A shared East African voice for mental health
The 2nd East African Mental Health Summit brought together representatives from all eight members of the East African Community (EAC) and beyond, producing the Kampala Declaration to make mental health a regional development priority. Commitments include dedicated mental health budgets, community-based care, suicide decriminalisation, and lived experience participation in policymaking.
Hear from one of our members, Vincent Mujune, Country Director of StrongMinds, the lead organisers of the Summit, in this video.
As Ministers call for a common voice ahead of the Global Ministerial Mental Health Summit in Kigali in March 2027, we will build on our support for advocates’ participation, connect civil society across the region, and support people with lived experience to participate in the Summit.
On 22 October 2026, the final day of the 2nd East Africa Mental Health Summit in Kampala, Uganda, ministers of health or their representatives from Uganda, Burundi, Somalia, South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, alongside the minister for East African Community Affairs, signed the Kampala Declaration. The Declaration calls for mental health integration to become a regional development priority and sets out a path towards a Regional Mental Health Policy and, in time, an East African Community Mental Health Bill. Representatives from Rwanda, Kenya and Tanzania indicated that they would consult their ministers, who were not present, before signing.
The Summit
The Summit took place on 21 and 22 October, hosted by Uganda’s Ministry of Health and Ministry of East African Community Affairs with support from StrongMinds, under the theme ‘Delivering on the Promises: Making Mental Health Integration a Development Priority in East Africa’. It is the second meeting of a recurring regional process, building on the 2025 Kampala Call to Action, and it brought together government, civil society and private sector partners to discuss community-based care, mental health financing, the links between mental health and climate change, and the integration of mental health into schools, prisons, and refugee and emergency settings.
The context is stark. According to the Summit organisers, between 10% and 25% of people in East Africa experience mental health problems, services remain concentrated in cities and psychiatric institutions far from rural communities, and the region has a severe shortage of mental health professionals. And the Summit came less than two weeks after the World Health Organization published new guidance urging countries to shift from institutional to community-based, person-centred care.
The Kampala Declaration
For too long, mental health has been underfunded and treated as a lesser priority in national budgets; the Kampala Declaration commits East African governments to act together as a region, with shared standards and shared accountability.
The commitments are specific. Partner States commit to:
create or sustain a dedicated budget line for mental health in national budgets, and progressively increase domestic financing for mental health to at least 2% of the national health budget;
bring care closer to communities through primary health care, with task-sharing and training for primary and community health workers, and shift care and resources from specialised institutions to community-based settings;
review and repeal laws, policies and practices that criminalise attempted suicide, replacing them with support and care for people experiencing suicidal distress;
include people with lived experience as active partners in policy design, governance and delivery, as well as in the monitoring and evaluation of the Declaration itself;
integrate mental health across education, maternal and child health, HIV and tuberculosis programmes, gender-based violence response, correctional services, humanitarian response, climate change and social protection;
establish a regional platform and technical working group to harmonise indicators, monitor progress and report to the EAC Sectoral Council of Ministers of Health.
Also, the Declaration sets out its own route into regional law. Ministers will lay it before the East African Legislative Assembly and their national parliaments, its commitments will guide a costed EAC Regional Mental Health Policy to be developed by the EAC Secretariat with all Partner States, and, once that Policy is adopted, the Declaration recommends that the Council of Ministers and the Assembly initiate an East African Community Mental Health Bill under Article 14(3)(b) of the EAC Treaty to give legal effect to the common standards agreed in it.
The road to Kigali
The Declaration also looks beyond the region. Partner States commit to contribute to the global target, agreed in the Political Declaration of the 2025 UN High-Level Meeting on noncommunicable diseases and mental health, of 150 million more people with access to mental health care by 2030, and to share their progress towards the Regional Mental Health Policy at the 7th Global Ministerial Mental Health Summit, hosted by the Republic of Rwanda in Kigali in March 2027.
“The Kampala Declaration on Mental Health 2026 must translate shared commitments into measurable action. The Kigali ministerial summit must secure clear targets, dedicated resources and robust accountability, ensuring governments report on progress, address implementation gaps and deliver tangible improvements in accessible, quality, rights-based mental health care across East Africa.”
Kigali, five months from now, will be an early test of whether the commitments made in Kampala - and in 2025 at the UN - are turning into budget lines, policies and services. And a common East African voice in Kigali will carry weight in a global conversation that has too often been led by High-Income Countries, which is why we will continue to connect civil society across the region and support advocates and people with lived experience to take part in the Ministerial Summit, in the room and in shaping what is said there.
Watch the reflections by Faith Kyateka Nassozi on the Summit in this video.
Read the full Kampala Declaration on Mental Health 2026.
If you are working on mental health in East Africa and want to be part of the road to Kigali, join our Network now: https://gmhan.org/join