Health

Covid-19 spurs health innovation in Africa

Photo: Dr Matshidiso Moeti
By Adeze Ojukwu

Coronavirus pandemic has put a fresh impetus on the need to invest in innovation and to put the right policies and strategic frameworks in order to unleash African ingenuity.

This requires more investments in technology and infrastructural development by governments in the continent.

‘Sub-Saharan Africa is the region with the largest number of economies performing above expectations for their level of development.’

The World Health Organization(WHO) Regional Director for Africa, Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, stated this today, during a virtual press conference facilitated by APO Group.

A study by the World Bank group revealed that African countries, at around 0.01per capita, invest far less in innovation than developed countries and the continent is not living up to its potential.

‘The pandemic has put a fresh impetus on the need to invest in innovation and to put the right policies and strategic frameworks in place to unleash African ingenuity on the world,’ she added.

‘We know that investing in innovation yields huge dividends. With COVID-19 and other health threats part of our daily life, there’s no time to waste in creating the right environment for African innovators to flourish.’

Dr Moeti was joined by Hon Ibrahima Guimba Saidou, Minister–Special Advisor to the President, and CEO of the National Agency of Information Society, Niger; Dr Ola Brown, Founder, Flying Doctors Investment Company, Nigeria; and Dr Integrity Mchechesi, Junior Resident Medical Officer, Parirenyatwa Central hospital in Harare, Zimbabwe.

‘Greater investment in ICT infrastructure, robotics, artificial intelligence, drones and mechatronics as well as putting the right policies in place to boost creativity and entrepreneurship and to bolster university-led research.’

According to the World Intellectual Property Organization the more developed an economy is the more it innovates and vice versa, but some economies break this pattern by performing better or worse than predicted.

‘COVID-19 is one of the most serious health challenges in a generation, but it is also an opportunity to drive forward innovation, ingenuity and entrepreneurship in life-saving health technologies,’ she added.

The disease, she revealed, has galvanized the development of more than 120 health technology innovations that have been piloted or adopted in Africa, according to a new analysis by WHO.

‘The study of 1000 new or modifications of existing technologies that have been developed worldwide to target different areas of the COVID-19 response finds that Africa accounts for 12.8 percent of the innovations.’

The response areas include surveillance, contact tracing, community engagement, treatment, laboratory systems and infection, prevention and control.

‘In Africa, 57.8 percent of the technologies were ICT-driven, 25percent were based on 3D printing and 10.9 percent were robotics.’

The ICT-based innovations include WhatsApp Chatbots in South Africa, self-diagnostic tools in Angola, contact tracing apps in Ghana and mobile health information tools in Nigeria.

The countries with the most innovations were South Africa 13 percent, Kenya 10 percent, Nigeria eight percent and Rwanda six percent.

‘It’s great to see the youthful energy of the continent fired up to fight COVID-19. Solar-powered automatic handwashing tools, mobile applications that build on Africa’s rapidly growing connectivity. These home-grown innovations are uniquely adapted to the African context.’

Earlier this year, all 47 African Member-States in the WHO African Region adopted a WHO strategy for scaling up health innovations in Africa, according to Dr. Moeti.

Meanwhile, ‘by 2023, 80 percent of all Member States agreed to perform needs assessments to identify critical gaps in their health systems and will have established coordination mechanisms to scale up innovations. Seventy-five percent will have developed policies and incentive frameworks, and half will have developed analytical tools to assess the economic and social impact of innovations.’

‘The WHO Regional Office for Africa has created a global database of innovations to share knowledge, ideas and successes, as well as set up a COVID-19 technology access pool to share intellectual property and data.’

‘The inaugural WHO health innovation challenge, which aimed to tackle some of the most pressing health needs of the world’s most vulnerable populations, included 2400 entries, including from 44 African countries.

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