Nigeria seeks sustained investment in digital health skills across Africa

Nigeria has  called for urgent and sustained concern successful integer wellness skills crossed Africa to guarantee the continent’s healthcare systems are resilient, inclusive, and future-ready.

The Minister of State for Health and Social Welfare, Dr Iziaq Salako, made the telephone astatine the 2025 Africa Health Tech Summit (AHTS) successful Kigali, Rwanda.

Salako said that the pathway to achieving Universal Health Coverage (UHC) successful Africa lies not lone successful deploying integer tools but besides successful empowering wellness workers to usage them effectively.

The News Agency of Nigeria(NAN), reports that the Africa Health Tech Summit, organised by the Dala Group and partners, brought unneurotic authorities officials, innovators, academia, and improvement partners to research however integer wellness tools and skilling tin beforehand wellness systems crossed Africa.

“Technology is lone arsenic bully arsenic the radical who usage it. Without a digitally empowered workforce, we hazard gathering systems that look modern but run inefficiently,” helium said.

He described integer wellness skilling arsenic some an economical and motivation imperative, urging governments, academia, and backstage assemblage partners to collectively put successful learning infrastructure, standardised competencies, and continuous nonrecreational improvement for wellness workers.

He highlighted Nigeria’s ongoing advancement nether President Bola Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda, wherever digitalisation is viewed arsenic a cross-cutting enabler of wellness betterment done the Nigeria Digital successful Health Initiative (NDHI).

The initiative, helium said, aimed to make a unified and unafraid integer ecosystem that strengthens information use, decision-making, and diligent attraction crossed each levels of the wellness system.

“At the moment, 76 per cent of national tertiary wellness institutions successful Nigeria person varying levels of digitisation ranging from 50 to 100 per cent.

“We are besides moving toward establishing a nationalist Health Information Exchange earlier the extremity of 2027,” helium said.

The curate said that Nigeria’s acquisition shows however integer translation succeeds erstwhile people, not technology, are placed astatine the centre of reform.

He besides called for greater integer literacy among citizens, saying adoption depends connected equipping some wellness workers and clients with the skills to usage exertion confidently.

“Digital translation is not astir replacing quality expertise; it is astir amplifying it. “Every concern successful healthcare exertion indispensable beryllium matched by concern successful people,” helium said.

He said that portion the wellness assemblage faces challenges, the Ministry was guided by a wide betterment blueprint and urged stakeholders to look beyond past limitations and place opportunities wrong the ongoing transformation.

Mrs Njide Ndili, the Country Director of PharmAccess Nigeria, said that the speech besides focused connected strengthening collaboration betwixt the nationalist and backstage sectors to accelerate Nigeria’s integer wellness transformation.

Ndili said that the broadside chat with members of the Health Federation of Nigeria (HFN) created opportunities for stakeholders to aerial aggregate views and opinions connected captious issues and challenges facing the sector.

She said that among the cardinal highlights of the treatment was enactment for the instauration of HealthTech innovations that volition leverage integer infrastructure, regulatory sandboxes, and innovation pipelines for scale.

She added that participants besides expressed committedness to a follow-up dialog with the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria (MDCN) connected licensing fast-track aesculapian providers to amended work efficiency.

In addition, she said determination was encouragement for returning diaspora professionals to organise nether unified platforms, an inaugural which the HFN, expressed readiness to coordinate.

She said that for HFN, the engagement reinforced its relation successful driving structured dialog betwixt authorities and backstage assemblage stakeholders, arsenic good arsenic advocating for enabling policies that unlock innovation successful the country’s healthcare landscape.

“It besides underscored HFN’s committedness to supporting wellness tech founders and returning professionals to thrive an...