Africa CDC To Harmonise Behavioural Intelligence

The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), in collaboration with African Union Member States, regional institutions and technical partners, has advanced efforts to establish a harmonised continental framework for Behavioural Intelligence and Infodemic Management (BIIM) to strengthen public health decision-making across Africa.

The move followed a five-day technical workshop held in Mombasa, Kenya, from August 30 to September 3, 2026, where public health experts reviewed and validated key components of the emerging continental BIIM package.

The package includes a BIIM Framework, Strategy, Digital and Data Architecture, as well as a Roadmap for institutionalisation and implementation.

The process brought together representatives from Burundi, Ghana, Kenya, Mauritania, Sierra Leone and Zimbabwe, alongside the ECOWAS Regional Centre for Surveillance and Disease Control (RCSDC), WHO’s Africa Infodemic Response Alliance (AIRA) and other technical partners.

BIIM is being developed as a public health intelligence capability that will enable countries to integrate behavioural and social data, community feedback, social listening, information-environment signals, programme and service-delivery data and rapid research to generate intelligence that can inform public health decisions.

The initiative is designed to address a major challenge facing African health systems: not necessarily the absence of data, but the fragmentation of information across programmes and institutions and the difficulty of connecting such evidence to decisions and action.

The framework is therefore not intended to create another database, platform or parallel reporting system.

Rather, it seeks to connect existing national capabilities while establishing common standards for data quality, governance, interoperability and shared learning.

Kenya’s Principal Secretary in the Ministry of Health, Mary Muthoni Muriuki, stressed the importance of national ownership in the process.

“BIIM is not another platform or parallel system. It strengthens and connects existing national capabilities,” she said.

Muriuki also agreed to champion BIIM across Africa, with the aim of strengthening Member State leadership and political engagement around its institutionalisation.

Under the proposed model, Member States will determine the institutional home, governance arrangements, data stewardship and implementation model for their national BIIM capabilities.

Africa CDC, on the other hand, will provide continental stewardship through common standards, technical guidance, coordination, quality assurance and cross-country learning.

This means continental harmonisation will not require every country to adopt identical institutional structures or technologies.

Instead, countries will have flexibility to integrate BIIM into their existing public health systems while working within agreed continental standards.

The Special Representative of the Director General for the Eastern Africa Regional Coordinating Centre, Africa CDC, Dr Lul Pout Riek, said institutionalisation would be the real test of the initiative.

“The technical architecture is important, but institutionalisation is the real test,” Riek said.

He said behavioural intelligence must become part of the routine processes through which public health institutions understand risks, make decisions and respond to emerging challenges.

A major focus of the Mombasa workshop was ensuring that BIIM does not stop at collecting behavioural and social information.

The proposed intelligence-to-action pathway begins with identifying a priority question, gathering signals, integrating and triangulating evidence, interpreting and diagnosing the issue, prioritising it and producing decision-ready intelligence.

The intelligence is then expected to inform decisions and action, followed by tracking, feedback and learning.

For instance, a community concern, rumour, survey finding, service-delivery problem or social media trend would initially constitute a signal.

It becomes actionable intelligence when it is verified, triangulated with other sources, interpreted in its behavioural and public health context and translated into recommendations for decision-makers.

The system could support public health priorities ranging from emergency preparedness and response to immunisation, primary healthcare, community trust and uptake of health services.

The Head of Social and Behaviour Change and Advocacy at Africa CDC, Dr Priscilla Madzinga-Kusena, said the continent’s challenge was its ability to connect existing evidence to decisions.

“Africa does not have a shortage of data or signals. The gap is our ability to systematically connect fragmented evidence to decisions and action,” she said.

Madzinga-Kusena said BIIM would provide an intelligence architecture for integrating and triangulating behavioural, social, community, information-environment, programme and service-delivery evidence.

She said the ultimate measure of success would be whether the intelligence reached the right decision-maker, triggered action and generated lessons from that action.

The direct participation of Member States was identified as a defining feature of the Mombasa process.

Country delegations reviewed the proposed technical and strategic components and identified the institutional, governance, workforce, digital, data and financing requirements for implementation.

Mme Ouhaida Alioune of the Mauritania Ministry of Health said Member States were helping to shape the continental model rather than simply receiving a predetermined framework.

She said common standards would provide a shared direction while allowing countries to determine how BIIM would be integrated into their existing public health structures.

Regional institutions and technical partners are expected to support implementation through capacity building, peer learning, cross-border intelligence and alignment of existing investments.

The participation of ECOWAS RCSDC and WHO/AIRA was intended to ensure that the continental framework builds on existing regional experience in social listening, infodemic management, community intelligence and digital systems rather than creating duplicate structures.

The Vice President of the ECOWAS RCCE Network, Mr Patrick Lansana, welcomed the framework, describing it as an important step towards a harmonised intelligence-to-action approach across Africa.

He stressed that harmonisation must build on functional country systems while preserving Member States’ ownership of their data and operational tools.

The Mombasa workshop marks a shift from developing and harmonising the BIIM framework to its institutionalisation and implementation.

The emerging continental roadmap proposes a phased approach through which Member States can establish minimum capabilities, apply BIIM to priority public health challenges and progressively integrate the function into routine national systems.

The roadmap also envisages strengthening governance, workforce capacity, technology, interoperability and sustainable financing.

Immediate priorities include consolidating the harmonised BIIM package, supporting Member States to develop national institutionalisation pathways, identifying priority public health applications, strengthening regional coordination and aligning technical and financial support with country-defined priorities.

The long-term objective is not to create a single continental database or technology platform, but an interconnected African public health intelligence capability in which countries generate, own and use behavioural intelligence nationally while benefiting from regional coordination, common standards and continental learning.