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Rigorous advice.
Real implementation.

Yemaya Health Advisory

We partner with governments, foundations and health institutions to solve the structural problems that prevent health systems from working.

Our advisory is grounded in primary research, shaped by community knowledge, and delivered with discretion. We sit in the space between evidence and action — helping institutions move from one to the other.

Because most of our clients are navigating politically sensitive terrain, we do not publish our advisory outputs. Our measure of success is whether change happens — not whether our name appears in a report.

Where We Focus

Health Systems Strengthening

We assess the structural capacity of health systems to respond to current and emerging challenges — financing architecture, workforce distribution, supply chain resilience and the quality of primary care. Our assessments are designed to inform investment decisions, not just describe problems.

Policy Design and Financing

We support ministries and partners in drafting, costing and financing national health strategies. This includes facilitating stakeholder alignment, stress-testing policy options against fiscal realities, and supporting the political processes through which health priorities get resourced.

HIV and Women's Health

This is where our practice began and where our deepest expertise lies. We design and evaluate programmes addressing HIV across the full continuum — with particular focus on the structural factors that put women and adolescent girls at disproportionate risk.

Faith and Community Systems

Faith institutions deliver 41% of health services in Kenya. We bring faith leaders and community networks into health policy and programme design as genuine partners — not as a communications afterthought. In 2025, we conducted a national listening exercise with 425 faith leaders.

How We Work

We start with listening

Every engagement begins with stakeholder interviews, data review, and where evidence is insufficient, we generate it ourselves.

We work within constraints

We design for real constraints: limited budgets, contested political environments, fragmented data, and communities whose trust has to be earned.

We hold what we are given

A significant share of our advisory work is confidential. We are trusted with sensitive questions because we treat those conversations with the seriousness they deserve.

We measure change, not output

An engagement is successful when a policy is adopted, a programme is redesigned, a decision gets made — not when we produce a report.

Our Leadership

"Opportunities ahead cannot be unlocked by keeping to the same pace and using more of the same approach to health systems."

Dr. Nduku Kilonzo

Lancet Commission on Health in Sub-Saharan Africa

Dr. Nduku Kilonzo

Founder & CEO

Over 25 years in public health and health systems development. Former Executive Director, Kenya's National AIDS Control Council. Contributing Commissioner, Lancet Commission on Health in Sub-Saharan Africa. Honorary Doctorate, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, 2026.

Ready to discuss a health systems challenge?

We take on a limited number of engagements to protect the quality of our work. We welcome the conversation.

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