Dimagi commits $3 million to support national adoption of digital tools under new Global Fund partnership

Today Dimagi is pleased to announce a monumental $3 million USD investment to support national governments in adopting and scaling digital service delivery tools. 

As the biggest digital Global Good provider for community health workers, Dimagi is proud to have reached over 950,000 frontline users. As we reach our twenty year anniversary and step back to study this success, we recognize factors driving national scale often have less to do with specific tool features and include enabling environment factors such as: 

• Groundwork & Political Commitment – Clarifying the goals of digitization and securing national commitment to the chosen digital tool provides the essential “backbone” for driving scale. 

• Digital Readiness & Technology Infrastructure – Investment in local infrastructure, trained and dedicated staff, digital policies and procedures, and digital architecture are needed to sustain a system once launched. 

• Sustained Financing – Availability of resources over a sufficient period of time are needed to ensure a tool can transition from pilot to full scale. 

• Partnership & Coordination – Strong long term partnerships as well as clear lines of decision making are needed to train and build technical support.

Despite our successes in growing a Global Good, we recognize that there are still inherent challenges in bringing solutions to national scale. Countries often face competing and urgent health priorities that come ahead of investing in digital solutions. This results in a reality where far too few programs have successfully transitioned to national ownership and scale. Instead, both countries and software providers face a much easier path taking on smaller, well-funded projects. 

The transition from innovation to scale is one of the hardest to solve, but we believe we can do better. And we are committed to pushing ourselves and the market towards sustainable impact. 

In order to support a world with affordable and impactful digital systems, we recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which provides 50% match funding to countries who leverage their Global Fund Country Grant to scale up Dimagi digital tools. The aim of this strategic partnership is to: 

• Reduce the up-front costs and risks to national governments related to digital tools
• Develop local digital readiness required to drive scale
• Improve coordination and up-front planning for digitization

This MOU will serve as a catalytic financing mechanism to amplify existing Global Fund resources and promote end-to-end resourcing of digital tools. Up to $1M per country will be available to Ministries of Health who choose to adopt and scale one of the following Dimagi products: 

• CommCare: Dimagi’s flagship low-code/no-code offline application platform 

• FocusMDM: Dimagi’s mobile device management software 

• Cloudworks: Dimagi’s digital diagnostics platform 

Up to five Global Fund eligible countries will be selected to be part of this initial partnership and success will be defined based on the number of countries that achieve over 80% penetration of digital tools over five years. In kind support without match funding will also be available on a case-by-case basis. 

This commitment marks a historic moment in Dimagi’s mission to build and sustain high-impact digital solutions that amplify frontline workers and programs. We look forward to strengthening pandemic preparedness and response efforts and building resilient systems through this new funding mechanism. 

Learn more about the process here. 

Interested countries can reach out directly to our Senior Director of Strategic Partnerships, Mel Miles at [email protected] to inquire about applying for this mechanism.