Africa faces 12 year talent gap despite hospital construction boom
Africa faces 12 year talent gap despite hospital construction boom
https://businessday.ng/news/article/africa-faces-12-year-talent-gap-despite-hospital-construction-boom/
Media Source: Business Day (Nigeria)
Date: 20 July 2026
A 12-year shortage of specialist training is emerging as one of the biggest threats to Africa’s expanding hospital infrastructure, with Aga Khan University Hospital (AKUH), Nairobi, warning that the continent’s healthcare construction boom will not deliver better outcomes unless governments invest as aggressively in people as they…
A 12-year shortage of specialist training is emerging as one of the biggest threats to Africa’s expanding hospital infrastructure, with Aga Khan University Hospital (AKUH), Nairobi, warning that the continent’s healthcare construction boom will not deliver better outcomes unless governments invest as aggressively in people as they do in buildings. While modern healthcare infrastructure remains essential, the continent’s growing shortage of skilled medical professionals threatens to leave many new facilities unable to provide the quality care they were built to deliver, the hospital affirmed. Rashid Khalani, the CEO of the Aga Khan University Hospital in Nairobi, Kenya, disclosed this at the BusinessDay CEO Forum on Thursday in Lagos. “A building cannot heal a patient. A state-of-the-art operating theatre is simply an expensive storage room without a trained specialist inside it,” the CEO said.