The Afya Bora Consortium is a partnership of eight academic health institutions, four in Africa and four in the United States. The Consortium members have a history of collaboration in four African-U.S. pairs: Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda, and Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, USA; Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and the University of California in San Francisco, California, USA; the University of Botswana, Gaborone, Botswana, and the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA; the University of Nairobi, Nairobi, Kenya, and the University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA.

The Consortium is developing a Global Health Leadership Fellowship for medical, nursing, and public health professionals, largely drawn from the four African partner countries. The primary purpose of the fellowship is to provide trainees with practical skills that will prepare them for future positions leading the design, implementation and evaluation of large, high impact programs in governmental agencies, non-governmental organizations, and academic health institutions in their own countries.

In this overview, we describe a Pilot of the proposed program, which includes three components: a six-week Core Curriculum taught in modules that focus on foundational skills in leadership, management, evaluation and other relevant topics; a six-month assignment to two Attachment Sites, that provides hands-on experience in a programmatic, clinical, or research area; and a post-training support and mentoring phase. We believe that the Afya Bora Fellowship is an innovative model, which, when fully implemented, could contribute significantly to training future leaders in global health and reducing “brain drain” of health professionals.