Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is estimated to account for 25 percent of the global disease burden and accordingly has some of the weakest health outcomes. Yet, the continent accounts for only 1 percent of global health expenditure. Few SSA governments have been able to meet the 2001 Abuja Special Summit target of allocating 15 percent of their budgets to health care by 2005, with the majority spending less than 10 percent on health care. Effectively, this has meant a considerable health care provision gap. Since the 1980s, the private health sector has played an increasing role in filling this gap, but the nature and extent of private sector’s role is not well-documented. Also little is known about how public policies shape the role of the private sector and ultimately influence outcomes.

The upcoming World Bank’s Flagship Report, The Business of Health in Africa, aims to address this knowledge gap by developing a set of relevant indicators that address these issues for all SSA countries. Overall the goal of the Flagship Report is to encourage leaders and policy makers to improve the effectiveness of the private health sector's contribution to the provision of high quality health-related goods and services and to reductions in financial risk, particularly as its affects the poor. In a first phase of producing the Flagship Report, the World Bank commissioned the RAND Corporation, in conjunction with Research for Development Institute (R4D) and the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), to lead an indicator scoping exercise. The main aim of the indicator scoping project is to identify a set of indicators that would best fulfill the needs of the Flagship Report. The team is exploring the availability and comprehensiveness of existing data sources relevant for the goals of the Flagship report, identifying areas where new indicators will need to be developed, and to proposing a framework to guide the selection and organization of indicators for the Flagship Report.