Cost recovery, or the pricing of health-care services in government-run health-care facilities, continues to be a politically delicate subject in Sub-Saharan Africa. Nevertheless, ministries of health are now beginning to understand that the selective pricing of healthcare services can be a powerful tool for achieving the efficiency and equity goals that their governments have set, and for increasing ministry financial resources that can be used to improve the quality of care offered. This article provides a blue-print for these nascent cost-recovery efforts. After a consideration of the rationale for cost recovery within a theoretical context, a set of pricing principles for the whole public health sector is presented and a prototypical systemic price schedule is derived from the principles. Constraints to effective and equitable cost recovery are then discussed, and topics for further empirical research are suggested.