Health system leadership development in selected African countries: challenges and opportunities

New forms of collaborative and collective leadership are required to re-orient health systems better to support health and wellbeing in many African countries. This chapter examines existing experiences of health leadership development, including in Kenya, Morocco and South Africa, through the specific lens of ‘systems leadership’. It concludes that strengthening health system leadership at scale must work across four levels: individual leader development; developing team leadership; institutionalising organisational changes that distribute leadership; developing networks that enable leadership learning. Three further actions will be needed to underpin the development of system leadership. First, leader development programmes must be founded on complexity and systems thinking principles, centring Afro-centric notions of leadership and combining classroom teaching with experiential team-based learning approaches. Second, such programmes must be complemented by, and connected to, organisational changes that themselves enable collective leadership. Third, political and higher-level organisational leaders must champion system leadership.