How UNFPA’s Match Fund spurs additional domestic funding

The United Nations Population Fund has unlocked millions in additional domestic resources for reproductive health products, and expects that amount to increase as it scales one of its innovative financing models in 2026 despite aid cuts. Launched in 2022, the UNFPA Match Fund provides $2 worth of commodities for every $1 a country spends on reproductive health products, including various contraceptives and essential items to help mothers during pregnancy and childbirth. The model encourages governments to put more of their own resources into ensuring the availability of these products for their populations — an action that has become even more urgent and relevant with recent donor cuts. Since its launch, the fund has provided $56 million in commodities to 36 countries. These countries, in turn, contributed an additional $33 million of their own resources through the matching model. Some countries, however, have gone beyond the $2 million that UNFPA can match through the model. That includes Madagascar, which spent over $9 million of its own resources in 2024 alone on contraceptives. “They are one of our biggest spenders across the partnership, which is quite remarkable, given they have one of the lowest [gross domestic products] per capita in the world,” Emma Foster, policy adviser for the UNFPA Supplies Partnership’s technical division, told Devex. Even some of the world’s most resource-constrained countries have put in their own resources as part of the funding model, including Yemen and the Central African Republic, Foster said. “I think it’s one of those … tried and tested solutions that we’re really excited to scale, particularly within the current funding context,” she added. How it works The Match Fund’s design ensures governments are spending and not just allocating budgets for contraceptives, and that the products they are buying are of high quality. That happens in two ways. UNFPA requires proof of actual government orders before it “matches” the government’s spending. “We’re not matching a budget allocation. We actually need to see evidence that orders have been placed,” Foster said. In addition, the U.N. program ensures orders include products that are prequalified by the World Health Organization, or approved by a stringent regulatory authority — regulatory bodies that meet the highest standards of ensuring the safety and quality of medical products. Foster said this helps ensure governments are procuring quality-assured products for their populations. “It can be incredibly time-consuming and difficult, but it’s a really important principle for us … that we’re ensuring that gold standard of transparency and accountability,” she said. Alongside these requirements, UNFPA makes the case to governments that every dollar invested in family planning can yield $27 in social and economic benefits for countries. And they’re engaging ministers of finance in the process. The Match Fund is part of UNFPA’s Supplies Partnership, which works in 54 countries where contraceptive usage is low and maternal death rates are high. Most of these countries are required to sign compacts with UNFPA that outline their commitment to domestic resource mobilization for the year ahead. This should be at least 1% to 10% of the cost of program-funded supplies, although Foster said most countries are surpassing that minimum requirement. These compacts are signed not just with ministers of health, but also ministers of finance. “Getting that buy-in early on from the ministry of finance has been really game-changing … in actually unlocking the budget allocation for contraceptives,” she said. Scaling in the face of cuts Foster said if they’re able to attract more donor resources, that could help unlock more domestic resources for reproductive health commodities. “We can provide countries with a bigger incentive to start investing and a bigger reward when they do so,” she said. However, donor funding cuts are putting a dent in that ambition. In fact, UNFPA’s Supplies Partnership is among those programs directly hit by the funding cuts. In 2026, the program faces a budget cut of 21%. Yet even with constrained resources, Foster said they’re planning to scale up the Match Fund as a proportion of the partnership’s total budget to allow them to increase the amount of match funding available to governments, helping further accelerate domestic resource mobilization. That would mean reductions in funding for the other funding streams under the UNFPA Supplies Partnership focused on donated commodities, including new and lesser-used contraceptives. “We’re having to make really tough choices right now about how to allocate that program budget. But it’s really important for us as a partnership that we prioritize domestic financing within that context,” Foster said. Replicating the model The success to date has prompted UNFPA and partners to try and replicate the Match Fund model for other purposes. In early 2025, UNFPA, in partnership with UNICEF and with financial support from the Gates Foundation, launched a pilot called the MNCH Accelerator, which applies the same principles and process as the Match Fund model but for maternal, newborn, and child health commodities. Mikaela Hildebrand, UNFPA team lead for maternal and newborn health, told Devex that while governments have been allocating their own resources to procure maternal health medicines, they have not done so at a scale to ensure they’re meeting all the needs in countries. Some also face challenges in the procurement of quality-assured medicines, or lack the supply chain infrastructure to manage them — for example, cold chain storage and facilities to maintain the effectiveness of oxytocin, a drug that helps prevent and treat postpartum hemorrhage but that is highly sensitive to heat. The accelerator applies the same process as the Match Fund. The partners verify government orders and ensure the products being procured meet quality standards. But as a pilot, it only involves a small set of countries — Ethiopia, Mali, Nigeria, and Senegal, according to Hildebrand. In addition, as part of the pilot, the partners agreed for UNFPA to focus on maternal health commodities and for UNICEF to focus on newborn commodities to see “if this is a new way that UNFPA and UNICEF could work together,” Hildebrand said. It also applies a $1 to $1 match instead of the Match Fund’s $2 to $1 model. For example, if a government procures $100 of oxytocin, UNFPA can match that by purchasing $100 worth of heat-stable carbetocin, which is also used to prevent postpartum hemorrhage. Discussions on the MNCH Accelerator started in 2024 and involved consultations with governments on the pilot design to ensure it aligns with the needs and interests of countries. The pilot is set to conclude by the end of the year. After that, they plan to evaluate the data to determine whether it’s been successful against a set of key indicators, such as whether the Accelerator was able to incentivize domestic resource spending, the procurement of quality-assured commodities, whether it was able to demonstrate price reductions by aggregating demand for the products, and whether it was able to demonstrate the collaboration between the two agencies. They’re careful not to make comparisons between 2024 and 2025, recognizing many governments have had to make difficult decisions on priorities for the year due to donor funding cuts. But Hildebrand said that based on lessons learned from years of implementing the Match Fund, it takes time to advocate for additional budget allocations for health commodities or to ensure quality-assured procurement. “And so we really see this first year as the first engagement year where we’re now having a very clear dialogue with government counterparts around these requirements,” she said. “And the hope very much is that … it can open up a conversation about the importance of procuring quality assured commodities as well as, of course, demonstrating the need for increasing the total funds allocated to essential lifesaving maternal health commodities.” But from UNFPA’s perspective, the MNCH Accelerator is a “really promising model,” and a critical innovation at a time when donor budgets are shrinking. “I think that there are partners in this space that are looking for these types of very sort of high-impact interventions and investments. And I think this is clearly one of them,” she added.