Nine recommendations across direction, innovation and employment emerged from Ubuntu Rising 2026, as greater than 80 young health professionals, researchers, innovators, entrepreneurs and upper education representatives came together to determine functional changes needed to upgrade young persons’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 People Health, Ubuntu Rising was designed to travel beyond consultation and grant young people a manager role in shaping priorities and solutions for the continent’s health forthcoming.
The recommendations will contribute to the Collaborative’s Youth Agenda and inform its upcoming programming and partnerships, according to a press line.
The discussions took place against a striking employment and health workforce paradox.
Figures from the Mastercard Guide’s Africa Youth Employment Attitude 2026, cited by Prof. Brandon Collier-Reed during the event, reveal that 90 per cent of employed young Africans effort in the informal economy, whilst merely 10 per cent of youth jobs are conventional.
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 considerable. According to the WHO Territorial Office for Africa’s Health Workforce Reports 2024 and 2025, which was additionally cited during Ubuntu Rising, Africa faces a shortage of 5.5 million health workers, although nearly one million trained health professionals are lacking intentional task.
For Prof. It’s co-creation of the upcoming we all prefer to see,” said Prof. It is whether the systems we have built are operating for them.”
Rather than focusing merely on the overall of young individuals trained or employed, participants identified changes needed during the institutions and systems that influence their opportunities.
Their recommendations centre on management, innovation and employment:
This was too at the heart of the keynote talk regarding by Dr. The query in advance of us is not whether young Africans are operating. At the Africa Health Collaborative, everything we do is done together with young individuals and mindful by young individuals — and increasingly, led by young humans, including us in a supporting role. For us, this is additional than participation or consultation. For me, deliberate participation is moving beyond merely being provide in the room to having the opportunity to result 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 secure that young humans’s perspectives inform the Collaborative’s programmes, partnerships and engagement together with the wider health ecosystem.
“If we’re building a world we won’t be section of, then those who will inherit it must help generate it. Brandon Collier-Reed, Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Teaching and Learning at the University of Cape Town, this disconnect calls for a broader measure of develop: “Employment, on its own, is not the target we should be measuring ourselves against. 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 association operating to strengthen principal health care systems across Africa through means of health workforce development, education, innovation, and entrepreneurship.
Addressing Africa’s essential shortage of health workers and unlocking the sector’s economic promising, the initiative contributes to the Mastercard Base’s Young Africa Works scheme to facilitate 30 million young individuals, notably women, to availability dignified and fulfilling labor by 2030.
Nathina Pakade, Community Health Medicine Registrar at the University of Cape Town and the Western Cape Department of Health and Wellness, who reflected on the gap amid young humans’s achievable and the institutional pathways equipped to them: “There is a difference in the midst of asking young individuals what they reason and giving them a intentional role in deciding what happens coming.
Source: Young Africans propose nine reforms to shape Africa’s health sector
