{"id":4128,"date":"2026-09-30T17:53:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-30T17:53:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thedawnrwanda.com\/?p=4128"},"modified":"2026-09-30T17:53:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T17:53:10","slug":"ahts5-urges-africa-to-move-health-tech-projects-beyond-pilot-stage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thedawnrwanda.com\/index.php\/2026\/09\/30\/ahts5-urges-africa-to-move-health-tech-projects-beyond-pilot-stage\/politics\/regional\/","title":{"rendered":"AHTS5 urges Africa to move health-tech projects beyond pilot stage"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Africa needs to move health technology projects beyond short-term pilots and build systems that can be financed, maintained and expanded, the chairman of the Africa HealthTech Summit said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jean-Philbert Nsengimana made the call at the opening of AHTS5 in Kigali, warning that the continent has accumulated numerous digital health projects without enough of them reaching scale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAfrica has therefore become a graveyard for health-tech pilots,\u201d Nsengimana told delegates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said the summit’s focus should shift from launching more projects to ensuring that existing solutions are implemented and produce measurable results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat we want to see over the next five years is accountability,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nsengimana said 75 implementation opportunities and resolutions were identified at the previous summit and organisers were working with partners to follow up on them individually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said the goal was to develop digital systems that could support services such as cross-border medical records, outbreak detection, disease surveillance and healthcare payments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fifth Africa HealthTech Summit is being held under the theme \u201cWellness for All: Powered by Intelligent Health Systems.\u201d<\/strong> The three-day meeting has brought together health officials, technology companies, researchers, investors and development partners to discuss how digital systems and artificial intelligence can improve healthcare across Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Minister of State for Health, Dr. Yvan Butera, who was guest of honour at the opening, pointed to Rwanda’s own experience in using digital tools across the health system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said more than 54,000 community health workers had been equipped with smartphones to collect health information and monitor patients, replacing multiple paper-based registers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cWe can scan the country and see where we have stockouts, where we have a pattern of high fever, where we have a concentration of high blood pressure,\u201d Butera said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said Rwanda was also connecting electronic medical records across different levels of healthcare, enabling health workers to identify high-risk pregnancies and link patients with specialists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

WHO Africa Regional Director Dr Mohamed Yakub Janabi said African countries should judge digital health systems by whether they improve access and outcomes for patients.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCan technology help a mother obtain care for her child sooner?\u201d Janabi asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said artificial intelligence could help identify risks earlier, improve forecasting and bring trusted care closer to communities, but technology could not replace health workers or fix weak health systems on its own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gates Foundation deputy director for health in Africa Boniface Njenga said governments needed to take ownership of the digital systems developed in their countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is not about partnership, it’s about ownership,\u201d Njenga said. \u201cIt’s about partnership and ownership by the governments.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Africa CDC Director-General Dr Jean Kaseya said digital investments should support the whole health system, from community health workers and laboratories to national surveillance and emergency response.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDigital investments should support the whole process,\u201d Kaseya said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He also called for stronger African standards around data, artificial intelligence governance, privacy and cybersecurity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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AHTS5 continues in Kigali through Oct. 2, with discussions focused on moving digital health solutions from individual projects into systems that can serve communities at scale.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Africa needs to move health technology projects beyond short-term pilots and build systems that can be financed, maintained and expanded, the chairman of the Africa […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4129,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,43,53,51,41,35,40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-africa-news","category-current_affairs","category-featured-stories","category-health","category-hot_topics","category-regional","category-top_stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedawnrwanda.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedawnrwanda.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedawnrwanda.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedawnrwanda.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedawnrwanda.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4128"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thedawnrwanda.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4128\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4132,"href":"https:\/\/thedawnrwanda.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4128\/revisions\/4132"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedawnrwanda.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedawnrwanda.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedawnrwanda.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedawnrwanda.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}