African health ministers have endorsed the Africa Health Workforce Agenda 2026–2035, committing to the recruitment and retention of 3 million additional health workers by 2035.
The agreement comes as the continent faces a critical labour deficit, with projections indicating a risk of a shortage exceeding 6 million health workers if current trends are not reversed.
The strategic framework, supported by the World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Office for Africa, outlines a coordinated effort to plan, educate, employ, and retain essential medical personnel to ensure the delivery of basic health services.
The agenda focuses on four operational pillars. The first involves improved planning to determine the exact number and type of workers needed per region. The second emphasises expanding education and training capacity to produce more qualified nurses, doctors, and midwives.
The third pillar focuses on employment, ensuring that graduates are absorbed into the formal health system. The final pillar addresses retention, seeking to improve working conditions and remuneration to keep trained professionals within their home countries.
The deficit in health personnel represents a significant economic risk. Poor health outcomes directly correlate with reduced labour productivity and increased absenteeism in the wider economy, hindering the growth of SMEs and larger industrial sectors across the continent.
Addressing the Structural Drivers of Healthcare Migration
A primary driver of the shortage is the phenomenon of medical brain drain, where healthcare professionals migrate from African nations to high-income countries in Europe and North America.
This migration results in a substantial loss of human capital. African governments often fund the primary and tertiary education of medical professionals, only for the economic return on that investment to be realised by wealthier nations.
The World Health Organization has previously highlighted the need for ethical international recruitment. The new African agenda seeks to create more competitive local environments to counteract the pull of foreign markets.
Beyond migration, the shortage is exacerbated by inadequate public finance allocations. Many member states struggle to fund the infrastructure required to support an expanded workforce, such as new clinics and upgraded teaching hospitals.
The African Union and its partners are expected to coordinate funding mechanisms to help lower-income states scale up their training facilities. This includes investment in digital health education and simulated training to accelerate the production of certified workers.
The agenda also acknowledges the role of the private sector. Increasing the capacity of private healthcare providers to employ and train workers is seen as a way to reduce the burden on overstretched public health budgets.
Implementation of the Africa Health Workforce Agenda will now move to the national level. Member states are required to integrate these targets into their own national health strategic plans and budgets.
Progress will be monitored through a series of biennial reviews to ensure that the target of 3 million new workers is on track for the 2035 deadline. The success of the initiative depends on whether governments can move from policy endorsement to the actual disbursement of funds for medical education and payroll expansion.
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