Young Africans propose nine reforms to shape Africa’s health sector

Nine recommendations across leadership, innovation and employment emerged from Ubuntu Rising 2026, as more than 80 young health professionals, researchers, innovators, entrepreneurs and higher education representatives came together to identify practical changes needed to strengthen young people’s role in Africa’s health systems.

Convened by the Africa Health Collaborative and hosted by the University of Cape Town ahead of the 18th World Congress on Public Health, Ubuntu Rising was designed to move beyond consultation and give young people a direct role in shaping priorities and solutions for the continent’s health future.

The recommendations will contribute to the Collaborative’s Youth Agenda and inform its future programming and partnerships, according to a press statement.

The discussions took place against a striking employment and health workforce paradox.

Figures from the Mastercard Foundation’s Africa Youth Employment Outlook 2026, cited by Prof. Brandon Collier-Reed during the event, show that 90 per cent of employed young Africans work in the informal economy, while only 10 per cent of youth jobs are formal.

Thirty-four per cent of employed young Africans live in households below the $2.15-a-day poverty line, and just nine per cent have completed tertiary education.

In health, the gap is equally significant.  According to the WHO Regional Office for Africa’s Health Workforce Reports 2024 and 2025, which was also cited during Ubuntu Rising, Africa faces a shortage of 5.5 million health workers, while nearly one million trained health professionals are without meaningful work.

For Prof. Brandon Collier-Reed, Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Teaching and Learning at the University of Cape Town, this disconnect calls for a broader measure of progress: “Employment, on its own, is not the goal we should be measuring ourselves against. The question before us is not whether young Africans are working. It is whether the systems we have built are working for them.”

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Rather than focusing only on the number of young people trained or employed, participants identified changes needed within the institutions and systems that shape their opportunities.

Their recommendations centre on leadership, innovation and employment:

This was also at the heart of the keynote address by Dr. Nathina Pakade, Public Health Medicine Registrar at the University of Cape Town and the Western Cape Department of Health and Wellness, who reflected on the gap between young people’s potential and the institutional pathways available to them: “There is a difference between asking young people what they think and giving them a meaningful role in deciding what happens next. For me, meaningful participation is moving beyond simply being present in the room to having the opportunity to influence what happens in that room.”

The nine recommendations developed at Ubuntu Rising will now feed into the Africa Health Collaborative’s Youth Agenda, helping to ensure that young people’s perspectives inform the Collaborative’s programmes, partnerships and engagement with the wider health ecosystem.

“If we’re building a world we won’t be part of, then those who will inherit it must help create it. At the Africa Health Collaborative, everything we do is done with young people and informed by young people — and increasingly, led by young people, with us in a supporting role. For us, this is more than participation or consultation. It’s co-creation of the future we all want to see,” said Prof. Tracey Naledi, Deputy Dean for Social Accountability and Health Systems at the University of Cape Town and host of Ubuntu Rising.

The Africa Health Collaborative is a multi-year partnership working to strengthen primary health care systems across Africa through health workforce development, education, innovation, and entrepreneurship.

Addressing Africa’s critical shortage of health workers and unlocking the sector’s economic potential, the initiative contributes to the Mastercard Foundation’s Young Africa Works strategy to enable 30 million young people, particularly women, to access dignified and fulfilling work by 2030.