Private Financial Actors and Financialisation in Global Health

The era of the Sustainable Development Goals has become the era of private finance. Decades-long political, economic and social trends have seen rapid growth in the size and scale of private finance relative to public finance, and the increasing political power of private financial actors. In global development, this has taken form in narratives and actions that establish and quantify investment gaps, call for greater and greater levels of private finance to fill these gaps, and create new financial instruments with which to realise the expansion of private financial capital. These changes are sometimes referred to as ‘financialisation’.
This briefing paper responds to the expansion of private finance in global health, demystifying the process of financialisation and offering a vital counter-perspective to an increasingly pervasive but questionable narrative that positions private finance as necessary to the future of global health. The paper charts the expansion of private finance across global health, pointing to how actors once marginal to this sector are becoming central to its financing and governance. Drawing on several case studies and a growing body of evidence, the briefing paper highlights three overlapping concerns associated with the financialisation of global health: the high cost of private investment; the undermining of public health principles and values; and the weakening of democratic governance and regulatory capture by powerful private financial actors.