African Higher Education Health Collaborative
Since its inception in 2012, the Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program has been a beacon of hope for young people across Africa, providing unparalleled opportunities to pursue their dreams, uplift their families, and make lasting contributions to their communities. The Mastercard Foundation is proud to build upon the scholars program’s legacy of transformative impact with the launch of the Africa Higher Education Health Collaborative (AHEHC), a groundbreaking 10-year initiative to revolutionise primary healthcare across the continent.
The African Higher Education Health Collaborative (AHEHC) is a networked approach of leading universities in Africa to collectively address health sector challenges in Africa through partnerships and strategic alliances. Supported by the MasterCard Foundation, the goal of the AHEHC is to foster inclusive, sustainable and impactful health initiatives. The project consists of three pillars, namely Health Employment, Health Ecosystems and Health Entrepreneurship (HENT), of which the Bertha Centre will focus on HENT in collaboration with the UCT Faculty of Health Sciences. The HENT pillar aims to optimize entrepreneurial ecosystems within African universities and support the launch and scaling of health start-ups, creating jobs and driving innovative solutions to address health challenges.
Termed, Healthy Futures South Africa, the project will focus on making an impact in the following areas:
- Health Employment: Enable students to acquire advanced skills across a broad range of disciplines critical for sustainable health sector growth and transformation.
- Health Entrepreneurship and Innovation: Enhance capacity for innovative and practical interventions to improve quality of life and wellbeing in the 3 selected sites as models for practice in South Africa and Africa with a specific focus on youth and social entrepreneurship.
- Health Ecosystem: Enhance the capacity at UCT to train skilled workers for Universal Health Coverage in South Africa and Africa.
- Develop a learning network: Develop a dynamic, sustainable, long-term network of partners working and learning together to create dignified and fulfilling jobs across health ecosystems and improve health outcomes in Africa.
Learn more about the Africa Higher Education Health Collaborative and partners here.
Partners:
- Addis Ababa University
- African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS)
- African Leadership University
- Amref International University / Amref Health Africa
- Ashesi University
- Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST)
- Mastercard Foundation
- Moi University
- University of Cape Town
- University of Toronto