Panel Remarks by Prof. Kingsley Moghalu Chairman, Africa Private Sector Summit (APSS) and Panelist Africa Health ExCon 2024 Conference: Cairo, Egypt June 6, 2024 Copyright Kingsley Moghalu Introduction: The Challenge If health is truly wealth, as the popular saying goes, does Africa have any chance of escaping mass poverty and low rankings in the human development index that measures the quality of life of the world’s peoples? This is an existential question for the continent because its health systems are collapsing, worsening the quality of life of millions of Africans who do not have adequate and quality healthcare because the continent’s doctors, nurses, pharmacists, laboratory scientists and other health professionals are fleeing abroad in search of greener pastures. Real development is not just about GDP growth numbers, but more about GDP per capita and human development issues such as the availability of quality healthcare and Universal Health Coverage, education and skills, nutrition, potable water, and life expectancy.
Africa, which has only 3% of the world’s health workforce despite being 18% of the world’s population, has suffered a massive “brain drain” – a one-directional migration of skilled human capital that benefits only the receiving countries – for several decades. The problem has become acute, progressively getting worse as the years have gone by. And it isn’t going away soon.
While the brain drain is a challenge for the continent across .
