I had the honor of delivering the keynote address at the 6th Africa Digital Health Summit in Abuja, where I challenged leaders, innovators, policymakers and partners to reflect on a single number: about 675 million people in Africa still lack access to primary health care.
That reality persists not because Africa lacks innovation. Across the continent, innovators are developing solutions that can strengthen health systems and expand access to care. The challenge is that too many of these promising solutions never move beyond pilot projects to achieve impact at scale. In my remarks, I explored a simple but urgent question: How do we move from promising pilots to sustainable systems that improve health outcomes for millions of people?
The answer goes beyond technology. It requires stronger, more responsive primary health care systems, investment in African innovators, and deeper partnerships with governments and communities to scale what works—especially for people who are too often left behind.
Watch the full keynote to learn how Africa can build digital health systems that are sustainable, African-led and capable of bringing quality care closer to every community. Until We Are All Safe.
From Pilots to Scale: Growing Africa’s Digital Health Innovation Ecosystem
Keynote Address by
Dr. Ahmed Ogwell Ouma
CEO & President, VillageReach
6th Africa Digital Health Awards Summit, Abuja, Nigeria (25 – 26 June 2026)
Excellencies,
Honourable Ministers,
Distinguished leaders from government, academia, industry, development agencies, civil society, and the innovation community,
Ladies and gentlemen,
Good morning.
Today, I want to start with a number – a number that I want to sit with you throughout this Summit and beyond.
Six hundred and seventy-five million. Yes, at least 675 million.
These are the number of people in Africa who do not have access to quality health care. 675 million people – mothers, fathers, adolescents, children, grandparents – nearly half of the continent’s population, cannot easily access quality healthcare. For them going to see a doctor is not an appointment – it is a journey. A bus fare they don’t have; a day of lost wages they can’t afford; to a health facility they often don’t fully trust.
Please keep that number – at least 675 million people in Africa! Keep it in mind because everything I say today is aimed at reducing that number, drastically, not in 2030, but now! Through African innovation and local action to scale. Action, now!
Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is a privilege to join you today at the Africa Digital Health Awards Summit and to engage in what I believe is one of the most consequential conversations shaping the future of health on our continent and beyond: how Africa moves from promising digital health pilots to scalable and sustainable systems that improve health outcomes for every citizen to thrive where they live.
Let me to begin with a simple observation – Africa does not suffer from a shortage of innovation. Africa does not have a shortage of innovators.
If anything, we have an abundance of innovations and innovators.
Across our continent, brilliant entrepreneurs, researchers, health workers, governments, and communities are developing extraordinary solutions. Mobile applications are improving access to care. Artificial intelligence is enhancing diagnostics. Digital supply chain platforms are reducing stockouts. Telemedicine is connecting remote communities to specialists. Digital health records are transforming patient management.
The problem is not innovation. The problem is scale.
For decades, Africa has become known as a continent of pilots – I call it pilot-itis; Pilot projects, pilot technologies, pilot partnerships, pilot funding all which give us pilot successes that often disappear when the grant ends. The only thing that is not a pilot is the health challenges we face on the continent – those are real and at scale.
Somewhere in Africa today, there is a mother who is feeling the first signs of labour. The nearest health facility is 2 hours away by walking, and today it has rained – it will take longer. There is no number to call an ambulance, no neighbour to ask for a lift, neither is there an Uber service. Her choice in that moment is the choice millions of women have faced across this continent for generations – to walk and hope; or to stay home and hope. Yet these are the kind of problems that we, African innovators, policy makers, investors, daughters and sons of this continent should address, successfully. The technology that is required to change this story exists. It is sitting in the mind of a young African innovator; forgotten in a beautifully written thesis of an African academic; buried in the dusty files of a civil servant as a delayed project; waiting for someone in this room to take it from a pilot to a successful product.
Colleagues,
Today, we must ask ourselves a difficult but necessary question:
Why do so many innovations succeed at district level but fail to transform nations?
And perhaps even more importantly:
What will it take to build an African digital health ecosystem capable of scaling solutions that are sustainable and endure? Digital transformation is no longer optional, it is foundational to the future of our health systems.
We are living through a historic period of transformation, one that is a defining moment for Africa. The world is facing unprecedented challenges such as Pandemics, Climate shocks, Conflict, Population growth, Health workforce shortages, Fiscal constraints and the growing demands for equity and accountability.
At the same time, advances in technology are creating opportunities unlike anything we have witnessed before from Artificial intelligence, predictive analytics, Digital public infrastructure to cloud computing, Genomics, remote diagnostics and internet-enabled medical devices.
The question before us is not whether technology will reshape healthcare. The question is whether Africa will be just a consumer of these transformations or a co-creator of them. I firmly believe Africa has an opportunity to become a global leader in digital health innovation.
The good news is that this is not new – we have done it before, with huge success. For a hundred years, the world was building telephone networks using buried copper wires, pole by pole, village by village, phone booth by phone booth. In Africa we skipped that and went straight into mobile telephony. So efficiently that today, a shepherd son in the hills of Ethiopia speaks with clarity to his sister who is attending the 6th edition of the Africa Digital Health Summit in Abuja. We can leapfrog to tomorrow’s technology today!
Who remembers how we were building banks – big, strong concrete buildings – with smart tellers behind security glass windows speaking big English. Africa skipped that too! Mobile money like m-Pesa jumped and put the bank in everyone’s pocket. Today, mobile money moves more value as a share of GDP in East Africa than anywhere else in the world. We leapfrogged that too.
Every breakthrough is realised when we refuse to photocopy the old paths and seek new ones that are suited to the context of our unique challenges here in Africa. But only if we shift our focus from technology itself to the systems that enable technology to create impact – something suited to the size of our ambition, our economies and our people. I put it to you that our ambition must wear the glow of success – not to wait for a perfect plan – but to wear the glow of success.
And as leapfrog into the future, let us not lose the important lesson that technology alone does not solve health challenges.
Our digital tools are not silver bullets.
A mobile application cannot compensate for weak governance.
An artificial intelligence platform cannot replace trust.
A dashboard cannot substitute for leadership.
And connectivity alone does not guarantee better outcomes.
Ladies and Gentlemen
Too often, we begin with technology and hope systems will adapt around it. I suggest to you that we must also bring along people, institutions, and the priorities of our health system.
Technology should strengthen health systems not the other way around. The most successful digital health interventions are not those with the most sophisticated code. They are the ones that solve real problems. They fit into existing workflows. They are trusted by health workers.
At VillageReach, we have seen this repeatedly.
Whether strengthening supply chains, supporting frontline health workers, improving data visibility, or enabling more responsive primary health care systems, success has come when digital tools are integrated into broader system transformation efforts. Technology becomes powerful when it’s simply part of how a system works – giving it bigger impact.
We have also seen that scaling digital health innovations remains one of our greatest challenges. Not because the solutions do not work. But because our ecosystems are often fragmented. Across many countries, we see dozens sometimes hundreds of digital solutions operating simultaneously – all trying to solve the same health challenges without synergy.
Multiple data systems.
Multiple reporting platforms.
Multiple donor requirements.
Multiple applications serving similar purposes.
The result is duplication, inefficiency, and burden on health workers.
Islands of innovation without integration does not produce transformation. In fact, it’s integration that creates scale. This means governments, partners, investors, innovators, and implementers must move beyond project thinking and embrace ecosystem thinking. We must think big, because the health problems in Africa are not small. We must sustain systems thinking because that is where sustainability resides.
As we think about moving from pilots to scale, I would like to propose four priorities.
First: Build Digital Public Infrastructure
Every country needs foundational digital infrastructure that enables innovation to flourish. Just as roads enable transportation and electricity enables industry, digital public infrastructure enables digital health solutions to function optimally. Without them, every innovation must start from scratch.
Africa cannot afford to keep reinventing the wheel.
We must invest in common foundations that enable many innovations to thrive.
Second: Put Communities and Health Workers at the Centre
Technology must work for the people who use it. Too often, solutions are designed far from the communities they are intended to serve.
We ask health workers to enter the same information into multiple systems.
We create platforms that require connectivity where connectivity is unreliable.
We design solutions without considering literacy, language, culture, or local realities.
Scaling requires co-creation. Communities must not merely be beneficiaries of innovation; they must be architects of innovation.
Health workers must not merely implement solutions; they must shape them.
When communities own solutions, adoption increases. When health workers trust systems, utilization increases.
And when people see value, scale becomes possible.
Third: Invest in African Innovators
Africa possesses extraordinary talent. Young entrepreneurs across the continent are creating solutions tailored to local realities. Yet too many struggle to access capital, mentorship, procurement opportunities, and pathways into public health systems.
We cannot talk about digital sovereignty while neglecting African innovators. We cannot discuss local ownership while importing every solution.
Governments, development partners, investors, and philanthropies must intentionally support African innovation ecosystems. Not through short-term competitions. Not through one-off grants. But through long-term investments that help innovators move from ideas to bankable products.
I have this dream that the next generation of global digital health leaders will emerge from Accra and Addis Ababa; from Cape Town and Dakar; from Kigali, Lagos, and Nairobi. From Africa!
Fourth: Strengthen Regional Cooperation
No country can build the future of digital health alone. The digital challenges we face transcend borders, just like disease outbreaks cross borders. Our reality is that data crosses borders. Supply chains cross borders. Workforce crosses borders. Innovation ecosystems cross borders. Our digital health response must therefore be regional – must cross borders.
As we build regional cooperation, we need harmonized standards; shared learning platforms; cross-border regulatory frameworks; and regional procurement mechanisms. We need stronger cooperation across the African Union, Regional economic communities, regulators, academic and research institutions, and private sector actors.
Excellencies, Ladies and gentlemen,
As technology continues to advance even faster, we must reflect on one major limiting factor – leadership. The courage to make difficult decisions.
The courage to integrate rather than duplicate.
The courage to invest in long-term systems rather than short-term projects.
The courage to collaborate rather than compete.
And the courage to place equity at the centre of our digital transformation.
Any digital transformation that excludes the poorest communities is not transformation. It is merely digitization. True transformation expands opportunity. It expands access. It expands dignity. It is our duty to ensure that every person in Africa, regardless of geography, income, gender, or circumstance, can benefit from the promise of innovation – African innovation that wears the glow of success.
A Vision for the Future
Imagine an Africa where every child has a digital health record from birth.
Where community health workers have real-time decision support tools in the palm of their hands.
Where disease outbreaks are detected before they spread.
Where medicines move efficiently through responsive supply chains.
Where health data informs policy in real time – community by community, nation by nation.
Where digital systems connect seamlessly from these Summit to the village clinic.
And where technology strengthens—not replaces—the human relationships at the heart of healthcare.
This future is possible.
Not in twenty years.
Not in ten years.
But within our generation.
The building blocks already exist.
The talent exists.
The institutions exist.
The innovations exist.
The opportunity exists.
You exist!
What remains is our collective commitment to move beyond pilots and build systems capable of lasting impact.
Closing
Excellencies, Ladies and gentlemen,
As we gather here today, let us remember that history will not judge us by the number of applications we developed. It will judge us by the outcomes and impact – by whether innovation improved lives.
Whether it reduced inequities.
Whether it strengthened resilience.
And whether it brought quality healthcare closer to the people who need it most.
The future of African health systems will be digital.
But more importantly, it must be equitable and resilient.
The future of Africa’s digital health systems must be African-led. Africa-owned. Africa-financed!
Let us build a digital health ecosystem worthy of the aspirations of our continent UNTIL WE ARE ALL SAFE!
Thank you very much.