Nigeria has called for urgent and sustained investment in digital health skills across Africa to ensure 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 call at the 2025 Africa Health Tech Summit (AHTS) in Kigali, Rwanda.
Salako said that the pathway to achieving Universal Health Coverage (UHC) in Africa lies not only in deploying digital tools but also in empowering health workers to use them effectively.
The News Agency of Nigeria(NAN), reports that the Africa Health Tech Summit, organised by the Dala Group and partners, brought together government officials, innovators, academia, and development partners to explore how digital health tools and skilling can advance health systems across Africa.
“Technology is only as good as the people who use it. Without a digitally empowered workforce, we risk building systems that look modern but operate inefficiently,” he said.
He described digital health skilling as both an economic and moral imperative, urging governments, academia, and private sector partners to collectively invest in learning infrastructure, standardised competencies, and continuous professional development for health workers.
He highlighted Nigeria’s ongoing progress under President Bola Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda, where digitalisation is viewed as a cross-cutting enabler of health reform through the Nigeria Digital in Health Initiative (NDHI).
The initiative, he said, aimed to create a unified and secure digital ecosystem that strengthens data use, decision-making, and patient care across all levels of the health system.
“At the moment, 76 per cent of federal tertiary health institutions in Nigeria have varying levels of digitisation ranging from 50 to 100 per cent.
“We are also moving toward establishing a national Health Information Exchange before the end of 2027,” he said.
The minister said that Nigeria’s experience shows how digital transformation succeeds when people, not technology, are placed at the centre of reform.
He also called for greater digital literacy among citizens, saying adoption depends on equipping both health workers and clients with the skills to use technology confidently.
“Digital transformation is not about replacing human expertise; it is about amplifying it. “Every investment in healthcare technology must be matched by investment in people,” he said.
He said that while the health sector faces challenges, the Ministry was guided by a clear reform blueprint and urged stakeholders to look beyond past limitations and identify opportunities within the ongoing transformation.
Mrs Njide Ndili, the Country Director of PharmAccess Nigeria, said that the conversation also focused on strengthening collaboration between the public and private sectors to accelerate Nigeria’s digital health transformation.
Ndili said that the side chat with members of the Health Federation of Nigeria (HFN) created opportunities for stakeholders to air multiple views and opinions on critical issues and challenges facing the sector.
She said that among the key highlights of the discussion was support for the creation of HealthTech innovations that will leverage digital infrastructure, regulatory sandboxes, and innovation pipelines for scale.
She added that participants also expressed commitment to a follow-up dialogue with the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria (MDCN) on licensing fast-track medical providers to improve service efficiency.
In addition, she said there was encouragement for returning diaspora professionals to organise under unified platforms, an initiative which the HFN, expressed readiness to coordinate.
She said that for HFN, the engagement reinforced its role in driving structured dialogue between government and private sector stakeholders, as well as advocating for enabling policies that unlock innovation in the country’s healthcare landscape.
“It also underscored HFN’s commitment to supporting health tech founders and returning professionals to thrive and contribute meaningfully within Nigeria’s evolving healthcare ecosystem,” she said.
She said that together, they reaffirmed their commitment to building bridges between policy, innovation, and private sector capacity through advocacy to ensure that Nigeria’s healthcare transformation is both inclusive and sustainable.
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