The movement of African health professionals away from their home countries, predominantly towards higher-income nations is a critical challenge to the sustainability and resilience of African health systems. The loss of skilled personnel is worsening workforce shortages, undermining healthcare delivery capacity, and impeding progress towards achieving Universal Health Coverage (UHC) and the African Union’s Agenda 2063.
The economic consequences of health worker migration are far-reaching. Modeling scenarios project that by 2063, under the status quo of inadequate health worker numbers the continent could face cumulative losses of approximately $1.4 trillion. Even under more ambitious scenarios with improved health worker densities, the projected losses remain significant, estimated at $431 billion.
Download: Outmigration of Health Workers: Case studies of Nigeria, Rwanda and Zambia
