Lessons From Practice on Scaling Care in Africa

Investments in care benefit women, families, and communities while driving more inclusive economic growth and sustainable development. Across Africa, governments, civil society organizations, research institutes, and communities are developing and implementing innovative solutions for childcare, elder care, disability care, and other forms of unpaid care and domestic work. These care innovations are generating promising results, creating opportunities to build on what works, address persistent gaps, and scale effective approaches.

Building on this momentum, the Scaling Care Innovations in Africa (SCIA) program, co-funded by the International Development Research Centre and Global Affairs Canada, offers a growing body of evidence on how promising care innovations can be strengthened, adapted, and scaled across diverse African contexts. Across 19 projects in 15 countries, the SCIA program supports implementation research on innovative approaches to recognizing, reducing, and redistributing unpaid care work and improving the quality and accessibility of care.

Drawing on evidence and learning from across the SCIA portfolio, this brief highlights care innovations that are demonstrating results and show potential for further scaling. It focuses on two thematic areas: expanding access to affordable, high-quality childcare and reducing and redistributing unpaid care work in rural settings. Using examples from the portfolio, the brief examines how these approaches are being strengthened, adapted, and expanded in different contexts and distills practical lessons on what supports effective scaling. The aim is to enable policymakers, practitioners, private sector actors, civil society actors, and donor agencies to build on existing innovations, adapt promising approaches to their own contexts, and strengthen care policies, services, and systems.