Governance & Leadership
Founded in 2016 and headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya, AAHRED operates under an independent board with five standing committees. Governance is the reason partners can rely on our results — not a formality appended to them.
Governance principles
The board sets strategy and holds management to account. Executive leadership delivers. No individual holds both mandates.
Governance bodies are majority African, with international members bringing donor, academic and audit perspectives.
Terms of reference, committee mandates, register of interests and meeting cadence are published and available for due diligence.
Structure
Each body has a written mandate, a defined quorum and an annual effectiveness review. Committee chairs report to the full board and, where relevant, directly to external auditors.
Sets institutional strategy, approves the annual budget and appoints the Executive Director. Meets quarterly with an independent non-executive majority.
Oversees the external audit, internal control environment, enterprise risk register and fraud response.
Reviews research protocols, data governance and human-subject ethics before any study is authorised.
Independent oversight of safeguarding cases, community complaints and the whistleblower channel.
Assures technical standards, monitoring frameworks and evaluation independence across the portfolio.
Guides resource mobilisation, blended finance structuring and strategic institutional partnerships.
Institutional history
2016
Established as an African-led alliance linking health systems research with economic development practice.
2018
Regional WASH and health systems portfolio launched across three East African countries.
2020
Rapid-response architecture stood up during the pandemic, supporting national surveillance and continuity of essential services.
2022
Interoperable health information exchange and geospatial analytics platform deployed with ministry partners.
2023
Youth incubation and women's financial access programmes surpassed 3,000 enterprises supported.
2025
New institutional strategy adopted, integrating health resilience and economic prosperity under one results architecture.
The secretariat maintains a standing due-diligence pack covering registration certificates, audited statements, governance charters, insurance, safeguarding records and donor references. It is released under NDA within five working days.
Tripartite operating model
Evidence generation translates into execution and delivery, which is in turn evaluated and governed — closing the loop between research, policy design, operations and accountability. Each arm is independently staffed and independently reported, so evaluation is never marked by the team that delivered the work.
Evidence generation, policy analytics and horizon scanning
Technical assistance, direct execution and capacity building
Accountability, systems strengthening and oversight
Programmatic lifecycle
Burden, equity and fiscal-space diagnostics using national datasets, geospatial layers and community consultation.
Costed intervention design with theory of change, indicator framework and explicit assumptions on attribution.
Controlled implementation with embedded measurement to test feasibility, unit economics and delivery risk.
Government-owned scale-up with SOPs, workforce training, procurement pathways and digital reporting rails.
Independent evaluation, public financial audit and open publication of results — including null findings.
Engagement matrix
Who AAHRED works with at each level of governance, what it delivers there, the legal instruments used and the cadence of reporting back to partners.
| Governance level | Core institutional clients | Key service offerings | Engagement instruments | Reporting cadence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Continental & Multilateral | African Union, Africa CDC, UNECA, WHO AFRO, World Bank, Global Fund | Strategic framework development, regional public goods governance, cross-border treaty alignment and macro-level grant evaluation. | Framework agreements, technical secretariats, joint working groups | Multi-year (3–5 yrs) |
| Regional Economic Communities | EAC, IGAD, ECOWAS, SADC | Surveillance harmonisation, cross-border migration protocols and trade-related biosecurity standards. | Protocol harmonisation compacts, corridor surveillance MOUs | Annual review cycles |
| National Governments | Ministries of Health, Finance, Gender/Social Protection and Agriculture | Policy formulation, UHC benefit package design, fiscal space analysis and embedded ministerial technical assistance. | Embedded advisory placements, costed national plans, MoUs | Budget-cycle aligned |
| Sub-National & Local Governance | County and district health directorates, municipalities, local councils | Decentralised planning, budget execution tracking, frontline worker training and community engagement architecture. | County work plans, community compacts, frontline training grants | Quarterly |
Unlike academic think tanks producing non-operational papers, or NGOs executing without rigorous evaluation, AAHRED unifies theoretical rigour with frontline delivery.
Empirical research → policy drafting → pilot implementation → nationwide scale-up → independent impact evaluation.
Endogenous African data models accounting for informal economies, pastoralist mobility and customary governance systems overlooked by external consultancies.
Evaluation standards
OECD-DAC criteria
Financial reporting
IFRS + 2 CFR 200
Data protection
GDPR / national DPAs
Safeguarding
PSEAH policy, independent channel
