Building community-driven, climate-resilient health systems in Nigeria
Climate change is already reshaping the health landscape across Sub-Saharan Africa. In Nigeria rising temperatures, flooding, droughts, and shifting disease are putting increasing strain on communities and the health system. These risks are particularly acute in underserved areas, where gaps in infrastructure, data, and governance make it difficult to plan and respond effectively.
Nigeria ranks 154 out of 181 countries on the ND-GAIN Index, reflecting its limited readiness to adapt to climate impacts. Without urgent, integrated action, climate shocks will continue to erode health system capacity, with the greatest burden falling on vulnerable populations, particularly women and children.
A new partnership for climate resilience
Amp Health has partnered with the UBS Optimus Foundation to help create the conditions for locally-led, climate-resilient health systems in Nigeria. This initiative supports the development of locally led leadership and management (L&M) development, and systems strengthening to create the conditions necessary for innovative, locally led responses to thrive.
The partnership will focus on:
Bridging the gap between policy formulation and implementation, ensuring Nigeria’s strong climate and health policy frameworks lead to measurable change
Strengthening coordination and collaboration across sectors and levels of government to address fragmented efforts and inefficiencies
Improving climate literacy and data analysis capacity and expertise amongst health system stakeholders
Integrating climate data into health information systems to support evidence-based decision-making, planning, and accountability
Supporting innovation through AI-enabled tools
Amp Health’s role will also complement the work of Scope Impact to support participatory, community-led climate-health planning by helping stakeholders identify local risks and co-create adaptation strategies with AI-enabled tools.
An embedded, phased approach
The programme will be delivered in two phases. During this partnership, an Amp Health Management Partner will be embedded within the Federal Ministry of Health in Abuja. Key activities will include stakeholder mapping, co-creation workshops, capacity building, community engagement, and support to coordination platforms. The final phase of the partnership will focus on sustainability, with handover planning, ongoing virtual coaching, peer learning, and documentation of lessons learned to inform future scale-up.
Looking ahead
By focusing on the enabling environment, this partnership will help transform fragmented efforts into coordinated action, linking policy, data, leadership, and community engagement into a cohesive climate-health response. It aims to catalyse long-term systems change while ensuring that immediate innovations have the foundations they need to thrive.
Together with Nigeria’s government stakeholders and partners, Amp Health is proud to contribute to building a more resilient, responsive, and community-rooted health system in the face of climate change.