Last week from April 28- May 1 2009 there was a meeting of minds across continents as reproductive health advocates converged on London for learning and review meeting.

The meeting was convened by the world's biggest Health advocacy body, the International Planned Parenthood Federation IPPF at its London office. The participants were drawn from the various countries that were implementing the Country Global Pathways CGP, a new advocacy strategy that is designed to increase political will in each country for funding reproductive health and linking this up with advocacy at the international level. The CGP came into being out of the recognition that 'meeting the needs of the most marginalized communities is essential to reducing poverty and achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The CGP is a dynamic response to this realization. It is designed to move the sexual and reproductive health sector from being external and donor driven toward being nationally owned and led.' The initiative was planned for implementation in some strategic countries, Brazil, Mexico, Nigeria, Tanzania and Egypt. Nigeria, Africa's most populous country is the first country to begin the implementation of the CGP. The meeting was to enable the project implementing partners to review their strategies, assess their performance, share experiences and learn best practices from each other.

The first day of the meeting began with a welcome address and an introduction to the objectives and expectations of the meetings by Jennifer Woodside the Manager, Advocacy and Communications Team at IPPF. She presented the objectives of the informal meeting which was to enhance experience sharing and networking among participants. She reminded participants about the format for making country presentations which had earlier been sent to all. It included an overview of the project; what have been the key achievements; did you achieve what you wanted to achieve - if so how and if not why not? What activities have been successful, or not, and why? What has been the added value of your advocacy initiative? What are your plans? The consultant who designed the CGP model, Duff Gillespie is a professor of Public Health at the Bill and Melinda Gates Institute of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University, in Bloomberg, Baltimore. He made a presentation titled Revisiting Country Global Pathways and the Evolving International Context. Dr Duff Gillespie reviewed development in the maternal and family planning sector at the international level and the new targets set for the MDG goal 5 which is to provide universal access to reproductive health. He also reviewed the aid architecture and the decrease in the funding allocated to reproductive health by some development partners and underscored the fact that generating political will to correct this should be the target for advocates working in various countries. His presentation also highlighted the windows of opportunity that could be could be used to generate political priority for increasing funding for reproductive health. Among these are the international commitments made by the various governments to increase funding to reproductive health and the change of government in the United States. After his presentation, the various country projects presented their report of activities.

The Nigerian presentation was made by my humble self. It was titled AdvocacyNigeria: Promoting National and Global RH Advocacy. The paper highlighted the advocacy project for reduction of maternal mortality in Nigeria which is being implemented by AdvocacyNigeria. It set the context by highlighting the fact that Nigeria is one of the most challenging countries for promoting and achieving universal access to sexual and reproductive health because of the consistently poor maternal and child health indicators which is one of the poorest in the world. The paper identified some of the causes of this anomaly, prominent among which are inadequate resource allocation, poor systemic programming, low rate of political attention given to reproductive health and inappropriate legislation. It provided a brief description of the AdvocacyNigeria, a movement established by a broad section of Nigerians in 2006 to promote reproductive health advocacy and reduce maternal mortality. The founders were representatives of Nigerians from all walks of life. Among them were representatives of state and federal governments, parliamentarians, gynaecologists, traditional and opinion leaders, faith based organisations and health care workers. They were all concerned about the country's poor health indicators which could not be defended and was unacceptable to them given the country's human and material resources.

Drawing from the Country Global Pathways (CGP), AdvocacyNigeria implemented a two year project with support from IPPF with a grant from Packard Foundation. From 2009 to 2010 it will be funded by the California based Public Health Institute with a grant from Packard Foundation. AdvocacyNigeria has three main objectives, advocacy for increased budgetary allocation to reproductive health, capacity building for advocates to undertake focused advocacy directed at policy makers and influential people and advocacy for change in policies to promote reproductive health and increase donor commitment to reproductive health in Nigeria and globally. The project is being implemented in partnership with the Health Reform Foundation of Nigeria, HERFON a non-governmental organization which is providing administrative and financial support to AdvocacyNigeria under the terms of an MOU signed with IPPF London and AdvocacyNigeria in the first two years of the project. Since establishment of the secretariat in Abuja, AdvocacyNigeria has developed its advocacy agenda, working with existing reproductive health networks to undertake focused advocacy directed at policy makers in the Northern states of Kano, Borno, Sokoto, Kaduna, Katsina, Jigawa and Bauchi which have the poorest health indicators. In developing a country specific agenda, for advocacy, maternal mortality, which is the most important health issue facing the country serves as the point of entry for promoting sexual and reproductive health.