Bed nets a booming industry in Africa.

The success of a U.S. Agency for International Development-funded program that helped sell 50 million bed nets in seven countries to protect millions of families from malaria has led to a thriving African mosquito net industry, according to findings from the Academy for Educational Development.

The decade-long initiative included a voucher system to allow the poor to receive free protective bed nets and created enough incentives for private companies to invest $88 million to expand their businesses. The new commercial approach also helped reduce the price of insecticide-treated bed nets by up to 70 percent. They now sell for $4-$7 each.

The Academy for Educational Development's NetMark project, a $67 million, USAID-funded public-private partnership to prevent malaria, ended Sept. 30, but the bed net market continues to thrive in the seven African countries where the partnership operated: Ethiopia, Ghana, Mali, Nigeria, Senegal, Uganda and Zambia. NetMark officials said 41 African distributors will continue to sell thousands or millions of bed nets in those seven countries.

"We worked ourselves out of a job," said Manual Urrutia, the Johannesburg-based deputy director of NetMark. "They don't need us anymore, and I'm proud of that."

NetMark began in 1999 and formed partnerships with international net and insecticide manufacturers and African distributors to create retail markets. Partners then worked together to launch the commercial marketing of insecticide-treated nets. Stores that had not been selling bed nets soon found a demand for them in part because of NetMark's national awareness campaigns.

The use of insecticide-treated nets is considered the most effective weapon in the fight against malaria, which kills an estimated 1 million people each year, the majority of them in Africa.

For more information, visit www.netmarkafrica.org.