As we prepare, with hundreds of others, to head to the Africa Health Exhibition and Conference in Cairo, Egypt, we are reminded by the pyramids of what can be achieved with vision, precision, and collective effort. In Giza, these monumental structures were built block by block, layer by layer—each piece carefully placed to create something enduring. Today, Africa faces another foundational challenge: building a robust digital health ecosystem that will support the continent’s health security, innovation, and equitable development.
At Africa Health ExCon 2025, we must prioritise health data governance as the bedrock of our digital health future. Just as the pyramids stand tall due to their strong foundations, Africa’s health systems need structured, secure, and harmonised data governance to drive progress.
AI and health data governance
AI has transformative potential for health in Africa, but data governance is the foundation that ensures this transformation is ethical, effective, equitable, sustainable, and upholds people’s rights. Data governance provides for a solid foundation on which we can build AI for health in Africa by:
- Protecting privacy and building public trust: AI systems require access to large amounts of personal and health data. Without robust governance, there’s a high risk of misuse of sensitive information, data breaches and erosion of public trust in digital health systems. Trust is a prerequisite for participation. Without clear rules on how data is collected, stored, and used, people may withhold data — undermining AI’s potential from the start.
- Promoting equity and preventing bias: AI can reinforce harmful health disparities if trained on unrepresentative or biased data. A good governance framework can ensure data from diverse populations is used, prevent algorithms from favoring certain groups, and require transparency in how models are trained and evaluated. Without oversight, AI risks amplifying health inequalities rather than reducing them.
- Safeguarding data sovereignty: Many African countries currently rely on partners to manage or analyse health data. Strong governance helps define who owns and controls health data, ensures African governments maintain sovereignty over their data and set the rules for sharing with external entities. Data is power. Governance ensures Africa doesn’t give it away for free.
- Enabling interoperability and innovation: A coordinated continental data governance framework makes it easier to standardise health data across regions and systems and enable innovation by researchers, start-ups, and governments. AI thrives on connected, high-quality data. Fragmentation holds it back.
Let’s build the pyramids
AI will not transform African health systems without equitable, secure, reliable and representative data that is protected (and used) through robust health data governance frameworks that foster trust. A regional, rights-based governance framework, and robust national legislation, are the scaffolding on which African health AI must be built.
Digital health innovations—like telemedicine, AI diagnostics, and electronic health records (EHRs)—are rapidly expanding. Yet, many African countries lack a dedicated digital health strategy (ITU/WHO 2023) or health data governance legislation equipped for the digital age. The Africa CDC’s flagship initiative on Health Data Governance, which is a continental effort to support governments to align and strengthen health data governance approaches, is a critical step towards addressing this. In Cairo, we hope that strong political commitments will move these efforts forward, including initiating the development of a Continental framework on Health Data Governance.
Several initiatives are supporting advances in this area and lay the foundation for such a framework:
- AU Digital Transformation Strategy (2020-2030)
- AU Data Policy Framework
- Africa CDC Digital Transformation Strategy
- Global Strategy on Digital Health
- Model Law on Health Data Governance
- Smart Africa’s Digital Health Blueprint
But policies and strategies alone are not enough. Implementation, enforcement, and continental coordination must accelerate. Africa CDC is uniquely positioned to drive this agenda, together with other regional bodies, such as the AU Commission and AUDA-NEPAD. The Africa CDC Flagship Initiative on Health Data Governance can support this effort in crafting a robust continental health data governance framework that reflects vision, mission, precision and collective work.
The pyramids did not rise overnight. They were the result of deliberate, sustained effort. Similarly, Africa’s health data governance framework must be constructed block by block, policy by policy, country by country.
At Africa Health ExCon 2025, we encourage governments and stakeholders to commit to making health data governance a continental priority, including through the signing of a Continental Commitment on Health Data Governance, which was initiated during the AU Roundtable on Health Data Governance that took place in February. The Commitment calls for regional bodies to lead the development of a Continental Framework on behalf of and with AU Member States. The future of Africa’s health security, innovation, and equity depends on it.