Helping UNICEF integrate supplies into the Ethiopian Pharmaceutical Supply Chain

In 2021, Crosscut served as a trusted advisor to UNICEF Ethiopia, providing supply chain expertise and strategic guidance to plan a $10M grant investment to integrate UNICEF health and nutrition commodities into the Ethiopian national government supply chain network. The work was well received, with the Director of the Ethiopian Pharmaceutical Supply Service (EPSS) saying that Crosscut’s work was “perfect” and would greatly contribute to the Government of Ethiopia’s supply systems. All Crosscut recommendations were accepted, and UNICEF Ethiopia is moving forward with implementation.

For this project, Crosscut visited and assessed all but three EPSS sites throughout the country and performed a rigorous quantitative analysis, analyzing millions of transactions from their management information system and combining this with data from more than twenty other sources. We prepared detailed engineering drawings of all EPSS facilities as part of the capacity evaluation. We conducted interviews with more than 100 persons within UNICEF and at all levels of EPSS. We evaluated various scenarios of UNICEF commodity integration (different years, different supply chain models) and made ten-year projections to understand how and when capacity challenges were likely to be faced.

In addition to this supply chain integration and design work, Crosscut has also provided advisory support to UNICEF Ethiopia in matters relating to forecasting, microplanning, and remote temperature monitoring of vaccines and other commodities. The UNICEF Technical representative stated that Crosscut consistently provided high quality deliverables, interim drafts, and final products in a timely manner and was open to providing additional detail when requested. You can learn more about the work by clicking on the report.

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