Michael Efetobore Atima started out crunching numbers in actuarial science before making a pivot that most people in his field would never consider: he walked away from the world of risk modeling and into health advocacy.
The shift was not accidental. Atima's background in business administration gave him a lens that many in the health sector simply do not have. He has been vocal about the need to treat health not just as a medical issue but as an economic one, arguing that the two conversations belong in the same room.
His position is one that is gaining traction across the continent, where the cost of poor health on productivity, household income, and national development is becoming harder to ignore. When people cannot afford care, or when systems fail them, the damage shows up in the economy long before it shows up in a hospital report.
Atima's own career path is a quiet argument for the kind of cross-sector thinking African health systems need more of. The question worth sitting with is how many other number-crunchers, economists, and business minds are still on the sidelines of a conversation that urgently needs them.
Originally published by BusinessDay.