The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) has set aside $1.6million for nine newly designated National Public Health Institutes (NPHIs) across Africa as regional Centers of Excellence.
“As a Center of Excellence, your NPHI will serve as a regional hub for peer-to-peer technical assistance, training, and mentorship. It will also support Member States in developing or strengthening core NPHI functions, including disease surveillance, outbreak response, public health research, and workforce development,” said Africa CDC Director General, Dr Jean Kaseya, in a letter to the selected organisations on 31 January 2025.
The selection of institutes in Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Mozambique, Nigeria, South Africa and Rwanda follows a rigorous assessment of NPHIs across Africa and aligns with Africa CDC’s mission to enhance disease control policies and strengthen public health capacities in Member States.
The agency has allocated $1.6million for equipment and training to the Centres across the continent. “We are planning different types of support, but this year we will be equipping them to start National Data Management Centres. We will be procuring servers and computer software, including training,” said Haftom Taame, Principal Technical Officer, Public Health Institutes and Research at Africa CDC.
NPHIs from Mozambique, Liberia and Burundi will be prioritized in 2025 to get ISO 9001 accreditation to improve operational efficiency through streamlined processes.
Starting in the second quarter of this year, Taame said Africa CDC, working with the European CDC, will be twinning, the Centers of Excellence with European NPHIs so they can learn from best experience.
As part of strengthening the NPHI’s, we will also focus on leadership and management- a continuation of what the Centre of Public Health started last year, supporting seven countries. This year, four rounds of training will be conducted to build leadership and management capacity of NPHIs across the continent.
“We will help them to build capacities for the essential public health functions including research, surveillance and information system, emergency response coordination, workforce development and corporate governance and leadership.
“Once we establish these Centres, they will support regional Member States in their respective regions to establish NPHI’s and build their capacities,” Taame said, adding that it is not easy for Africa CDC to serve all member states from its headquarters in Addis Ababa.
Taame said the biggest challenge in managing health security in Africa is the fragmented approach to outbreaks and infections. In many countries, core public health functions are handled by different departments or agencies, he said. “For example, surveillance is managed in one place, response is handled elsewhere, and the lab is in another centre. These entities are not linked to the department that responds to the outbreak or the lab that detects the infection to coordinate the response,” he said.
Dr. Dougbeh Chris Nyan, Director General of the National Public Health Institute of Liberia (NPHIL), welcomed the decision to designate his institution as a Center of Excellence.
“This recognition is a testament to the dedication of our public health professionals. As a Center of Excellence, we will continue leading efforts in disease surveillance, emergency response, and capacity building for the African continent,” he said.
NPHIL’s selection as a Center of Excellence marks a significant milestone for Liberia, a country that has faced major public health challenges, including the 2014–2016 Ebola outbreak and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Besides supporting regional Centers of Excellence, an Africa CDC performance review held in Arusha, Tanzania, in January 2025, noted delays in the legal process of Member States establishing NPHIs as autonomous institutions. The review also highlighted a lack of top leadership commitment, insufficient resources to operationalise newly established NPHIs, and inadequate staffing to run all programmes within the Centers. The meeting recommended facilitating high-level advocacy efforts targeting parliamentarians, relevant sectors, and key partners. It also called for strengthening country engagement, mobilizing resources through strategic partnerships, and fast- tracking staff recruitment and contract issuance.
