The government side
Ministries and national programmes own the choices and the consequences. They need answers framed around the decision in front of them — not a paper published two years later.
Africa Modelling Bridge · a modelling movement
When the money is tight, modelling decides where it goes.
Africa Modelling Bridge is a movement to put modelling at the centre of how African governments spend scarce health resources — and how they make the case for more. We convene Ministries of Health and African universities around the models that decide where nets, drugs and surveillance go, and that ministries take to funders to justify the ask.
Founder & lead modeller
Ernest Moyo
The bridge
Ministries of Health ↔ Academia
Reach
Southern & East Africa
Why now
Donors are pulling back.
The decisions only get harder.
−21%
Development assistance for health, 2024 → 2025 IHME
−25%
Forecast contraction across sub-Saharan Africa
15yr
Low — DAH forecast level, lowest since 2010
As donors boycott, withdraw and tighten, every health programme on the continent is being forced to do more with less. That is not, first, a fundraising problem — it is a prioritisation problem. Which district, which intervention, which population, this year, with this much money? Those are modelling questions. The movement exists to make sure governments answer them with their own evidence — and use that evidence to argue for the funding to act.
The idea
Be the bridge between the ministry and the model.
African Ministries of Health hold the decisions, the data and the urgency. African universities hold the modelling talent. They rarely sit in the same room. AMB is a convener — led by a modeller who has worked on both sides — that closes that gap as a standing movement, not a one-off project.
The academic side
African universities train capable modellers whose work too rarely reaches a programme manager’s desk. The movement gives them real questions, real data, and a real audience.
The bridge
A modeller who speaks both languages — convening the room, framing the questions, and translating the outputs into decisions governments can act on and funders will back.
Who is driving it
A modeller who has sat on both sides of the table.
Ernest Moyo is an epidemiologist and health-systems modeller with over a decade supporting African Ministries of Health — interpreting modelling outputs into real programme decisions. He has built malaria risk maps and stratifications alongside leading global modelling groups, working directly with national programmes across Southern and East Africa, and is now deepening the craft through doctoral research in mathematical modelling.
This movement is led by someone who understands the models, has stood in the ministry rooms where they get used, and knows what it takes to turn them into funding.
Read the full background-
A decade inside the ministry rooms
Over ten years supporting African Ministries of Health and national programmes — turning analysis into decisions, from surveillance to resource allocation.
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Built with the best in the field
Malaria risk maps and stratifications produced alongside leading global modelling groups, across multiple countries in Southern and East Africa.
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Deepening the craft
Doctoral research in mathematical modelling — building Bayesian frameworks for high-resolution risk mapping that national programmes can act on.
Why modelling
What a good model does for a government under pressure.
Modelling is not an academic luxury. In a constrained year it is the most practical tool a health system has — to target, to prove, and to fund.
Put the resource where the burden is
High-resolution risk maps and stratification show where to deploy nets, spray, drugs and surveillance for the largest reduction in cases per dollar — instead of spreading thin and hoping.
Cost-effectiveness, not guesswork
Transmission and intervention models estimate what a reallocation actually buys — the marginal cases averted from moving a budget line — so a programme manager can defend the choice in the room.
The model is the investment case
A credible, locally-owned model is what a ministry takes to the Global Fund, to Treasury, to a new funder. Outputs do not just inform decisions — they justify the ask for the money to act on them.
How the movement works
Convene. Frame. Build. Translate.
Not a fellowship, not a think-tank, not a software product. A thin, consultant-led movement that runs the same four-step cadence in each country it works in.
- 01
Convene the room
Bring the Ministry of Health and the country’s modellers to the same table — small rooms, shared meals, no rank. The decision the ministry is actually facing sets the agenda.
- 02
Frame the questions
Turn that decision into a short portfolio of modelling questions the country owns — feasible, fundable, and tied to a real programme choice rather than a journal deadline.
- 03
Build the capacity
Route those questions to African BSc, MSc and PhD researchers with a named supervisor and methods support, so the skill to answer them stays in the country after the project ends.
- 04
Translate for decisions
Interpret the outputs into something a programme manager and a finance ministry can act on — and a funder can back. This is the step the movement exists to get right.
A growing toolkit supports the cadence — a public index of ministry documents, an AI question-scaffold, methods coaching, open dossiers. Useful, but secondary: the tools serve the movement, never the other way around. See the tools →
Join the movement. Back the bridge.
For ministries, modellers, universities and funders who believe African health decisions should be driven by African evidence. One quiet email a month — what we convened, what we modelled, what changed.
How to get involved