RHSC work in francophone Africa leverages $2.6M

In December 2019, the RHSC called on its unique levers of change – its brain trust, its convening power and its neutral playing field – to co-organize a pioneering dialogue on safe abortion in Cotonou, Benin for some 80 government representatives, advocates, and donor organizations. What started as a germ of an idea took shape steadily and a year on, Le Centre ODAS has been unveiled. With joint funding of $2.625M, from the Hewlett and Packard Foundations and the Foundation for a Just Society, the Centre’s hosting agency, Ipas, will coordinate and catalyze the provision of safe abortion in the nine countries of the Ouagadougou Partnership as well as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and address commodity security as one of its key strategic areas of focus.