At the 32nd Afreximbank Annual Meetings (AAM2025) held in Abuja on Thursday, Mrs. Oluranti Doherty, Afreximbank’s Managing Director for Export Development, revealed that Nigeria and other African countries are losing vast sums of money each year due to medical tourism.
She highlighted that this outflow of funds is stunting economic growth and undermining the development of local healthcare systems across the continent.
She identified the soaring costs of medical tourism as a major drain on African economies.
According to her, Nigeria alone loses an estimated $1.1 billion annually to medical tourism, while the entire African continent collectively forfeits approximately $7 billion yearly.
“We had our member countries losing a lot of foreign exchange to medical tourism.
“We just talked about Nigeria, where our medical tourism annually is about $1.1 billion.
“The entire continent is about $7 billion just because we can’t help ourselves with ourselves when we come up with chronic diseases.
“ That’s money that’s going to other economies, building up their institutions,” she said.
She noted that the capital outflow diverts funds that could be invested in local healthcare.
Doherty added that the development contributes to a “brain drain” of skilled medical professionals from the continent.
“Another thing we noted was a great way we were losing a lot of our good talents.
“The best of talents in the health sector were going out of the continent, working in places such as India, Asia, Middle East, America, and that often was an issue,” she said.
Doherty said the bank launched its Health and Medical Tourism Programme in 2012 long before the broader recognition of healthcare’s connection to economic security in response to the challenge.
“Afreximbank was innovative. I call us the innovative financier, innovative investors
“We recognised this part since 2012 and we set about doing something about it.
“A key initiative borne from this foresight is the Africa Medical Center of Excellence (AMCE) in Abuja, a 170-bed facility boasting state-of-the-art equipment, including an 18 MeV cyclotron, a three-Tesla MRI, and a 20-bed ICU.
“Afreximbank has invested over $450 million to establish and scale up this project,” she said.
The official praised the leadership behind the AMCE, noting, “Afreximbank had to go where no one has gone before; Afreximbank’s leaders adhered to the dreamers.
“The AMCE aims to provide healthcare services comparable to global standards, not just African standards.
“I’m talking about global standard. I’m talking about Africans coming up with solutions to challenge,” she said.
She, however, stressed the need to build trust in local healthcare facilities and ensure access for all to stem medical tourism.
NAN
