The Gates Foundation will maintain a long-term focus on Africa, with most of its spending expected to go to the continent over the next 20 years, a senior foundation official said on Wednesday.
Boniface Njenga, the foundation’s deputy director for health in Africa, said the commitment reflects its goal of reducing preventable deaths among mothers and children while supporting African countries to strengthen their health systems.
Speaking at the opening of the fifth Africa HealthTech Summit (AHTS5) in Kigali, Njenga said the foundation was backing the use of artificial intelligence and other technologies to improve primary healthcare.
One initiative, known as Horizon 1000, aims to bring AI-supported tools to 1,000 primary healthcare clinics, with the goal of reducing administrative work and giving health workers more time with patients.
Njenga said AI should support health workers rather than replace them and must operate within national rules governing its use.
But he stressed that African governments should remain in control of the systems being developed with support from donors, technology companies and other partners.
“This is not about partnership, it’s about ownership,” Njenga said. “It’s about partnership and ownership by the governments.”
He said governments should be able to determine how digital health systems are designed, financed and maintained so they can remain functional after external programmes end.
Njenga also urged technology companies to build systems that can work with national health structures instead of creating separate platforms that cannot communicate with one another.
He said stronger coordination was also needed across African countries, particularly on standards for health data, AI governance and interoperability.
Africa CDC Director-General Dr Jean Kaseya said African institutions had a role to play in developing common approaches that would allow health information to be shared responsibly across borders.
The Gates Foundation official said the value of digital health should ultimately be measured by improvements in patient care rather than the number of clinics or facilities that have been digitised.
