Africa’s health security is global security

In 2025, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, or Africa CDC, recorded 213 active public health emergencies in 44 of the African Union’s 55 member states. This statistic does not concern ministries of health alone. It is a first-order political fact: Health has ceased to be a peripheral sector. It has become a central pillar of national security, economic stability, and state legitimacy. There can be no sustainable development and no national security without structured health preparedness.

This coincides with a global retreat, which is structural and reflects a lasting shift in geopolitical priorities. External development assistance for health is declining and already, poor households are the most affected: In many African countries, families are the main source of health financing, bearing between 40% and 60% of total health expenditure. This transfers global risks to the most vulnerable — a situation no responsible state can accept.

For Africa and the world, there is only one viable response: recognize health security as a strategic investment in sovereignty and build systems that allow action without dependence on external factors. African health sovereignty must be recognized as a pillar of global security and equity, grounded in effective preparedness and rapid response strategies.

From ambition to an operating system

Africa has moved from diagnosis to action, defining its priorities, taking ownership of its destiny, and transforming its health systems with sovereignty. Under the Africa’s Health Security and Sovereignty Agenda, approved in September 2025, we are building an operational ecosystem for prevention, early detection, and rapid response, supported by continental accountability and coordination mechanisms. The continent has made a clear political choice to institutionalize health preparedness as an essential function of the African state.

Thanks to the remarkable work carried out by Africa CDC, progress is measurable. In 2025, event-based surveillance expanded to 38 member states and, according to Africa CDC internal records, the timeliness of routine reporting — the rate at which states met their data deadlines — improved from 40% in 2022 to approximately 58% in 2025. Genomic sequencing is now conducted by 46 member states, and turnaround times fell from over 30 days in 2022 to fewer than seven in 2025. These advances represent real scientific sovereignty, not rhetoric.

For the first time, Africa has a continental force capable of rapid response without waiting for external intervention. Between 2022 and 2025, National Public Health Emergency Operations Centres in operation increased from five to 33. All 55 member states now contribute to the African Health Volunteer Corps, with a readiness window — the lead time for corps members to be deployed in an emergency — of 48 to 72 hours.

In parallel, Africa CDC has promoted a Central Data Repository and a health data governance framework for Africa, enabling reliable and sovereign data to move across borders as quickly as threats spread. This affirms a fundamental principle: African data must serve African decisions, promptly and under African governance.

By way of example, over the past year, my country has invested in expanding laboratory capacity, raising the total number of operational public laboratories integrated into the National Public Health Laboratory Network to 87. We also established the National Genomic Surveillance and Bioinformatics Unit, which has already enabled the analysis of thousands of viral genomes. This has direct implications for outbreak response, ongoing support to integrated disease surveillance systems, and evidence-based policymaking.

Mpox proved the point: Speed is governance

The mpox outbreak was a stress test and demonstrated that sovereignty is not merely a slogan; rather, it is measured by the capacity to act with speed and leadership. In 2024, Africa CDC declared mpox a public health emergency of continental security, working with the World Health Organization to lead an incident management support team coordinating the continental response. Through this mechanism, Africa CDC leveraged pledges of $1.1 billion and 6 million doses of the mpox vaccine, supporting their deployment across African countries without obstruction. Testing capacity was expanded to cover more than 98% of affected countries.

This was more than a technical response — it was a demonstration of African health governance at continental scale.

Financing that moves at the speed of an outbreak

Emergency response cannot depend on last-minute appeals. It requires predictable, sovereign financing that can be activated before an outbreak becomes a crisis.                                                                                  

For this reason, in 2025, Africa CDC began operationalizing the “One Plan, One Budget, One Monitoring” approach of the Lusaka Agenda through its continental secretariat and a digital dashboard, alongside 20 public finance management experts. This approach breaks with decades of fragmentation, duplication, and external dependence in health financing across Africa.

In parallel, the African Epidemic Fund is changing the pace of response. According to internal data by Africa CDC, in 2025, it reduced the average delay in financing emergency operations from 21 days to just seven and secured $38.7 million. This fund represents a concrete step toward African financial autonomy for health emergencies.

The sovereign commitment: Leading by example

Angola is progressively increasing domestic financing, aligning external funds with national plans, developing and deploying innovative financing mechanisms, and leveraging blended finance to invest in infrastructure, local production chains, and the distribution of medical products.

We are also diversifying health financing sources through taxes on products harmful to health. All of this is underpinned by good governance — to which Angola is fully committed — and alignment with the Lusaka Agenda to ensure that our reforms form part of a continental effort.

Angola is structuring a National Resilient Health Fund — supported by revenues from the extractive sector and earmarked taxes — to guarantee financial predictability, strengthen emergency response capacity, and promote the financial sustainability of the health system.

Health sovereignty also means securing essential health products

Health sovereignty is not autarky. It is strategic autonomy with selective and intelligent integration. It is the capacity to guarantee timely access to quality-assured products through predictable demand, regional production, and coordinated procurement.

In 2025, internal Africa CDC documents mapped 574 health product manufacturers and more than 27 vaccine production initiatives across the continent while helping to mobilize more than $10 billion in financing for manufacturing. Without guaranteed African markets, however, products can’t reach scale — and there can be no sustainable African health industry.

For this reason, Africa CDC operationalized the African Pooled Procurement Mechanism, which launched joint procurement of 10 priority health products in 10 pilot countries in 2025. As the program scales, the goal is to achieve price reductions between 30% and 40% and availability above 90% for priority products — along with deeper cost reductions, improved availability, and more resilient supply chains.

Consider malaria mosquito nets: More than 95% of nets distributed in Africa are still imported. Africa CDC helped facilitate a partnership to manufacture mosquito nets in Angola, connecting government, a local manufacturer, and technology-transfer partners. Angola is also prioritizing national pharmaceutical production through policies that incentivize domestic industry, aiming to reduce import dependence and strengthen health security.  These are the models to replicate — predictable demand, pooled procurement, and sourcing that creates jobs in Africa while protecting African lives.

What we ask of member states, partners, and global institutions in 2026

The direction Africa must take is clear: prevent outbreaks whenever possible, detect them early, respond faster, and secure the tools that make responses effective. No operating system functions without sustained investment and aligned partners.

In 2026, the continent calls for three fundamental shifts. First, African governments must treat health preparedness as an essential function of the state, with dedicated budgets, regular audits, and clear performance indicators. Second, international partners must align around country-led plans and continental coordination, financing the Lusaka Agenda in practice and strengthening — not bypassing — African institutions. Third, the global health architecture must evolve from charity to cogovernance: flexible financing to build systems, procurement that prioritizes African manufacturers, and governance that elevates African institutions.

Health security is not an African issue. It is a global public good. The central question is no longer whether Africa is ready to lead, but whether the world is ready to accept that leadership. In an interdependent planet marked by recurrent epidemics and public health emergencies, Africa’s health gains are victories for all humanity.