The future of healthcare in Africa

To research this report, the Economist Intelligence Unit surveyed the literature and data available on Africa’s current healthcare systems. We also conducted 34 in-depth interviews with leading experts in the different professional roles that make up the healthcare sector: academics, clinicians, healthcare providers, policymakers, medical suppliers, and think tanks. The data and interview comments were then analysed to define trends likely to have an impact on the direction of healthcare over the next decade. Finally, bearing in mind these trends, we developed five extreme scenarios, each a distillation of a possible outcome of the trends identified. The intention is to use these scenarios as a policy-neutral set of platforms upon which some degree of agreement can be reached about the future direction of African healthcare. A list of data sources consulted for this research is in Appendix I. A list of participants in the in-depth interview programme is in Appendix II.