African Government Asked To Strengthen Health Data Systems For Better Outcomes

A professor of Global Health Education and Research Leadership at the Medical Research Council (MRC), Gambia, Prof. Assan Jaye, has urged African governments to increase domestic funding for health research and data systems to safeguard sustainability and fully harness the continent’s growing data resources.

At a high-level workshop on Pan-African Health and Clinical Trials Data Sharing, in Abuja, yesterday, Jaye said while Africa had generated significant, high-quality data on diseases such as tuberculosis, malaria and HIV, the region continued to rely heavily on external funding for research and infrastructure.

He said  this dependence threatens long-term sustainability, especially as international donors increasingly expect African countries to take greater ownership of health investments.

“African governments are still reticent in allocating resources for research, and this has been a long-standing issue. We must begin to prioritise research funding locally to sustain the infrastructure and capacity we have built over time,” he said

Jaye explained that the workshop aimed to expand a regional data repository into a continent-wide platform that would enhance data sharing, collaboration and innovation in health research. The Health Data Research Platform for West Africa, he noted, was initially established to address the rise of multi-drug resistant tuberculosis and malaria drug resistance.

The platform has since evolved into a critical repository hosting diverse datasets, including HIV mutations and emerging disease trends that can strengthen policymaking and improve health outcomes.

“Data is now central to everything we do, including the use of emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence. But for Africa to benefit, we must own, understand and control our data,” he said.

He added that the platform would support secondary data analysis, promote cross-country collaboration and help translate research findings into better healthcare delivery. Jaye also highlighted ongoing innovations such as AI-supported tuberculosis diagnosis using X-ray imaging and language models for interpreting clinical data.

Also speaking, Prof. Toyin Togun of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) said Nigeria remains pivotal to any regional or continental health intervention due to its population size, diversity and disease burden.

“Nigeria is crucial to any intervention in Africa because of its population and the scale of its public health challenges. We must ensure that Nigeria is fully integrated into any pan-African data-sharing initiative,” he said.

Togun identified poor data quality, lack of standardisation and weak infrastructure as major barriers to effective health data management, emphasizing the need for secure storage systems and skilled personnel. He added that participants were working toward an “Abuja Declaration” outlining commitments from researchers across more than 12 West African countries to strengthen data sharing and collaboration.

Director of the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research, Ghana, Prof. Dorothy Yeboah-Manu

underscored the need for greater awareness among African policymakers on the importance of data sharing. She said lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic and Ebola outbreaks show that rapid data exchange is essential for developing diagnostics, vaccines and effective response strategies.

“We need to understand that diseases do not respect borders, and without data, we cannot strategise effectively to combat them,” she said.

Yeboah-Manu noted that although Africa has large volumes of health data, much of it remains fragmented and underutilised. She also called for increased investment in building the capacity of female scientists, especially in data-driven health research.

In her remarks, Michelle Nderu of the European and Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership (EDCTP) described the data-sharing initiative as timely and critical for strengthening collaboration across African institutions. Consolidating scattered datasets into a secure and accessible platform, she said, would support evidence-based policymaking and enhance clinical research capacity.

The workshop gathered researchers, policymakers and development partners to design a roadmap for a unified African health data repository, with focus on governance, accessibility and sustainability.