Africa CDC Fellowship Training Program for citizens of an African Union Member State
About Africa CDC
The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention is an autonomous technical Agency established by the African Union (AU) to enhance the capacity, capabilities, and partnerships of Africa’s public health institutions.
Africa CDC is mandated through Article 3 of its governing statute to “support Member States in capacity building in public health through medium and long-term field epidemiologic and laboratory training programmes”. To fulfil this mandate, Africa CDC convened the Africa Health Workforce Compact in 2025, with a focus on investment, training, and retaining of skilled health workforce. The Compact builds upon the Africa CDC Framework for Health Workforce Development 2020–2025 and supports the African Union Agenda 2063 through the development of a sufficient, motivated, and well-trained health workforce capable of delivering essential health services across the continent.
About the Fellowship
Africa CDC has developed a continental African Epidemic Service (AES) Program, a flagship training program aiming to enhance the capacity, capabilities, and partnerships of Africa’s public health institutions. Its primary goal is to build capacity of mid-level professionals to control, prevent, detect, and respond to disease threats and outbreaks by employing science, policy, and data-driven interventions and programs effectively and efficiently whilst learning from best practices across the continent. The African Epidemic Service has three tracks namely, Epidemiology, Laboratory Leadership Fellowship and Public health informatics.
The African Epidemic Services – Epidemiology track is a full time two-year competency based applied epidemiology training program with three months in-person didactic training in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and 21 months of applied training in a site hosted by an African Union Member State. The program aims to strengthen the disease prevention and response capacity of African Union Member States. Successful applicants will participate in experiential Core Activities of Learning (CALs) that include, but are not limited to, data analysis, surveillance system evaluation, and outbreak investigation. The AES-Epidemiology fellow will have the support of an expert supervisor and or a mentor who will provide support throughout the fellowship programme.
Africa CDC will provide all learning and development materials and meet cover costs associated with the fellowship, including travel-related costs, stipends, hardware, software and health insurance.
Education
Applicants for the Fellowship must:
- Be a citizen of an African Union Member State.
- Be a youth as defined by the African Union, i.e., an individual under the age of 35.
- At the time of application, be employed in an African country with permission from employing government institution to attend the two years training, with guarantee to return to employment post training;
- Have a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree from an accredited university in the one health or related fields such as human medicine, nursing veterinary medicine, environmental sciences, public health or related fields or other doctoral-level training;
- Demonstrate satisfactory completion of coursework in epidemiology or quantitative research methods; and biostatistics
- Have at least three years of recent full-time public health post graduate experience in an African country.
- Demonstrate ability to read and prepare technical medical and epidemiological communication materials such as scientific publications, scientific conference presentations etc
- Proficiency in at least one of the African Union’s official languages (English, French, Arabic, Portuguese, Spanish, or Kiswahili) is required. Knowledge of an additional AU official language is an asset
Note: Advanced FETP Fellows and Graduates are not eligible to apply.
Requirements
All applications must be submitted using the online application form. Incomplete applications will not be considered. All applicants must provide the following information:
- A national passport from an African Union Member State.
- An official letter of support with permission from a government institution to attend the two-year training programme with the right to return post training.
- Letters of recommendation from two reputable professional referees.
- An official copy of degree certificate and transcripts of your bachelor’s or master’s degree.
- Brief curriculum vitae using the AU template.
- Motivation statement (maximum 500 words), outlining why this program would be a good fit, and further outlining how this training will impact your country.
- Optional: Evidence of additional relevant qualifications.
- Application Deadline: 26 August 2026
- Programme Start Date: October 2026
Click here to apply for the Africa CDC Fellowship Training Program
