Dr. Jean Kaseya is included in Africa Health 20 because he sits at the center of Africa’s continental public health architecture. As Director-General of Africa CDC, he leads the African Union’s top technical institution for disease control, emergency coordination, and public health system strengthening. His influence matters because the role is bigger than outbreak response alone.
It shapes how Africa thinks about surveillance, health security, financing, sovereignty, and the long-term capacity of its own institutions. In 2025, Kaseya remained one of the clearest power centers in African public health: not simply a visible figure, but a leader with direct authority over some of the continent’s most strategic health priorities.
Influence areas: Health security; outbreak coordination; surveillance and epidemic intelligence; health sovereignty.
