In last week’s column, I explored how Africa’s financial institutions are navigating systems that don’t always recognise their realities. That same tension plays out in health, where digital tools hold enormous promise but struggle to take root without local investment.
“Local investment means funding, yes, but also something deeper: policy ownership, institutional strengthening, talent development, and public trust.”
Digital health is gaining traction across Africa, from mobile diagnostics to AI-assisted disease tracking. But even though the potential is clear, that promise won’t be realised without a deeper kind of investment, not only in tools but also in the local systems that allow them to take root.
Not just funding. Investment.
The distinction matters. Because what digital health truly needs is not only more money. It’s commitment in infrastructure, in local capacity, in context, and in time. The kind of commitment that builds ecosystems, beyond pilots.
Too often, digital health solutions are designed from the outside in, slick in presentation but clunky in practice. They overlook the realities of weak infrastructure, low digital literacy, cultural nuance, and overstretched frontline capacity. In that context, even the most elegant platform can quickly become irrelevant or unusable.
I’ve seen this pattern play out. Across Africa’s health innovation space, digital tools often arrive with fanfare and are quietly abandoned months later. Not because the need wasn’t real. Not because the technology wasn’t “smart.” But because users weren’t engaged from the start. Because the infrastructure failed. Because the initiative was built to report, not to last.
We need to be honest about what’s broken in this pattern.
Too often, digital health in Africa reflects good intentions but fragmented outcomes. Tools are brought in, not adapted. Pilots are celebrated but rarely scaled. Strategy follows funding cycles more than long-term health priorities. And the local institutions expected to sustain these efforts are often left without a voice or resources to guide them.
Read also: From Challenges to Change: How Digital Innovation is Rewriting Healthcare in Nigeria
This is not a failure of technology. It is a failure of approach.
If we want digital health to truly serve African populations, we need to stop asking what the technology can do and start asking what communities want it to do and whether the systems around it are equipped to support that.
That’s why local investment is so critical. When countries and communities have a stake in the systems being built, they are more likely to shape them in ways that are relevant, inclusive, and enduring.
Local investment means funding, yes, but also something deeper: policy ownership, institutional strengthening, talent development, and public trust. It’s about making digital health something that is by the people and for the people, not an experiment on them.
In practice, this means training and retaining local developers and analysts who understand context, not only code. It means investing in infrastructure that won’t buckle under poor connectivity or unreliable electricity. It requires designing tools with frontline health workers in mind, not just program officers. And most critically, it demands governance that is transparent, accountable, and rooted in local systems, not borrowed templates.
These are not new ideas. But in a global development climate shaped by austerity, AI optimism, and shifting donor priorities, they are newly urgent.
In the first half of 2025, digital health attracted over $12.1 billion globally, with more than half flowing to established companies, mainly in AI diagnostics and enterprise platforms, many based in the Global North. Meanwhile, innovators in low-resource settings, especially in Africa, continue to face barriers to accessing this capital. Experts warn that without local trust, data integrity, and strong governance, technology may deepen, rather than close, the access gap.
The most enduring health platforms we’ve seen, from DHIS2, used by 70+ LMICs, to openIMIS in health financing, were not celebrated for flashy features. They were built on local systems, integrated into national policy, and designed for scale with intention.
This is the spirit behind the 2025 Insights Learning Forum (ILF), and why this year’s theme could not be more urgent—Local Investment for Connected Communities: The Power of Digital Health Networks in Public Health Transformation.
On July 30, ILF will bring together policymakers, innovators, funders, and frontline leaders to wrestle with this reality; if Africa’s digital health future is going to be transformative, it must be locally driven.
Since its founding in 2023, ILF has become a space where ideas meet practice and where those building the future of health systems, not only those funding them, are given the microphone.
This year, the stakes are even higher. We face global economic headwinds, declining donor flows, and the widening gap between high-level health targets and day-to-day realities in under-resourced clinics. But we also have an opportunity to rethink what digital health leadership looks like and who gets to define it.
At eHealth Africa, we’ve learnt that scale happens only when solutions are grounded in local leadership. That’s why we’ve invested in regional data hubs, trained community health technologists, and aligned with national health strategies across West Africa. But this work can’t happen in isolation. It will take a network of actors committed to putting communities, not only technologies, at the centre of the digital health agenda.
So, this is my call to governments, development partners, tech innovators, and civic actors: invest not only in platforms but also in people. Not only in systems, but also in the soil that sustains them. Digital health can transform lives, but only if we let it take root where it matters most: at home.
Ota Akhigbe is a global business and development leader and Director of Partnerships and Programs at eHealth Africa. Her work sits at the intersection of health systems, innovation, and equity across Africa. She writes weekly in BusinessDay on inclusive development, local leadership, and structural transformation.
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