Professor Mosa Moshabela
MBChB: University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2001; Diploma in HIV (SA): Colleges of Medicine of South Africa, 2006; Master's in Family Medicine: University of Limpopo, 2009; PhD: University of the Witwatersrand, 2012; MSc in Demography & Health: London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, 2017. He is currently enrolled in an EMBA programme at the Henley Business School, University of Reading.
In May 2024 UCT announced that Professor Mosa Moshabela would become its 11th Vice-Chancellor. His appointment took effect on 1 August.
Professor Moshabela is a Professor of Public Health and served as deputy vice-chancellor (DVC) for research and innovation at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) from 2021 until his departure in 2024. During that time he was responsible for a large university-wide portfolio of research management, development, ethics and integrity, capacity building, innovation, entrepreneurship, technology transfer and commercialisation.
An esteemed academic and clinician scientist, member of the Academy of Science of South Africa (MASSAf), he was awarded the PHILA Annual Award (2022) by the Public Health Association of South Africa (PHASA) for his contribution to Public Health in South Africa, and a Ministerial Special Covid-19 Award (2020 - 2021) for Covid-19 Science Communication and Public Engagement.
Prof Moshabela is the Chairperson of the Governing Board at the National Research Foundation (NRF) and Health Commissioner to the Premier of KwaZulu-Natal, as one of the seven multi-sector commissioners on the Premier's Provincial Planning Commission. He is former Member of the Board at the South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC), and former Chairperson of the Standing Committee on Health in the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf).
Primarily, Prof Moshabela’s contribution to health research has been in the improvement of access and quality in healthcare to combat infectious diseases, particularly in relation to HIV and TB, and in the areas of health systems, services and policy research.
Prof Moshabela has held a number of scientific grants for his research, mainly from the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), Medical Research Council in the United Kingdom (MRC-UK) and the National Research Foundation (NRF) in South Africa.
He has also received funding from the South African Medical Research (SAMRC), the Wellcome Trust and the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) in the UK, International Development Research Centre (IDRC) of Canada, and more recently, the US Government, Swiss Government, German Government and the European Union.
Prof Moshabela’s research is focused on implementation science of health innovations, which cuts across multiple disciplines, and involves the design, implementation and evaluation of complex interventions in healthcare services and programs, and seeks to improve access, quality, equity and impact in healthcare, for resource-poor settings in sub-Saharan Africa.
Currently, he leads the Quality Health Systems and Transformation (QuEST) Center in South Africa, a collaboration with the T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Harvard University, USA, and he is a faculty member in HIV, Infectious Disease and Global Health Research Institute (HIGH IRI) at the University of Washington in St. Louis, USA.
Globally, he is a member of the international advisory board for the Lancet Healthy Longevity, Lancet commission on synergies between Health Promotion, Universal Healthcare Access and Global Health Security, and the commission of the US National Academies for Science, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) on the Global Roadmap to Healthy Longevity.