At VillageReach, we believe leveraging private sector capacity for health supply chains is critical to driving sustained impact. Local private companies offer low- and middle-income country (LMIC) governments and their partners a variety of effective and cost-efficient solutions to strengthen health supply chains.
One clear way we see the impact of private sector engagement (PSE) in Africa is through local private logistics companies. Our journey to find innovative transportation options with LMIC governments began in Mozambique in 2015 and has evolved into an ability to provide nuanced technical assistance (TA) to help African countries optimize their health supply chains through improved operational performance and logistics.
It has been a journey that built VillageReach’s expertise in outsourced logistics and will help us reach our 2030 goal – to reduce inequities in access to quality primary health care in health systems that reach 350 million people.
In the Beginning: A Mozambique Story
In 2013, the Mozambique Ministry of Health (MISAU) adopted a new supply chain strategy (PELF – Plano Estrategico de Logistica Farmaceutica) that included integrating private transporters for health product delivery. After a successful pilot in Tete province, VillageReach worked with MISAU, the Central Medical Store of Mozambique and USAID to develop the Last Mile Supply Chain (LMSC) program, which aimed to scale private transport country-wide.
And it worked. Between 2018 and 2021, the LMSC program reached all 11 provinces, serving nearly 2,000 health facilities with regular monthly deliveries, completed on time and in full. The Mozambique government continues to work with donors and partners to manage this coordinated fourth-party logistics (4PL) private transport model that gets products to people consistently, no matter where they live.
It was LMSC’s success in Mozambique that led to the creation of VillageReach’s Outsourced Transport Resource Center (OTRC) in 2021 with catalytic funding from the Gates Foundation.
Sharing our Expertise: OTRC & Education
The transport, opening and storage of medicines and materials at the Jangamo Health Center District Medicines Warehouse in Inhambane Province, Mozambique. Photo Credit: Ricardo Franco
To share our learnings from Mozambique, the OTRC created a resource library, between 2021 and 2025, on outsourced transport covering topics such as integrated delivery of vaccines and medicines, cost management, service-level agreements and more. We presented at several conferences, conducted webinars and developed a Transport Quality Management Toolkit to share our learnings and expertise with governments, technical partners, private logistics companies and donors.
We also knew from our experiences in PSE that governments and private transporters in many LMICs were skeptical of partnership. To dig deeper into outsourced transport stakeholder perceptions, the OTRC conducted a survey in five countries (Mozambique, Zambia, Kenya, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Malawi). Based on stakeholder responses, the OTRC held a workshop in each country to align with partners. These workshops led to increased awareness and acceptance of outsourcing as a viable model for improving distribution reliability as well as a better understanding of government priorities, risks and expectations for engaging private transporters.
These workshops created the foundational understanding for informed decision-making for a gradual progression toward optimized private transport models. For the countries that were ready to move from learning to action, the OTRC shifted its objectives beyond education to TA.
Outsourced Transport in Action: OTRC & TA
The OTRC provided TA to 15 African countries between 2022 and 2025. This included the five countries where perception survey workshops were held, as well as countries where OTRC provided TA for private transporters moving polio lab samples.
Some examples of country TA include:
- Developed and reviewed outsourcing tools at the request of governments and their partners in nine African countries
- Implemented service level agreements between government and private transporters in three countries
- Trained government staff in five countries to plan execute, monitor and implement joint performance reviews with the private sector
- Trained 14 private sector transporters, seven health workers, 10 pharmaceutical distributors and two technical partners in DRC on the transport quality management toolkit to safely transport health products
- Conducted an outsourced transport landscape analysis across 10 African countries
- Administered the outsourced logistics gap assessment tool in six countries to assess immediate needs after the U.S. funding stoppage in 2025.
In a culmination of the OTRC’s efforts in both education and TA, it received the Africa Supply Chain Excellence Award in August 2025 for Humanitarian and Health Supply Chain Management.
Supply Chain Logistics: Sustainable Pathways
Private logistics companies can offer services to African governments in areas such as transport, warehousing and distribution. When these services are outsourced, the governments can focus on other core supply chain functions, such as data quality and supply chain workforce training, rather than maintaining transport fleets and warehouses.
However, leveraging private companies for health supply chains cannot happen overnight, and in some countries, private transport is not the right fit. At VillageReach, we focus on meeting governments where they are, and co-developing solutions that meet country-specific needs and priorities.
When private sector solutions are the right fit for a country’s health supply chain, we offer high-quality TA that ensures the integrity of health products, engages local businesses and reduces dependence on internationally managed distribution systems. Our outsourced transport journey will continue to be part of our core supply chain capabilities, making health products available, improving health service delivery and ultimately building healthier communities.