Participants at Ubuntu Rising 2026 in Cape Town discuss how young people can influence health policy in Africa. [Courtesy]
Africa faces a shortage of 5.5 million health workers while nearly one million trained health professionals remain without meaningful work.
The figures were cited at Ubuntu Rising 2026, where more than 80 young health professionals, researchers, innovators, entrepreneurs and higher education representatives met in Cape Town to develop recommendations on the future of health systems in Africa.
The meeting, convened by the Africa Health Collaborative and hosted by the University of Cape Town ahead of the 18th World Congress on Public Health, produced nine recommendations covering leadership, innovation and employment.
The recommendations call for stronger links between young people and health policy, greater opportunities for youth to influence decision-making, innovation-focused education and better pathways into paid and dignified health employment.
The health workforce gap comes amid wider challenges facing young Africans entering the labour market.
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Figures from the Mastercard Foundation’s Africa Youth Employment Outlook 2026, cited by University of Cape Town Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Teaching and Learning Prof. Brandon Collier-Reed, show that 90 per cent of employed young Africans work in the informal economy while only 10 per cent of youth jobs are formal.
The report also shows that 34 per cent of employed young Africans live in households below the $2.15-a-day poverty line while only 9 per cent have completed tertiary education.
The health figures come from the World Health Organisation (WHO) Regional Office for Africa’s Health Workforce Reports 2024 and 2025, which were also cited during the meeting.
For Collier-Reed, the challenge goes beyond creating jobs for young people and requires institutions to examine whether those jobs provide meaningful opportunities.
“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,” Collier-Reed observed.
Participants proposed measures to close the gap, including harmonising curricula across Africa to make skills transferable and creating pathways into paid and dignified health workforce internships.
They also called for entrepreneurship and community needs to become part of education and training programmes while connecting young innovators to existing expertise and innovation infrastructure.
Under leadership, participants proposed stronger links between young people and health policy, measuring youth influence through system-level outcomes and creating institutions where young people can contribute to decision-making.
On innovation, they recommended embedding entrepreneurship and problem-solving in higher education and developing structured programmes to help young people turn ideas into health innovations and businesses.
The recommendations also seek to move young people beyond participation in programmes towards influencing decisions and developing solutions.
Dr Nathina Pakade, a Public Health Medicine Registrar at the University of Cape Town and the Western Cape Department of Health and Wellness, said young people need more than invitations to participate.
“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,” Pakade explained.
Pakade also called for pathways that allow young people to gain experience, mentorship and opportunities to progress into leadership.
She described the desired progression as allowing young people to “enter, learn, contribute, progress and lead” rather than remaining holders of potential without opportunities to influence institutions.
The nine recommendations will feed into the Africa Health Collaborative’s Youth Agenda and inform its future programmes, partnerships and engagement with the wider health sector.
Prof. Tracey Naledi, Deputy Dean for Social Accountability and Health Systems at the University of Cape Town and host of Ubuntu Rising, argued that young people should have a greater role in shaping the systems they will inherit.
“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,” Naledi added.