Family planning support is coming to every one of Lagos State's 20 local government areas (LGAs). Led by WHGI, The Challenge Initiative (TCI) has launched Lagos RISE (Reproductive Health Impact for Scale and Equity), a three-year program funded by a $7.2 million investment from the Gates Foundation to make modern contraception more equitably available across Nigeria's largest city-state.
Scaling From 10 to All 20 LGAs in Lagos State
TCI has supported family planning programs in ten Lagos LGAs since 2021. Lagos RISE takes the interventions that proved effective there and extends them to the remaining ten, with a focus on underserved peri-urban and riverine communities that public-sector health services have historically struggled to reach.
The program began with an inception meeting in Lagos. Representatives of the Lagos State Ministry of Health, local government health departments, implementing partners and community stakeholders met to agree on priorities, settle roles and responsibilities, and design the implementation approach together.
"Lagos RISE represents a significant step forward in our efforts to ensure that every woman in Lagos State – regardless of where she lives — has access to high-quality family planning services. By working through and alongside government systems, we are building something that will last well beyond this investment."
Kojo Lokko, TCI's Executive Director
Full Contraceptive Method Choice Across 367 Public Health Facilities
Lagos RISE covers every contraceptive method available in the state's public health system: short-acting options such as pills, injectables, condoms and DMPA-SC; long-acting reversible contraceptives, including implants and IUDs; and permanent methods. Counseling is client-centered and based on informed choice, so women and couples can choose the method that best fits their needs.
The program will work through 367 public health facilities. It will strengthen service delivery, expand postpartum family planning, and deploy community health workers and mobilizers to help people who intend to use family planning start, and keep using, a modern method. It will also help government systems plan, finance and sustain these services on their own. By September 2029, Lagos RISE expects to reach about 688,000 annual modern contraceptive users, a net gain of roughly 300,000 new users, and 1.33 million couple-years of protection.
Sustainability is built in from the start. Family planning targets and financing will be written into government planning processes, and responsibility for the program will shift to state and local government structures over the course of the grant.
Lagos RISE puts WHGI's core approach into practice: expanding access to family planning and reproductive health by strengthening the public health systems people already use, not building parallel ones. Because the program anchors targets and financing in Lagos State's own planning and hands responsibility to local institutions, the gains in contraceptive access are designed to outlast the grant. It is a locally led, evidence-based model for scaling family planning in fast-growing urban settings.
