Stakeholder Engagement Meeting in Ghana: Opportunities for Commercial Sector Expansion in Ghana’s Family Planning Market

FHM Engage, in collaboration with Total Family Health Organisation (TFHO) and Metrics for Management (M4M), held a stakeholder engagement meeting in Accra, Ghana in October 2024. The event, “Opportunities for Commercial Sector Expansion in Ghana’s Family Planning Market” brought together a range of stakeholders from the Ghana Health Service, Ministry of Health, social marketing organizations, contraceptive manufacturers, health associations, and donors, including the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), over the course of a day and a half to discuss opportunities and challenges for commercial expansion in Ghana.  

Participants engaged in spirited dialogue to discuss the implications of findings from FHM Engage activities designed 1) to describe and diagnose constraints in the family planning market in Ghana, 2) develop estimates of the contraceptive market size, including private sector volume and value, and 3) to understand consumers’ willingness to pay for oral contraceptives and injectables to inform pricing strategies that could better support commercial expansion strategies. 

Stakeholders had the opportunity to challenge their assumptions about what women are willing to pay for contraceptives, discuss why current pricing might be different between pharmacies and over-the-counter medicine sellers (OTCMS), and reflect on opportunities and challenges identified through FHM Engage's market description, such as the impact taxation has on pricing strategies for contraception. FHM Engage and M4M also debuted the Contraceptive Market Size Visualizer, which enables users to visualize national and subnational contraceptive use data and provides value and volume estimates of modern contraceptives sources from the private sector. 

Participants, both from the public and private sectors, reflected on their role within the broader health market and had the opportunity to talk with other stakeholders that play different roles along the supply chain to identify opportunities to work together or learn from each other.  

The sustainability of the family planning market in Ghana can be supported by improved integrated market access that works through new market segments with existing or new products and services. Understanding factors that may impact market segment uptake of contraceptives, supported by commercial expansion strategies, can help drive family planning uptake to meet the needs of women and men.