This post summarizes Dr. Cheikh Faye’s opening and closing remarks during a Countdown webinar on 10 April 2026. Dr. Faye is Countdown’s project director and the head of the West African office of the African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC). The webinar convened global experts to reflect on Countdown’s 20-year history and discuss what’s needed to sustain and accelerate progress toward improving the health of women, children, and adolescents.

Over the past two decades, Countdown has shaped the global conversation on measurement, equity, and accountability for women’s, children’s, and adolescents’ health. It has contributed dashboards and equity profiles, advanced methodological innovation, generated scientific evidence, and built strong partnerships across governments, United Nations agencies, academia, and development partners. Countdown has consistently pushed the field to look beyond national averages and ask who is being left behind, why, and what must change.

              Watch the webinar recording:

Countdown has evolved toward a more country-centered model, moving closer to country institutions, analysts, and decision-making processes. APHRC has played an important leadership role in this transformation. This includes helping reposition Countdown to work more directly with national actors, strengthen country analytical capacity, and promote more embedded, country-led approaches to accountability and evidence use, especially in sub-Saharan Africa.

Countdown should be understood not just as a reporting platform, but as an accountability mechanism. Accountability is not an external exercise, but something that should be owned, used, and acted upon by countries themselves.  Countdown helps make progress visible, shows where inequities persist, assesses whether commitments are translating into results, and creates space for evidence-informed dialogue and action. This accountability function remains essential, but it must evolve in response to a changing data landscape.

Major shifts are now reshaping global and country health data systems. These include:

• Shrinking investments in data,
• Increasing politicization of evidence,
• Risks to independent accountability,
• Strains on large household surveys such as the Demographic Health Surveys, and
• Growing country demand for more timely, granular, and integrated data systems.

In addition, greater emphasis is now being placed on data sovereignty, sustainability, national analytical capacity, and stronger use of data within planning, review, and policy processes. Automation and artificial intelligence may bring both opportunities and risks.

The next phase of Countdown cannot simply extend the past. It must be more deeply rooted in country-led approaches, stronger national institutions, the strengthening of long-term analytical capacity, and better integration of survey and routine data. There is a need for renewed commitment to independent accountability, country ownership, and equity.  We must build data systems that are not only technically stronger, but also more useful, more sustainable, and more firmly anchored in country decision-making.