Consultancy: In-depth Skills Gap Mapping

Primary healthcare (PHC) systems in Africa face increasing pressure to address the region’s evolving health challenges, including the rise of non-communicable diseases, emerging infectious diseases, and the growing demand for accessible and equitable healthcare. However, a significant gap exists between the demand for skilled health workers and the availability of professionals with the necessary competencies to deliver optimal healthcare services. The mismatch between workforce skills and the evolving demands of the health sector is a growing concern, hindering both economic growth and healthcare system performance. This gap results in high unemployment rates among health workers while simultaneously leaving critical job vacancies unfilled.

Rapidly changing labor market dynamics—driven by technological advancements, globalization, demographic shifts, and other macro-level trends—exacerbate this issue. Young PHC workers, who are essential to the future of the health workforce, often face obstacles such as limited access to specialized training, inadequate resources, and insufficient professional development opportunities. These barriers hinder their ability to thrive in dynamic and resource-constrained settings.

To address these challenges, initiatives like the Learning for Life (L4L) program play a crucial role. In 2024, the L4L program conducted a needs assessment and one of the key findings was that a majority of the finalist students, interns, and early-career PHC workers rated themselves as having low confidence in technical skills. This finding underscores the need for an in-depth skills gap mapping to identify cadre-specific technical and competency deficiencies. The goal is to develop targeted recommendations to enhance training programs, improve workforce readiness, and increase employability. Therefore, this in-depth skills gap mapping will be embedded in the ongoing needs assessment.

Skills gap mapping provides critical information to guide the program in aligning training initiatives with workforce needs. This process helps build a more capable health workforce and fosters the development of innovative, locally relevant solutions to strengthen primary health care (PHC) systems. Ultimately, addressing the skills mismatch is essential to ensuring that the health workforce is adequately equipped to meet the evolving demands of the healthcare system, improve health outcomes, and create meaningful, dignified employment opportunities for young PHC workers.

Specific Objectives

The skills gap mapping targets young (< 35 years) Primary Health Care workers in the fields of medicine and Surgery, Dentistry, Pharmacy, Clinical Medicine, Nursing, Environmental/Public Health, Orthopaedic, Physiotherapy, Oral Health, Community Health, Optometry, Laboratory Services, and Radiology within Primary health care facilities in Kitwe, Ndola, Lusaka, and Kafue Districts. This includes in-service and pre-service primary healthcare workers and finalist students in the training institutions that were targeted by the ongoing needs assessment.

The primary objective of this consultancy is to:

1. Conduct an in-depth skills gap mapping to identify critical technical and competency gaps among young primary healthcare workers in the following cadres: Medical Doctors, Dentists, Pharmacists, Clinical Officers, Nurses, Midwives Environmental/Public Health Officers/ specialists, Physiotherapists, Oral Health officers, Community Health officers, Optometrists, Laboratory technicians, Radiologists and Sonographers.
2. Assess skills gap in Health Entrepreneurship among Primary Healthcare workers in the above-mentioned Cadres with a focus on business development, pitching, resource mobilization, customer services, business plan development, networking skills, bookkeeping, procurement, and leadership.
3. Assess the skills gap in advocacy, policy formulation and leadership among young primary healthcare workers both in-service and pre-service, in the above-mentioned cadres.

The assignment will be contracted to an independent consultancy firm to lead and execute the exercise. Consultants must demonstrate experience in Human Resources for Health and have incountry experience.

The lead consultant should possess the following expertise:

• An advanced degree (Master’s or PhD) in public health, community health, social sciences research, or other relevant field of study;
• Good understanding of the Human Resources for Health and Primary Health Care
• A minimum of 5 years of demonstrated experience in both quantitative and qualitative and/or mixed methods research, including training and supervising qualitative research assistants
• Excellent analytical and report writing skills;
• Proficiency in using of ATLAS.ti for qualitative data analysis
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English
• Must have authorization to work in Zambia
• Strong leadership, planning and problem-solving skills
• Ability to work independently while demonstrating excellent teamwork and coordination skills;
• Previous experience working for or with international non-governmental organizations and donors is desirable.