In 2017, African Union Heads of State and Government made a strategic commitment to strengthen the health workforce by training and deploying two million community health workers to help close the gap in healthcare provision.

Eight years down the line, Africa has managed to deploy half of the intended target. Preliminary findings from the Continental Survey on Community Health Worker Programmes—conducted jointly by Africa CDC and UNICEF and released on the sidelines of the 78th World Health Assembly in May—show that progress is being made.

“We have 1,005,007 community health workers already deployed. That means we have achieved 50% of the target in just eight years,” said Dr Ngashi Ngongo, Principal Advisor to the Director General of Africa CDC and Continental Incident Manager for the Mpox response in Africa.

“What lies ahead is that, in the remaining five years, African Union Member States need to recruit, train, and deploy the remaining one million. That’s why it is important for this survey to be conducted annually until 2030 to track progress,” he added.

“The big question is: what needs to change to shift the needle from the one million community health workers we currently have to the two million-plus required? In 2017, the population of Africa was around 1.1 billion. Today, we are 1.5 billion,” said Dr Raji Tajudeen, Acting Deputy Director General and Head of the Division of Public Health Institutes and Research.