No single actor can accelerate progress towards maternal health. Effective collaboration among governments, businesses, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and development partners has proved necessary for rapid progress. A strategy of collaboration that draws on available local context, expertise and resources to provide health care to those in greatest need should be designed and implemented. The increasing role of the private sector in delivering health services in Africa provides an opportunity to complement the public sector with a view to delivering health care in low-income settings. This underlines the need to devise a health care business model that serves the needs of the low-income group, possibly through public-private partnership and franchising. Health innovations driven and implemented at the national level with limited involvement of the local people tend to have limited impact and less sustainability.