Across Africa, new threats to public health are on the rise, putting additional strain on the continent’s health systems, which are already overstretched.
Here in East Africa, we’ve seen recent outbreaks of Marburg virus in Tanzania, Ebola flare-ups in Uganda, and recurrent cholera outbreaks across the region. This worrying trend extends across the continent: Disease outbreaks in Africa rose from 153 in 2022–2023 to 242 in 2024, and this elevated level continued into 2025.
And even as the threats mount, external financial support for Africa’s health systems is falling sharply. Development funding for global public health dropped by more than $10 billion in 2025 alone. External health aid to Africa plummeted by an estimated 70 per cent between 2021 and 2025.
The combination of rising public health threats and declining external funding exposes a hard truth, which African leaders already acknowledge: The continent’s health security cannot rely on external rescue.
That’s why key actors across the continent are beginning to reframe the situation as an opportunity to invest in powerful collaborations within the African continent, including on the critical issue of disease surveillance. It’s a powerful approach that will ultimately put Africa in a position to secure its own future and set an example for the rest of the world.
In 2025, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention adopted a new strategy called Africa’s Health Security and Sovereignty, which reflects the growing recognition that African nations must finance, produce, and govern their own health systems and medical countermeasures.
Collaboration
This is an emerging opportunity that creates real space for African leadership and offers the chance to develop the next generation of healthcare leaders, champion local manufacturing, and strengthen partnerships across the continent.
Collaboration is key to making that strategy work, and African leaders know it. That’s why the African Union Assembly of Heads of State and Government has officially designated the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Africa CDC, as the official public health agency for the continent, putting the institution in a position to promote political, strategic, and technical collaboration across all African nations. In the same vein, African leaders also recently declared their support for continent-wide collaboration on the manufacturing and procurement of health products.
African leaders have put surveillance front and centre in Africa’s CDC’s mandate. Indeed, the very first of Africa CDC’s official “objectives and functions,” according to the African Union, is to establish “early warning and response surveillance platforms” to ensure that African nations can “address in a timely and effective manner all health emergencies and disease threats.”
Within that context, collaborative disease surveillance, which encourages doctors, community groups, government officials, and other key actors to work together as a team, is one of the most powerful ways to strengthen Africa’s ability to prepare for and respond to public health emergencies. Collaborative surveillance strengthens local capacity to detect, manage, and contain outbreaks before they escalate, while remaining cost-effective and highly scalable across Africa and the broader Global South.
African leaders must continue to make disease surveillance a priority by investing in collaborative systems that connect government, institutions, and health care providers on the ground.
Dr. Caroline Kisia is the Africa Director of Project ECHO
