Baseline Report on the Health Workforce Status of 55 African Union Member States, March 2025

Executive Summary

This Baseline Report, developed pursuant to an Inception Meeting for the Health Workforce Compact in Addis Ababa in June 2024, describes key findings from analysis of health workforce strategic documents, desk research, and economic scenario analysis. Our research makes several salient observations, including:

• Twenty (20) Member States
  (Cape Verde, Chad, Eritrea, Ethiopia, the Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Lesotho, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe) have a dedicated/standalone health workforce strategy.
• Of the 20 Member States that had dedicated health workforce strategies, we found that only eleven
  (Cabo Verde, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, United Republic of Tanzania, Zambia) were linked to finance for implementation by our metric, that is, either refers to a specific budget line or inclusion of the Ministry of Finance in interministerial task forces or working groups on health workforce. Some countries, such as The Gambia, utilize the health workforce strategic plan to resource mobilise with the Ministry of Finance.
• Out of the 20 countries which had dedicated health workforce strategies and which were accessible to us, eight
  (Ethiopia, the Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, and Zambia) mentioned outmigration within their strategies. One country of the 20 confirmed that there was a dedicated health workforce strategy, but this was not made available to us nor was the document publicly available.
• Of all the 55 African Union Member States, 56% (N=31) of Member States have established an HRIS with plans to improve/upgrade their HRIS systems and therefore enabling data-driven planning and management of health workforce. An additional 6 have HRIS but no immediate plans to improve. It is unclear as to the status of HRIS in 14 Member States
  (Central African Republic, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Eswatini, Liberia, Libya, Mali, Niger, Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Tunisia).

Out of the 55 African Union (AU) Member States, 56% (N=31) have established HRIS platforms and have concrete plans to further improve or upgrade their systems to enable more effective, data-driven health workforce planning and management. An additional 3 countries have functioning HRIS systems but currently have no plans for immediate improvement. Four countries — Cape Verde, The Gambia, Rwanda, and South Sudan — have expressed intentions to establish HRIS platforms, marking important steps toward strengthening their health workforce systems.