Master of Business Administration (MBA) – Health Management

Background

The Master of Business Administration (MBA) with a focus on Health Management is introduced targeting individuals in both the private and public health sectors and aims at equipping senior health managers and health administrators with leaderships skills and competences that will enable them to manage their private sector businesses, or public national, regional, district and local health systems and institutions successfully.
The Government of Malawi has adopted a strategy for development and growth spanning 2017-2022. This is the Malawi Growth & Development Strategy III (MGDS III). This blueprint recognizes that failure of the country to move to a developmental state has slowed down national socio-economic development, making Malawi a consuming and importing state with very little being invested into industry, technology and private sector activities to promote manufacturing and export growth.

According to MGDS III, the plan for spurring growth recognizes provision of education and skills as key to providing the human capital required for socio-economic development and industrial growth. Unicaf University Malawi aims to play a part in the national effort to increase accessibility to tertiary education in general. Its online model, combined with its scholarship scheme makes high quality tertiary education accessible to a much large number of students than could be absorbed in a traditional face-to-face setting. Unicaf, therefore meets the goal of availing tertiary education to as many Malawians as possible. More particularly, the MBA in Health Management programme will contribute towards the realization of the national vision for socio-economic development as outlined by the rationale below.

Rationale for the Programme

Health is one of the most important industries in society. Hospitals, pharmaceutical groups, medical and biotechnology companies, insurers, research centers, government and non-profit organizations, start-ups and many more stakeholders are looking for well-qualified leaders who understand the complexity and the big picture of the health sector and its market.

One of the four pillars for the implementation of the national blueprint for economic growth and poverty alleviation, the Malawi Growth & Development Strategy (MGDS) III, is “human capital development” (Government of Malawi, 2017). It is in response to the call by government for increased private sector involvement in the field of education and training that Unicaf University, in general, develops its programmes.
In particular, this online MBA programme with specialization in Health Management was developed with a view to providing the skilled manpower needed to support the expected demand for expanded and improved health management that will be required to meet the needs of a growing population and a growing economy. Business managers, and also associated entrepreneurs, are critical in both public and private health sector organizations such as in healthcare, pharmaceuticals or medical supplies.

Aim of the Programme

This programme aims to equip students with integrative thinking, combining intuition, analytic reasoning and imagination, and link it with core competencies and transformational leadership capabilities to become a successful leader in health management. This programme aims to be relevant to professionals both outside the health industry, for example executive managers, and inside the health industry, for example doctors and nurses, who wish to apply their learning and experience to health management through the acquisition of practical health management skills.

Programme Outline

Foundation Courses

Core requirements (required modules)