The African Health Observatory Platform on Health Systems and Policies (AHOP) is a collaborative partnership to support and promote the transfer of evidence and experience between countries to foster better policies and action for improved health and wellbeing.
The grant from LSE’s International Science Partnerships Fund (ISPF) 2023-2024 co-funded the delivery of AHOP’s core outputs (policy dialogues, policy briefs and country profiles) and peer-to-peer learning activities to build capacity across the partnership.
Activities funded by the grant have enabled AHOP partners to strengthen relationships with policy-makers in Ethiopia, foster collaboration between two research units at LSE, propose strategies to strengthen surgical services in Africa, and inform amendments to Ethiopia’s National Strategy for Private Sector Engagement in the Health Sector.
By convening diverse stakeholders and presenting high-quality evidence, these activities have laid the groundwork for informed policy decisions. The amendments to the National Strategy for Private Sector Engagement and the insights on surgical services are tangible outcomes that will shape healthcare delivery. By providing robust evidence, and the time and space to absorb it, AHOP's activities have empowered policy-makers to allocate resources effectively, optimize workforce planning, and enhance healthcare access and quality.
Beyond immediate outcomes, these activities fostered relationships among institutions, researchers, and decision-makers. AHOP's first policy dialogue in Ethiopia led directly to a second policy dialogue four months later, at the explicit request of the Ethiopian Ministry of Health, demonstrating continuity and a commitment to sustained impact from all partners. These improved connections will make it easier for policy-makers to access and use evidence on health systems in Africa.
Future activities
A shortfall of 18 million health workers is projected across health systems worldwide by 2030. These shortfalls disproportionately affect lower income countries with lower health worker densities. Africa is the only region where health worker shortfalls are projected to increase in the next decade. Shortages in the African region constrain efforts to achieve health equity and universal health care (UHC), with knock on effects on health outcomes. A significant factor exacerbating existing workforce gaps is the outward migration of qualified health professionals, often referred to as “brain drain”.
Policymakers in countries faced with shortages must find ways to mitigate impact and manage migration flows without restricting individual right to movement. Four out of the five countries involved in AHOP have requested support to strengthen their approaches to data collection, policy dialogue and engagement and the development of bilateral/multilateral agreements to address outward migration.
Building on the existing evidence-to-policy work undertaken by AHOP, we propose a collaborative programme of work to a) collate and synthesise available evidence on policy approaches to health workforce migration in the African region, addressing acknowledged information gaps; and b) bring together policy decision makers and key stakeholders to engage with evidence and identify national and regional policy solutions. We will do this via primary data collection on existing bilateral labour migration agreements (BLMAs) in the region; a policy brief on brain drain; a high-level AHOP policy dialogue, and a knowledge exchange workshop to share best practice. This programme of work will be timed to feed into both national level policy windows and the planned review of the existing WHO Global Code of Practice on the International Recruitment of Health Personnel (WHO Code), one of the key frameworks guiding health workforce migration at the international level.