Akhona Tshangela is a trained field epidemiologist with more than 10 years of experience in public health in working in the laboratory, public health programs implementation, surveillance and public health data management. She is currently the Program Coordinator for the Partnerships for African Vaccine Manufacturing, previously the Chief of Staff to the former Africa CDC director. She joined the Africa CDC in 2016 as one of the first staff members and has played a critical role in launching Africa CDC and developing its first programs and finds capacity building projects the most rewarding. During the COVID-19 response she was one of the co-chairs for the Science, regulations and standards technical working group; under the Africa Task Force on Coronavirus (AFTCOR), a joint partnership between Africa CDC, WHO AFRO and Member States, supporting Member States with making science based policy decisions.  She also lead the knowledge management platforms, innovations and research for the COVID-19 response and was part of the Steering Committee for the COVID-19 Clinical Research Coalition.

Her current PhD focus is looking at determinants of implementing medical interventions in Africa during pandemics, consequences for epidemic preparedness; which will look at various factors such as inequities.