Evidence Is Not Enough: What the Domestic Resource Mobilization Webinar Series Revealed About Leadership, Learning, and Systems Change
By Wyckliff Ombede, Head of Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning, policy/strategy group
Global development does not suffer from a lack of evidence. Every year, new studies, evaluations, financing analyses, and monitoring systems generate insights into what works and why. Yet many reforms continue to struggle to move from political commitment to sustained implementation. The challenge is often not generating evidence, but translating it into action.
This lesson emerged clearly from the Global Leaders Network (GLN) DRM in Action! Webinar Series, led by South Africa in partnership with PMNCH and the National School of Government. Running from September 2025 to April 2026, the series brought together political leaders, policymakers, financing experts, development partners, and practitioners to explore how countries can strengthen domestic financing for women’s, children’s, and adolescents’ health (WCAH).
policy/strategy group (p/s) supported the series through coordination and Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL), capturing insights from participation data, audience engagement, live polling, speaker discussions, and participant reflections. While the webinars focused on domestic resource mobilisation and innovative financing, they revealed broader lessons about implementation, accountability, learning, and systems change.
Participants were largely aligned on the challenge. Few questioned the importance of domestic resource mobilisation or the need for innovative financing approaches. Instead, discussions focused on a different question: how can reforms be implemented, sustained, and translated into results?
Across all six webinars, a consistent message emerged. Countries are looking for practical support to navigate implementation. They want stronger accountability systems, opportunities for peer learning, and guidance on managing the political and institutional realities that shape reform. In short, they are seeking the capabilities that bridge the gap between evidence and action.
For MEL practitioners, this raises an important challenge. The future of MEL lies not only in producing evidence, but in helping leaders and institutions use evidence to strengthen implementation, improve decision-making, and sustain change.
Knowing What Works Is Not the Same as Making It Work
One of the clearest lessons from the webinar series was that many countries have moved beyond understanding the financing challenge and are now grappling with implementation.
Early discussions focused on declining aid, fiscal pressures, and the need to strengthen domestic financing. Over time, however, the conversation shifted from why reform is needed to how reform can be delivered. Questions increasingly centred on governance arrangements, implementation sequencing, institutional readiness, accountability mechanisms, and political feasibility.
Whether discussing blended finance, social impact bonds, debt-for-health swaps, or innovative taxation models, participants consistently sought practical guidance on implementation rather than additional evidence of the problem.
Country experiences generated some of the strongest engagement. Participants wanted to understand what had worked, what barriers had emerged, and how implementation challenges had been addressed in different contexts. The message was clear: awareness is not the primary constraint; implementation readiness is.
This has important implications for MEL. If implementation is the challenge, MEL cannot focus solely on measuring results after the fact. It must help decision-makers navigate uncertainty, identify bottlenecks, and adapt as reforms unfold.
Accountability Is Becoming a Strategic Asset
Another important lesson from the webinar series was the changing role of accountability in financing reforms.
Historically, accountability systems were often viewed as reporting requirements designed to satisfy donors, auditors, and programme managers. Monitoring frameworks, expenditure reports, and performance reviews frequently sat alongside implementation rather than at its centre.
The discussions across the six webinars suggested a different perspective.
Participants repeatedly emphasised that sustainable financing depends not only on mobilising resources, but also on demonstrating that those resources are managed effectively, transparently, and in ways that produce measurable results. Accountability emerged not as a compliance requirement, but as a foundation for financing credibility.
Country examples reinforced this point. Nigeria’s Basic Health Care Provision Fund illustrated how expenditure tracking and accountability systems can strengthen transparency and confidence in public financing arrangements. Zambia’s experience financing SRH commodities demonstrated how procurement monitoring can improve both oversight and service delivery. In South Africa, discussions around the Imagine Social Impact Bond highlighted the value of independently verified results in building confidence among investors, governments, and implementation partners.
Across these examples, participants returned to a common theme: financing systems are only as credible as the accountability systems that support them.
Governments need evidence to justify continued investment. Citizens need transparency to maintain trust. Investors and financing partners need confidence that resources are being used effectively and that promised outcomes can be verified.
For MEL practitioners, this expands the role of monitoring systems. Beyond tracking indicators, they help build trust, strengthen legitimacy, and create confidence among those financing and implementing reforms. Accountability is therefore not simply an administrative function; it is a strategic asset that helps sustain reform.
Politics Matters More Than Most MEL Systems Acknowledge
Perhaps the most significant lesson emerging from the webinar series is that implementation challenges are rarely technical alone.
Across discussions on financing, accountability, and SRHR, participants consistently pointed to political priorities, institutional incentives, leadership transitions, fiscal pressures, and stakeholder dynamics as the factors most likely to determine whether reforms progressed or stalled.
The discussions on SRHR financing were particularly revealing. Despite strong evidence on the health, social, and economic benefits of investing in SRHR, financing remains vulnerable in many countries. During periods of fiscal constraint, these services are often among the first to face budget reductions and may become subject to political contestation or shifting government priorities.
The challenge, therefore, is not whether evidence exists. It is whether the political and institutional conditions exist for that evidence to be acted upon.
Participants repeatedly highlighted the importance of relationships between Ministries of Finance and Ministries of Health, the role of political leadership in sustaining reform momentum, and the need to build coalitions capable of navigating competing interests and institutional constraints.
Several country examples demonstrated that reforms progressed because stakeholders aligned incentives, built support, and created ownership across government systems—not simply because compelling evidence was presented.
For MEL practitioners, this raises an important question. Many MEL systems continue to treat implementation as a largely technical process, focusing on activities, outputs, and outcomes while paying less attention to the conditions that shape whether change is possible in the first place.
Yet some of the most useful questions are often:
- What enabled progress?
- Which political or institutional conditions supported reform?
- What incentives helped or hindered implementation?
- What barriers continue to limit change?
Answering these questions requires MEL systems that pay greater attention to context, power, incentives, and institutional dynamics. Evidence matters, but it rarely drives reform on its own.
Learning Must Move Closer to Decision-Making
A fourth lesson emerging from the webinar series is that countries are not asking for more information. They are asking for help turning information into action.
As discussions progressed, participants sought practical guidance on implementation. They wanted to understand how reforms could be operationalised within their own political, fiscal, and institutional realities. Questions focused on sequencing, governance arrangements, accountability systems, implementation readiness, and how other countries had navigated similar challenges.
What participants valued most were not additional reports or abstract concepts, but practical lessons that could help them make decisions.
This reflects a broader challenge across international development. Significant investments have been made in generating evidence through monitoring systems, evaluations, research studies, and reporting frameworks. While these efforts have increased the availability of information, they have not always increased its use.
Evidence creates value when it helps decision-makers understand emerging challenges, test assumptions, adapt strategies, and make better choices.
This was evident throughout the webinar series. Some of the most engaging discussions emerged not from presentations of findings, but from country experiences. Participants repeatedly referenced lessons from Ethiopia, Zambia, Nigeria, South Africa, Malawi, Kenya, Sierra Leone, and Cameroon, seeking practical insights into what worked, what did not, and how implementation challenges had been addressed.
The demand was not for more evidence. It was for learning.
For MEL practitioners, this means learning cannot remain a separate activity conducted at the end of a programme. It must be embedded within implementation and decision-making processes through stronger learning loops, structured reflection, adaptive management approaches, and regular opportunities for stakeholders to interpret evidence together and act on it.
What This Means for the Future of MEL
The lessons emerging from the GLN webinar series extend far beyond domestic resource mobilisation. They point to a broader shift in how MEL must evolve to remain relevant in increasingly complex policy and development environments.
Five implications stand out:
- Focus on decisions, not indicators. The purpose of MEL is not data collection; it is better decision-making.
- Integrate political economy and implementation realities. Understanding incentives, institutions, and stakeholder dynamics is often as important as measuring outcomes.
- Strengthen accountability as a governance function. Accountability builds trust, improves transparency, and supports long-term reform.
- Create structured learning systems. Learning requires deliberate processes that help stakeholders interpret evidence and translate it into action.
- Support adaptation, not just reporting. MEL systems should help programmes respond to changing realities, not simply document what happened.
Conclusion
The central lesson from the webinar series is straightforward: countries do not lack evidence. They are seeking support to implement reforms, navigate complexity, strengthen accountability, and learn as they go.
As development challenges become increasingly complex, MEL cannot be limited to measuring results after implementation. It must support decision-making, learning, adaptation, and accountability throughout the reform journey.
The future of MEL will not be defined by how much data we collect or how many reports we produce. It will be defined by how effectively evidence helps leaders navigate complexity, strengthen implementation, build trust, and make better decisions.
At p/s, we believe MEL should do more than measure change. It should help leaders understand systems, strengthen implementation, and turn evidence into action.
Reading No
Reader, when this writer was a child, the baby brother — don’t call him that! — would, when exasperated, despatch offending elder siblings with a perfectly sounded-out “N-O means no.” Arms akimbo, brow furrowed, pitch declaring level of seriousness, the matter closed before it had properly opened. Credit to the parents for their kindergarten choices, wah! There was no appeal, no counter-offer, no graceful retreat into ambiguity, just total clarity, the end.
In the last two months, no has been on the lips of a few African capitals’ mouths, in response to American 30-60-90 hardball in a brave new transactional global health world. Whether all these nos are in every case a complete sentence, or just the opening gambit, remains to be seen. What is clear is that the word has lately been wielded with an attention-getting just so.
Harare went first. In late February, Zimbabwe withdrew from talks over a $367m bilateral health memorandum with the United States, calling the terms “lopsided.” Lusaka followed within days, suspending a deal worth more than $1bn after officials concluded that several clauses, including one apparently hitching health funding to a mining partnership, did not align with the national interest. Then a few days ago, Accra. Ghana walked away from a $109m, five-year package, citing concerns over the sharing of sensitive citizen health data. Three governments in three different rooms, with three rather different price tags on the table, arrived at the same single-syllable conclusion. Meanwhile, Kenya’s $1.6bn agreement moved forward after the Court of Appeal lifted orders that had temporarily blocked implementation of the medical cooperation framework with the United States.
How is all this to be read? As a robust, if multifaceted, defence of Common African Position on Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness, and Response (CAP-PPPR) in the face of Divide and Conquer, Season 55?
Washington’s “America First Global Health Strategy,” unveiled last year, replaced traditional aid with bilateral compacts requiring co-financing, performance tracking and, in several cases, the long-term sharing of pathogen and population health data and reach-in around them, to say nothing of mineral rights, transport corridors, and whatever else might reasonably be slipped into a schedule.
When Zimbabwe’s information minister explained Harare’s refusal, he framed the issue not as money but as multilateralism: a bilateral pathogen-sharing deal, he argued, would undermine the very system Africa has spent years championing in Geneva. Zambia’s objections centred on the entanglement of health aid with mineral access, while Ghana’s turned on data sovereignty and the absence of any guaranteed access to innovations derived from its citizens’ biological information. The particulars vary, perhaps decidedly. But the ricochet heard around the world from these three capitals was unmistakable: Africans can indeed say no. I’d rather starve than sign that.
The “rather starve” is not, alas, entirely figurative. The 2025 dismantling of USAID and the abrupt suspension of American health assistance has, by one tracker’s count, already contributed to hundreds of thousands of avoidable deaths. The Center for Global Development reckons the new compacts represent, on average, a 49% drop from 2024 funding levels, with recipient governments expected to absorb the gap within five years. The numbers describe a wager, not a posture.
What is being wagered, and why now? Perhaps the brazenness of this latest round has caused at least these three capitals to reflect on how far ceded health sovereignty had quietly exposed them, and to take the painful decision to lance the boil. If so, it is the right thing to do. But because they failed to consult their publics in advance, the choice is exceedingly painful, and the pain will be borne by people who were never asked whether they were willing to bear it. To refuse a billion dollars when your HIV programme depends on it is not a flourish. It is a calculation that the alternative, yes on these terms, is worse than the cliff. Whether the citizens whose treatment will be interrupted agree with that calculation is a question their governments have not yet thought to ask.
The edge of the cliff is looming, against the backdrop of the final stretch of negotiations on the Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing annex, the PABS annex, the last and most contested piece of the WHO Pandemic Agreement adopted at last year’s World Health Assembly. Negotiators reconvened in Geneva this week, but with member states unable to bridge key divides, discussions on the annex have now been extended to May 2027. The gap between blocs remains wide enough to swallow the original deadline whole. Positions have barely shifted, low- and middle-income countries continue to press for mandatory benefit-sharing, including guaranteed access to vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics in exchange for the rapid sharing of pathogen data, wealthier countries press for safeguards on pharmaceutical innovation and open access to genetic sequences. The Pandemic Agreement itself cannot enter into force until the annex is finished, which gives every bilateral signature a quiet but forceful relevance as a thumb on the multilateral scale.
In a few weeks, African and other capitals, and the health diplomats who speak for them, will have to go home and explain the consequences of these negotiations to their publics. Whatever emerges from Geneva, and whatever has been signed or refused bilaterally, will land on the desks of finance ministers, in the wards of public hospitals, in the queues at primary health care facilities where the supply of antiretrovirals has dried up. This is what we got. This is what it cost. This is what we could not protect.
It causes one to reflect that engaging those publics beforehand, explaining the trade-offs, naming the red lines, soliciting a mandate rather than presenting a fait accompli, would make the coming medicine go down rather better. Sovereignty asserted on a citizen’s behalf, without the citizen, is a thinner thing than sovereignty asserted with one. And perhaps, it also presents an opportunity to extend that need to be treated as mature adults to their own citizens. There is scarcely a country on the continent where the memory of having died to defend the principles of dignity and the right to self-determination is more than a grandparent’s generation away.
The capitals that have refused these bilateral deals have, broadly, framed the refusal as a defence of national interest, but whether their citizens recognise it as such when the consequences arrive in the form of stockouts, shuttered programmes, sickness, and death will depend almost entirely on whether the conversation happened in time.
That conversation will also determine the larger thing. The question hanging over Geneva, and over every capital weighing a bilateral against a multilateral commitment, is whether what is being defended is worth the price of defending it. A PABS annex that collapses, or one stripped of meaningful benefit-sharing, would arguably represent the last and best chance of operationalising equity in pandemic response squandered. A multilateral framework that holds, by contrast, would vindicate a decade of African diplomatic insistence that the rules of global health be written with rather than for the global majority.
Whether the diplomats now at work are negotiating a Pyrrhic victory in the form of a principled refusal that costs more lives than it saves, a multilateralism preserved on paper while its constituencies are abandoned in practice, or, conversely, delivering a lethal blow to multilateralism itself by signing away its premise in side-deals, will not be known on the day the Assembly votes. It will be known later, in the explaining. And the explaining, like the negotiation, is best done with a mandate already in hand.
To what are we saying no?