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Financing Health Futures: Nigeria, Ghana, Uganda Turn to Tobacco and Telecom Taxes in Big Push Against Malaria

Published

4 months ago

September 28, 2025

African leaders, parliamentarians, health experts, and development partners have renewed their commitment to ending malaria by 2030, with a bold call for domestic financing through innovative taxation on tobacco, alcohol, and telecom services to close critical funding gaps.

The discussions took center stage at the Big Push Against Malaria: Harnessing Africa’s Role high-level political engagement in Abuja, where Nigeria, Ghana, and Uganda showcased new homegrown financing strategies aimed at reducing dependence on dwindling donor support.

Africa’s Heavy Burden

Malaria remains one of Africa’s deadliest diseases. In 2023, the world recorded 263 million cases and nearly 600,000 deaths, with 94% of cases and 95% of deaths occurring in Africa. Nigeria alone accounted for 26.6% of global cases and 31% of deaths, according to the World Malaria Report 2024. Children under five remain the most vulnerable, making up 76% of deaths.

Despite progress — with Nigeria cutting malaria deaths by more than half since 2000 through insecticide-treated nets, preventive treatments, and the rollout of the new R21 malaria vaccine — leaders warned that global targets are off-track. The World Health Organization’s technical strategy for malaria (2016–2030) has stalled since 2017, with Africa unlikely to meet its 2025 and 2030 milestones without urgent action.

Taxing for Health Futures

The Nigerian Parliament’s Committee on HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria (ATM) announced plans to fund malaria elimination through “sin taxes” and telecom levies.

According to the House Chair on ATM, Hon. Linda Ogar, a bill is underway to restructure the National Agency for the Control of AIDS (NACA) into a multi-disease agency that will address HIV, TB, and malaria.

The new financing mechanism proposes:

Taxes on tobacco, alcohol, and other luxury items

Dedicated levies on telecom airtime and mobile money transactions

A percentage of the nation’s consolidated revenue

“These resources will provide sustainable funding to strengthen health systems and accelerate malaria elimination,” Ogar said, stressing that Africa must stop relying solely on foreign donors. “We cannot continue to take two steps forward and five steps backward. Africa must begin to show the world that we are ready to solve our problems ourselves.”

Similar models are already being piloted in Ghana and Uganda, where levies on mobile money and telecoms are being redirected to finance health interventions. The Abuja meeting urged other African countries to adopt this approach as part of a continental framework for sustainable financing.

Leaders Call for Urgent Action

Nigeria’s Minister of State for Health and Social Welfare, Dr. Iziaq Adekunle Salako, emphasized that while malaria is preventable and treatable, it still kills hundreds of thousands yearly due to funding shortfalls, climate change, insecticide resistance, and humanitarian crises.

“To truly defeat this disease, we must rethink, join forces, and mount a concerted ‘Big Push’. Funding gaps remain a major obstacle, and innovative domestic financing is the way forward,” Salako declared.

From the civil society front, grassroots representatives pledged to act as “foot soldiers”, demanding that communities have a seat at the decision-making table. The World Health Organization, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Aliko Dangote Foundation, and other partners reaffirmed support but stressed the need for stronger political will and local ownership.

Private Sector and Global Support

Representing billionaire philanthropist Aliko Dangote, the Nigeria Malaria Council reiterated that private sector investment must complement government financing. Meanwhile, the Global Fund confirmed it has invested nearly $2 billion in Nigeria’s malaria response and committed an additional $500 million for 2024–2026, including support for local production of malaria drugs.

The Gates Foundation’s Uche Anaowu noted that while progress has slowed, malaria remains beatable:

“Smallpox is the only human disease ever eradicated. The question is — can malaria be next? I believe Africa has both the burden and the opportunity to lead the world in making that happen.”

Financing Health Futures: Nigeria, Ghana, Uganda Turn to Tobacco and Telecom Taxes in Big Push Against Malaria

Abuja, Nigeria – African leaders, parliamentarians, health experts, and development partners have renewed their commitment to ending malaria by 2030, with a bold call for domestic financing through innovative taxation on tobacco, alcohol, and telecom services to close critical funding gaps.

Africa’s Heavy Burden

Taxing for Health Futures

The Nigerian Parliament’s Committee on HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria (ATM) announced plans to fund malaria elimination through “sin taxes” and telecom levies.

The new financing mechanism proposes:

Taxes on tobacco, alcohol, and other luxury items

Dedicated levies on telecom airtime and mobile money transactions

A percentage of the nation’s consolidated revenue

Leaders Call for Urgent Action

Private Sector and Global Support

The Gates Foundation’s Uche Anaowu noted that while progress has slowed, malaria remains beatable:

“Smallpox is the only human disease ever eradicated. The question is — can malaria be next? I believe Africa has both the burden and the opportunity to lead the world in making that happen.”

The Big Push: From Talk to Action

Speakers acknowledged that Africa has hosted too many malaria meetings without concrete outcomes. This time, however, leaders insisted the Abuja gathering must mark a turning point — from dependency to self-reliance.

With Nigeria, Ghana, and Uganda setting the pace on tax-based health financing, the continent now faces the challenge of replicating and scaling up these models.

“Now that Africa is at a critical point, the need for a Big Push against malaria cannot be overemphasized. If we align political will, innovative financing, and community engagement, we can end malaria within our lifetime.”

Nigeria, Ghana, and Uganda are pioneering a shift from donor dependence to domestic revenue mobilization via tobacco, alcohol, and telecom taxes — a model hailed as central to financing Africa’s health futures and ending malaria by 2030
Speakers acknowledged that Africa has hosted too many malaria meetings without concrete outcomes. This time, however, leaders insisted the Abuja gathering must mark a turning point — from dependency to self-reliance.

With Nigeria, Ghana, and Uganda setting the pace on tax-based health financing, the continent now faces the challenge of replicating and scaling up these models.

“Now that Africa is at a critical point, the need for a Big Push against malaria cannot be overemphasized. If we align political will, innovative financing, and community engagement, we can end malaria within our lifetime.”

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50 Years After The Firsts; Has Ogun Prepared The Next?

Published

8 hours ago

February 4, 2026

The Gleamer

History Is Not a Development Plan

By Abiola Odetola

There is a kind of love that claps. And there is a kind of love that tells the truth. As Ogun State turns 50, it would be easy, maybe also expected to write the familiar tribute, the great names we produced, the firsts we claimed, the achievements we once wore like a crown, or probably eulogize the current governor and government for its many achievements.

However, Ogun is a state of immense pedigree in Nigeria’s modern story, a place that has repeatedly supplied the country with its thinkers, reformers, builders, and dreamers.

Ogun did not merely participate in Nigeria’s story, it helped write it. But anniversaries are not only for applause. They are also for audit.

If Ogun at 50 is only a celebration, then we have learnt nothing. Because a state that is truly serious about its future does not only praise the past, it interrogates the present and prepares the next fifty years with painful honesty.
This is that conversation many don’t want to have openly.

I write not as an observer, but as one whose identity is stitched into the Ogun story by birth, by upbringing, by daily realities, and, to the glory of Eledumare, by work and service. I write with the kind of loyalty that does not end at sentiment. I have read about the strides of our forebears, seen Ogun in its pride, and I have lived its contradictions.

And it is that contradiction that must concern us most today: how can a state with so much history still struggle to translate that inheritance into a consistently rising future?

The danger of Ogun at 50 is not that we will forget our past. The danger is that we will hide inside it.
History should be a foundation, not a hiding place. Legacy should be a launchpad, not a resting mat. A people cannot build tomorrow by endlessly reciting yesterday.

So the harder question must be asked, one that cuts beyond ceremony and nostalgia. Fifty years after the firsts, has Ogun prepared the next?
Ogun’s political history is impossible to tell without invoking towering figures whose ideas reshaped governance, education, federalism, culture, and civic duty in Nigeria. Names like Obafemi Awolowo, Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola, Tai Solarin, Wole Soyinka, Fela Kuti, Olusegun Aremu Obasanjo, Justice Atanda Fatai Williams, and Justice Adetokunbo Ademola did not merely occupy offices or stages; they built ideas that outlived them.

But herein lies our quiet failure: we mastered leadership, but neglected succession.We built icons, but failed to build pipelines. We celebrated brilliance, but did not institutionalise its transfer. We raised legends, but did not systematically prepare replacements.

Political leadership in Ogun has too often become custodial rather than generational, focused on preserving relevance, not preparing successors. The result is a dangerous vacuum where younger people grow up hearing stories of greatness without being handed the tools to recreate it.

So today, we must ask without sentiment and without fear: who is the political leader of Ogun State today in the mould of ideas, not office? Who is thinking about Ogun’s future beyond the next election cycle? Who is grooming the next Awolowo, Solarin, Soyinka, not in personality, but in intellectual rigour and moral courage?

As Ogun marks 50, we also stand at the doorstep of another election season, a moment that will quietly shape not just the next four or eight years, but the next fifty. Yet, the signs are worrying.

The same political warlords, many who have dominated the space for decades and failed the sustainability test from Ijebu to Egba, are sharpening daggers, not to build consensus, but to protect territory. Young professionals, technocrats, reform-minded servants, and emerging leaders are already feeling the weight of suppression, voices muted, ambitions caricatured, innovation treated as insolence.

Personal aspirations have become endless, often at the direct expense of youth inclusion.
This must be said clearly: a generation that will not live in the next fifty years has no moral right to mortgage that future with ego, factional battles, and needless political fracas.

Nature does not tolerate vacuum. Leadership transitions will happen, whether planned or chaotic. The only real question is how prepared the next leaders will be.

Today, many of Ogun’s socio-political and traditional leaders are between the ages of 60 and 90. This is not an insult; it is biology. But wisdom demands something of this reality: intentional transfer of power, knowledge, and responsibility.
Who is engineering young minds towards development rather than desperation? Who is preparing Ogun’s youth for leadership rather than patronage?

One of Ogun’s most painful contradictions is this: our young people are thriving, just not at home.
Across Nigeria and the diaspora, Ogun sons and daughters are holding their own in finance, technology, medicine, law, academia, arts, sports, and entrepreneurship. They are building systems, running companies, shaping policies, and competing globally.

Yet many do not see Ogun as a place where ambition can legally and competitively flourish. Too often, talent is met with suspicion rather than support. New ideas are strangled by old gatekeepers. Young voices are silenced in community and political spaces. Merit is sacrificed on the altar of loyalty. Innovation is treated as rebellion.

We have normalized a culture where young people are told subtly or directly, “wait your turn,” even when the system offers them no real seat at the table.

This culture does not build states. It empties them.

Cultism. Internet fraud. Prostitution. Skill gaps. Hopelessness. These are not moral failures unique to Ogun youth. They are responses to blocked opportunities.

When legitimate pathways are closed, illegitimate ones thrive. When skills are not taught, shortcuts are taken. When voices are suppressed, anger festers.

The real tragedy is this: the same energy that fuels these challenges could power Ogun’s renaissance only if properly channelled.

Youth energy is raw capital. Unrefined, it explodes. Refined, it builds nations.

This is why Ogun must now confront the question it has avoided for too long: where is the Ogun Youth Agenda?

Not youth empowerment as charity. Not youth inclusion as rhetoric. But a deliberate, state-wide youth development framework that treats young people as the primary infrastructure of Ogun’s future.

An Ogun Youth Agenda must be the organising principle of the next ten years, aligning education with skills, industry with apprenticeship, governance with mentorship, and politics with succession. Without this, every other plan will fail, because no state rises above the capacity of its people.

If Ogun is to matter in the next fifty years, youth development cannot be an afterthought. It must be the strategy.

There is a large pool of youth in Ogun State today largely not engaged.

In the long run, Ogun must raise leaders, not just office holders. It must export ideas, not only people. It must become a place where talent can succeed legally, competitively, and sustainably from home. It must position itself not as a feeder state, but as a shaper of Nigeria’s future.
This is not idealism. It is survival.

As we celebrate fifty years, let us ask the question that truly matters: where are the next Awolowo, Mike Adenuga, MKO, Fela, Tai Solarin, Soyinka, Oba Otudeko, Fola Adeola, and many others we all know, not just in name, but in preparation?
More importantly, who is deliberately posturing young Ogun minds for that level of greatness?If the answer is silence, then our celebration is premature.

Ogun’s history is not its destination. It is its responsibility.

Those who built the past deserve honour. But honour does not mean control. At this stage, leadership must be measured not by how long power is held, but by how well it is handed over. Not by how loudly history is invoked, but by how intentionally the future is prepared.

One truth must now guide Ogun beyond 50: history is not a development plan.

Has Ogun prepared the next?

History does not reward inheritance. It rewards stewardship.

The future is already watching.

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