Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire: The United States Government, through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), today launched Agir pour la Planification Familiale (AgirPF) in conjunction with the unveiling of the Government of Côte d’Ivoire’s National Family Planning Costed Implementation Plan (CIP). The CIP intends to achieve more than double the current percentage of women in the country using modern contraceptives by 2020. In response to the country’s high unmet need for family planning services, AgirPF aligns its activities with the CIP and contributes to increased access to and use of voluntary family planning services in selected urban areas.

A five-year regional family planning project, AgirPF recognizes the region’s growing urbanization, and uses hospitals and health centers as well as mobile outreach and community-based platforms. More specifically, AgirPF will: 1) expand access to family planning counseling and a range of contraceptive methods; 2) promote safe and healthy family planning behaviors; and 3) increase awareness of the benefits of family planning.

“I am announcing today that the United States Government is committing to support the implementation of the National Family Planning Plan for 2015-2020 in the planned amount of six million dollars over the next four years,” said U.S. Ambassador to Cote d’Ivoire Terence P. McCulley. “AgirPF will contribute to this Implementation Plan…by supporting and complementing government efforts and those of other development partners and local community organizations to increase access to and use of quality family planning services.”

USAID designed AgirPF to support five of the member countries of the Ouagadougou Partnership for Repositioning Family Planning in Francophone West Africa, each of which pledged to reach an additional one million women with modern family planning methods by 2015.  AgirPF, implemented by EngenderHealth together with the Futures Institute, builds upon successful USAID-funded family planning projects, notably Santé Familiale et Prevention du Sida (SFPS) and RESPOND. AgirPF is already underway in Togo, Burkina Faso and Niger, and will soon be launched in Mauritania.