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Background: The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyze the professional expectations of medical students during the 2007-2008 academic year at the public medical schools of Angola, Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique, and to identify their social and geographical origins, their professional expectations and difficulties relating to their education and professional future. Methods: Data were collected through a standardised questionnaire applied to all medical students registered during the 2007-2008 academic year. Results: Students decide to study medicine at an early age. Relatives and friends seem to have an especially important influence in encouraging, reinforcing and promoting the desire to be a doctor. The degree of feminization of the student population differs among the different countries. Although most medical students are from outside the capital cities, expectations of getting into medical school are already associated with migration from the periphery to the capital ...