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29May

Lessons from Ethiopia’s Disability Inclusion Conference for Africa’s Telecom Sector

Author CIPESA Posted on

By CIPESA Writer |

On April 24, 2026, Safaricom Ethiopia Telecommunications convened a Disability Inclusion Conference in Addis Ababa. While opening the conference, Safaricom Ethiopia CEO, Wim Vanhelleputte emphasised the importance of involving persons with disabilities in the design of digital products and services by invoking the principle of “Nothing About Us Without Us.”

The conference, which brought together stakeholders from government, academia, tech companies, Disabled Persons Organisations (DPOs), and civil society, nevertheless highlighted a more persistent reality. For the approximately 15-17 million Ethiopians living with a disability, roughly one in six people, the disconnect between policy commitments and lived reality remains significant in access to services and devices.

As Abayneh Gujo, Executive Director of the Federation of Ethiopian Associations of Persons with Disabilities (FEAPD), noted during the conference, the disconnect continues to affect access not only to digital services, but also to education, healthcare, and economic opportunity. Many other African countries face a similar gap.

A Sector That Continues to Treat Accessibility as Optional
Findings from a CIPESA report, Access Denied: How Telecom Operators in Africa Are Failing Persons with Disabilities, show that major telecom companies across markets in Africa continue to treat accessibility as a secondary consideration. The study assessed 10 telecom companies in Botswana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa and Uganda. For example, staff were untrained and often unaware of what accessible products existed. Procurement policies did not require accessibility features, while physical access to sales outlets was poor. Discounted rates for persons with disabilities were virtually non-existent, with only Vodacom South Africa offering them in the form of a modest SMS bundle for customers with hearing impairments.

These shortcomings reflect a sector that has long treated accessibility as optional, often framing it as corporate social responsibility rather than a legal obligation. There has been progress since the report, but it has been driven by individual company initiatives rather than coordinated, sector-wide change anchored in regulatory standards and enforceable requirements.

Even where accessibility features exist, accessible smartphones, assistive technologies and mobile data remain out of reach for many persons with disabilities, especially in rural and low-income settings. This is because access depends not only on whether technologies are available, but whether people can afford to use them consistently over time. Studies, including by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), identify affordability as a major barrier to digital inclusion, yet telecom pricing and product design still rarely reflect the realities faced by persons with disabilities.

What Ethiopia Must Do
Ethiopia has ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) and has disability-related provisions in existing laws. However, the country still lacks a comprehensive and enforceable disability rights law. Such a law should set clear obligations on telecom operators, broadcasters and digital service providers, including standards for accessible customer care, websites, mobile applications and emergency communications. In the absence of such a framework, accountability rests largely on goodwill.

Beyond legislation, Ethiopia has an opportunity to use its newly established Universal Access Fund, administered by the Ethiopian Communications Authority, to finance accessible digital centres, assistive devices, software, and skills-building programmes for persons with disabilities. As the country expands its digital public infrastructure, such as mobile money, e-government services, and digital identity systems, accessibility cannot remain an afterthought that is addressed only after systems are deployed.

What Telecom Operators Must Do
Based on CIPESA’s research, telecom operators need to prioritise accessibility by establishing an accessibility function at the senior management level, and embedding universal design into products and services from the earliest stages of development. As Karen Smit, Accessibility Lead at Vodacom Group, noted, many of the barriers experienced by persons with disabilities are created not by disability itself, but by how technologies, systems and environments are designed.

Operators also need procurement policies that require accessible handsets to be stocked across outlets, including in rural areas, alongside practical training for customer-facing staff on accessibility and assistive technologies. Regular user experience research with Disabled Persons Organisations (DPOs) should become standard practice rather than a one-off consultation exercise. As Vanhelleputte argued in his opening remarks, inclusion is not about designing for persons with disabilities, but designing with them.

One finding from CIPESA’s research still stands out. Several operators do not have reliable data on the number of customers with disabilities. Disaggregating customer data by disability status is a necessary foundation for any serious inclusion strategy.

Operators should also recognise that accessible design is good business. Captions, voice navigation and simplified interfaces benefit older users, people with low digital literacy and anyone navigating a screen in difficult conditions. Features initially developed for persons with disabilities, such as audiobooks and voice-based tools, have often become popular and proved beneficial to broader groups of users.

Safaricom Ethiopia can build on Vodacom’s accessibility initiatives in South Africa and Safaricom Kenya’s disability employment targets and digital skills programmes to move from commitments to measurable implementation. This includes conducting accessibility audits across retail outlets and digital platforms, improving accessibility across customer service channels, embedding accessibility into services such as M-PESA, and establishing sustained partnerships with DPOs to support ongoing user testing and co-design.

At the Addis conference, Vanhelleputte noted that accessible e-learning, telemedicine and mobile money can help bypass barriers that have historically excluded persons with disabilities from economic and social life.

According to Dr Wairagala Wakabi, the Executive Director of Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA), the next step for telecom operators is ensuring that these commitments are reflected in everyday customer experience, backed by clear targets, public reporting, and sustained engagement between telecom operators, regulators, government, civil society and organisations of persons with disabilities.

From Commitment to Action
Some civil society actors are doing their part through research, advocacy and sustained engagement. However, this is not a substitute for what regulators, governments and telecom operators are obliged to do through enforceable commitments, clear standards, and measurable implementation.

For Africa’s estimated 260 million persons with disabilities, digital inclusion must stop being a conference theme and start being a measurable reality. As governments digitise banking, identity systems, healthcare and public services, inaccessible digital infrastructure increasingly means exclusion from economic and civic life itself.

CIPESA will continue documenting these gaps, engaging stakeholders, and holding the sector to account until meaningful inclusion is achieved.

29May

Kenya Doesn’t Have an AI Regulation Gap, It Has an Accountability Gap

Author CIPESA Posted on

By Brian Byaruhanga |

Kenya was reported, in a recent global update, to hold the world’s highest rate of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools usage – 42.1% of surveyed internet-using adults. The figure has travelled quickly. It now adds to a familiar story: Kenya as Africa’s AI frontrunner, sprinting ahead of its regulatory infrastructure, in need of a comprehensive AI law to close the gap. While the claim might seem true, is the story built around it accurate?

The 42.1% does not measure Kenyan AI capability. It measures Kenyan consumption of AI built elsewhere. The chatbots – OpenAI’s GPT, Google’s Gemini, and Anthropic’s Claude – run on compute owned by foreign firms, are trained on data scraped without Kenyan consent, and are monetised in jurisdictions outside Kenya. To call this “adoption” is to mistake dependence for agency. The frontrunner framing flatters us into thinking Kenya is racing, yet, in reality, it is being driven.

Furthermore, AI-powered tools in current Kenyan usage are not only chatbots. They include algorithmic feeds – TikTok’s For You Page, Instagram’s Reels, X’s recommended timeline, YouTube’s autoplay, and Facebook’s News Feed, used by the country’s 18.4 million social media users. These algorithms shape the perception of information consumed by every Kenyan on social media. Most users do not experience or recognise these systems as AI. They experience them as the internet. That is the most pervasive form of AI adoption: Kenyans do not need to log into an AI chatbot to be governed by foreign machine-learning systems; they need only to scroll.

In 2022, a Mozilla investigation by Odanga Madung showed how TikTok’s For You Page algorithm boosted election disinformation in Kenya far beyond the reach of any individual post – proof that recommender systems are themselves political infrastructure. The 2025 State of Internet Freedom in Africa report flags this issue, directly pointing out that algorithmic recommendations, content curation, and automated moderation “profoundly affect how citizens access news, engage politically, and mobilise digitally.” Yet, this usage is not factored in as part of the 42.1%, and neither does the recently proposed Kenya AI Bill 2026 provide an oversight or regulatory mechanism to address the potential harms.

This is where Kenya’s emerging AI governance architecture, as outlined in the Bill, the National AI Strategy, and the regulation-versus-innovation commentary that frames them, falls short. In treating AI as a commodity, Kenya is integrating – a thing to be permitted, audited, and made fair. But the labour that trains these systems is Kenyan: the data annotators in Nairobi’s outsourcing centres, the moderators who absorbed the worst of OpenAI’s training data for less than two dollars an hour, and the gig workers whose human feedback shapes what foreign models call “alignment”. That extraction predates the 42.1% figure and, in many ways, produces it, yet safeguarding the risks to these workers has not been prioritised.

In June 2024, during the #RejectFinanceBill protests, Kenya experienced a nationwide internet disruption that the Communications Authority denied it planned, which telecoms attributed to undersea cable cuts, and that NetBlocks and Cloudflare confirmed. The Kenya National Commission on Human Rights subsequently documented at least 82 abductions and enforced disappearances of digital organisers. These events were routinely framed as exceptions, an unfortunate moment of overreach.

The internet disruptions and the abductions were not just exceptions. They were fundamental to the design of Kenya’s executive-security-telecoms nexus, i.e., the Interior and ICT ministries, the Communications Authority, the National Intelligence Service, the National Cyber Crimes Coordination Committee (NC4), the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI), and some licensed mobile operators and internet service providers (ISPs) acting in concert as a single discretionary instrument of the state. An apparatus that can track and disappear activists and protestors, deny a shutdown that it instituted, is the same apparatus that will play a key role in determining what AI deployments are permitted and how citizens can use it safely.

The same Communications Authority that suspended Telegram sits inside the country’s AI governance ecosystem. The same security apparatus that disappeared activists is responsible for the biometric surveillance systems that the National AI Strategy declines to prohibit. These institutions will oversee the enforcement of any AI law passed in 2026. A regulatory framework that does not address the behaviour of its enforcers is flawed.

Another shortfall is the plea in nearly all Kenyan AI discourse: to “balance innovation and regulation”. Innovation in Kenya is not endangered by regulation. It is endangered by foreign capital concentration, undersea cable bottlenecks, and the migration of local talent to international firms. Far from being a hindrance, regulation is a vital tool for oversight and asserting sovereignty. Instead of weighing regulation against innovation, the focus should be on the tension between sovereignty and access – two areas currently dominated by the same powerful interests and left unprotected by frameworks that fail to identify extraction for what it truly is.

What, then, does honest governance look like?

AI Governance for Kenya and Africa as a whole should look like a gate, a pre-deployment review mechanism where data access is a privilege earned through evidence rather than a courtesy extended in advance. The non-negotiable is an independent authority with the power to halt or redesign deployment when non-compliance is found. Not advised. This should apply as much to recommender systems already operating inside Kenya as to new models entering the market. An AI law that cannot reach the algorithmic curation layer of TikTok, Meta, and X has already exempted the largest category of AI affecting Kenyans. The current draft of the AI Bill fails to establish such authority.

While apprehensions regarding censorship, over-regulation and enforcement capacity are valid, the lack of a halt mechanism remains a more critical flaw. Although the draft National AI Strategy mentions governance, it fails to identify the ultimate decision-maker. Until that authority is clearly defined, Kenyans are merely debating form rather than addressing the core substance.

Kenya does not have an AI regulation gap. It has an accountability gap, and AI is the new vector through which that gap widens. The proper question is not ‘How do we govern AI?’ but ‘How do we govern the institutions that will govern AI?’ A “human-centred design” is not a complete answer. The answer begins by rejecting the frontrunner story, naming the extraction, tying the June 2024 shutdown to the architecture rather than the cable, and reserving the word ‘sovereignty’ for governance that can actually halt an AI deployment when the evidence requires it. Ultimately, introducing new AI laws into a system that already lacks institutional checks and balances will not protect citizens; rather, AI will just become a new vector through which state overreach expands unchecked.

22May

Zimbabwe’s National AI Strategy: Policy Lessons for Africa

Author CIPESA Posted on

By Edrine Wanyama |

Zimbabwe recently adopted its National Artificial Intelligence (AI) Strategy 2026–2030 (AI strategy)  to guide digital technology and transformation in the country. The strategy aims to accelerate development, enhance industrialisation, and improve service delivery in sectors such as health, finance, agriculture, education and public administration. The strategy emphasises building local data infrastructure as opposed to relying on foreign data storage infrastructure while promoting an AI governance approach grounded in Ubuntu, human rights, accountability, transparency and inclusivity.

However, an important question is whether Zimbabwe’s approach offers useful lessons for other African countries developing national AI strategies.

Lessons for Other African Countries

The country’s AI strategy is organised around six pillars that together map a practical path for AI adoption and deployment. First, AI talent and capacity development is essential for ensuring that institutions have the skills needed to implement AI effectively. Second, AI infrastructure and computational sovereignty are necessary for ensuring digital and data sovereignty. Third, AI adoption and service transformation are critical for supporting the integration of AI across public and private sectors to improve their productivity, accountability and transparency.

The fourth pillar, AI governance, ethics and regulation, is essential for building public trust and creating a framework that supports responsible innovation. The fifth pillar, AI research, development, and innovation, can drive investments, expand knowledge production and strengthen academic output. The sixth pillar, strategic international collaboration, presents an opportunity for global partnerships with key players and stakeholders, technology exchange, and potentially greater investment.  

Consequently, these pillars offer useful lessons for other countries seeking to harness AI for socio-economic transformation while protecting data rights and data sovereignty.

Alignment with the African Union (AU) AI Strategy

Zimbabwe’s AI Strategy reflects several priorities contained in the AU Continental Artificial Intelligence Strategy, particularly the emphasis on coordinated AI governance, digital sovereignty, and sectoral innovation. Zimbabwe’s strategy aims to harmonise the deployment and use of AI across sectors such as health, finance, agriculture, education and public administration through common governance benchmarks for AI governance. If implemented effectively, these goals could help to address digital neo-colonialism, an issue that has been dominant in Africa’s technological space.

The Strategy also places strong emphasis on AI as a tool for socio-economic development, aligning with Agenda 2063 and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly in sectors such as health, agriculture, and education. The Strategy promotes the deployment of AI to improve agriculture through crop disease prevention, as well as mining and mineral development, which is consistent with the AU AI strategy’s priorities on resource optimisation and climate resilience.

However, Zimbabwe faces significant governance and implementation challenges. The country scored 0 in the 2024 Global Index on Responsible AI Governance, highlighting the gap between policy ambition and institutional readiness. This means it requires major actions to implement the strategy, such as the establishment of robust legal safeguards, accountability mechanisms, oversight institutions, and rights-based governance frameworks, which are also emphasised within the AU strategy.  Other African countries can draw lessons from Zimbabwe’s approach, such as the need to complement AI strategies with stronger governance capacity, clearer regulatory safeguards, and more coherent data governance frameworks to support responsible and accountable AI deployment.

UNESCO Guidance on AI

The UNESCO Recommendations on Ethics of Artificial Intelligence, adopted in 2021, is a global normative framework that promotes human rights, including human dignity, transparency, fairness, human oversight in AI systems, and democratic participation. It also provides practical policy action areas covering issues such as data governance, gender, education and research, health, and social wellbeing.

While the UNESCO Guidance is emphatic on ethical and privacy considerations, Zimbabwe’s strategy falls short. Ambitions to integrate AI into public service delivery sectors such as education, health, and public administration will require stronger safeguards to ensure alignment with the human-centric principles articulated in the UNESCO framework. In the age of AI, data security concerns, intellectual property rights, algorithmic bias, and institutional accountability are central to responsible deployment of AI and require clearer policy and regulatory attention.

Similarly, the UNESCO Guidance warns against the use of AI in a manner that undermines democratic participation, civic engagement, and collective decision-making. This is especially important in contexts where surveillance technologies such as facial recognition, drone monitoring, communication tracking, and social media surveillance are deployed without clear safeguards or independent oversight. Zimbabwe, like several other African countries, has invested in AI-enabled infrastructures, such as the “smart city” systems to monitor and surveil citizens in ways that are opaque and lack clear accountability mechanisms.

As African countries continue developing national AI strategies and governance frameworks, they must strive to ensure that the deployment of AI is transparent, publicly accountable, and pays close attention to ethical and human rights standards. Without these safeguards, AI risks reinforcing exclusion, surveillance, and digital authoritarianism rather than advancing development.

Conclusion

Zimbabwe’s adoption of an AI Strategy is an important step toward advancing tech-enabled digital and socio-economic transformation. It also reflects the country’s intent to align national priorities with the African Union’s vision for AI-driven development across the entire continent. However, for such strategies to be effective and legitimate, they must be grounded in ethical and human rights standards laid down in regional and international benchmarks.

14May

Rethinking Platform Design and Accountability to Combat TFGBV in Africa

Author CIPESA Posted on

By Alice Aparo |

Africa’s rapid digitalisation, spanning e-commerce, online services, and digital infrastructure, has been accompanied by a persistent rise of Technology-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence (TFGBV). African women and girls are exposed to several forms of TFGBV, including online harassment, algorithmic discrimination, and deepfakes that prevent equal participation in online spaces.

To commemorate this year’s International Women’s Day, the Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA) convened a webinar themed Advancing platform accountability for women’s online safety in Africa to discuss efforts to enhance women’s online safety and hold digital platforms accountable.

A key insight from the discussion was that the rise of TFGBV in Africa is amplified by platform design, limited legal enforcement, weak moderation of content by digital platforms, and a poor system for reporting abuse and harmful content. The low levels of digital literacy, poor redress and appeals mechanisms, and lack of awareness among policymakers were also cited. Many of those who experience online abuse struggle to obtain justice and, in most cases, turn to self-censorship instead. This ultimately shrinks women’s voices in public discourse.

Further, online harm is often misframed as an individual responsibility, whereas it is largely enabled by platform design features such as anonymity and algorithm-driven content amplification that support harmful behaviour and accelerate the spread of harmful content. In her remarks, Barbra Okafor, founder and Lead Strategist at The Agency Lab, said major digital platforms prioritise “profit and scale over user safety”, adding that features like reposting and seamless sharing are built for viral amplification, not user protection.

Okafor added that when content that qualifies as harassment is posted, algorithms interpret the resulting engagement as “interest” and accelerate the distribution of the abuse rather than introducing safeguards. She described these platforms as “mini-gods” that have assumed regulatory power without corresponding accountability, making online user safety secondary to profit.

Gaps in content moderation, the limited inclusion of African linguistic expertise, and weaknesses in platform design and legal frameworks raise serious concerns about technology companies’ capacity to respond to harmful content in a timely and context-sensitive manner.

The increasing reliance on Artificial Intelligence (AI) for content moderation, yet it is largely trained on Western datasets, means it continues to struggle to detect harassment expressed in African languages or to interpret culturally specific slurs. This leaves women participating in public discourse exposed to unchecked, gendered insults and coordinated digital attacks.  

While AI-based features such as deepfake detection, content filters, and automated tools such as Safety Mode and Limits exist, their effectiveness is uneven across African contexts. These measures are further constrained by structural challenges, including limited investment in local content moderation and weak legal enforcement systems.

Marie-Simone Kadurira, an independent feminist researcher and panelist, noted that digital violence often mirrors and amplifies offline abuse, reinforcing patriarchal norms through technology. This perpetuates existing gender power imbalances and harmful social norms. She added that African women, particularly those in public-facing roles such as journalism, activism, or politics, face heightened, systemic harassment.

Despite the existence of cybersecurity and data protection laws in many African countries supported by regional instruments such as the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) Resolutions on developing Guidelines to assist States monitor technology companies in respect of their duty to maintain information integrity through independent fact-checking (ACHPR/Res. 630 (LXXXII) 2025) and the Resolution on the protection of women against digital violence in Africa (ACHPR/Res. 522 (LXXII) 2022) – addressing TFGBV remains a persistent problem across the continent. The two resolutions emphasise the obligation of African states to protect individuals, particularly women and girls, from digital harms, including online harassment, cyberstalking, non-consensual sharing of intimate images, and other forms of abuse.

Dr. Abudu Sallam Waiswa, Head Litigation, Prosecution and Legal Advisory at the Uganda Communications Commission (UCC), said effective legal enforcement remains challenging because most major platforms, such as Meta, Google, and X, are neither based nor registered on the African continent. This creates significant jurisdictional gaps that hinder thorough investigations and accountability.

Several recommendations emerged at the discussion:

  1. Platforms must hire and train African local content moderators with linguistic and cultural expertise across African contexts.
  2. Governments must shift from reactive legislation to forward-looking, preventive frameworks. This includes mandating that platforms provide transparency on their algorithmic moderation and establishing a local physical presence to facilitate legal accountability.
  3. Civil society and policymakers need to deepen their understanding of how algorithmic systems work in order to effectively monitor and govern them.
  4. Fund women’s rights organisations to continue to provide survivor support, document abuse, advocate for policy reform, and hold both governments and tech companies accountable in the fight against TFGBV.
  5. Strengthen the ability of users to recognise, respond to, and recover from online harm.
12May

 How the WHO Digital Health Strategy Should Govern Data, AI and Digital Public Infrastructure

Author CIPESA Posted on

By Raylenne Kambua |

As the World Health Organization (WHO) develops the Global Digital Health Strategy for 2028–2033, the Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA) has submitted recommendations urging that the strategy be anchored on human rights, equity, and accountability, alongside technological innovation. 

Across Africa, Artificial Intelligence (AI), telemedicine, disease surveillance systems, and automated diagnostic systems are transforming healthcare delivery. However, CIPESA pointed out in the submission to the WHO Regional Office for Africa that technological innovation without proper governance can worsen exclusion, undermine privacy protections, and reinforce inequalities in healthcare delivery.

The submission comes at a time when key global and regional digital health governance frameworks are being reshaped. Last year, the World Health Assembly extended the Global Strategy on Digital Health 2020–2025, and simultaneously mandated a successor framework to be completed in 2027. 

Furthermore, global initiatives such as the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) and the Global Digital Compact emphasise that digital transformation must integrate the Sustainable Development Goals and ensure inclusive development.

At the continental level, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) has rolled out the Africa CDC Digital Transformation Strategy which alongside the  African Union (AU) Data Policy Framework advances interoperability, transparency, privacy, and the ethical deployment of digital systems in the health sector. However, CIPESA notes that despite these commitments, implementation gaps remain significant, particularly regarding health data governance, accountability, and protection against algorithmic harm.

CIPESA’s work on health data governance in Uganda, patient data privacy in Ghana, Rwanda, and Uganda, and analysis of Kenya’s Digital Health Act, point to the same reality. The rules governing who controls health data, who is included in digital health systems, and who is held accountable when data is mishandled are still weak across most of the continent.

“As countries embrace AI, digital public infrastructure, and data-driven healthcare systems, the real test will be whether these technologies strengthen confidence in public health systems or deepen concerns about exclusion, surveillance, and the misuse of personal data,” said CIPESA Executive Director Dr. Wairagala Wakabi.

He added: “Trustworthy digital health systems require transparent digital infrastructure, accountable AI systems, and strong data protection safeguards. Africa has the chance to shape a digital health governance model that is innovative, inclusive, and based on the public interest and human dignity.”

CIPESA’s Core Positions and Recommendations

Digital health offers significant potential to enhance Universal Health Coverage and strengthen health systems across Africa. However, without governance anchored in rights, equity, inclusion, and accountability, this promise will remain unfulfilled. It is against this backdrop that CIPESA submitted the following recommendations:

1. Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI)

Digital health infrastructure should be open, interoperable, transparent, and rights-respecting, with safeguards to prevent exclusion and misuse of shared systems.

    2. Health Data Governance

    Most African countries lack specific laws that govern health data. Countries should therefore establish clear legal frameworks governing health data, including informed and meaningful patient consent, limits on data sharing, independent oversight mechanisms, and enforceable accountability structures.

    3. Artificial Intelligence (AI)

    CIPESA warns that most AI systems used in healthcare are trained on non-African datasets, which increases the risk of inaccurate diagnoses and exclusion. The submission recommends that AI tools and systems should be tested and validated in Africa, and include mandatory “explainability” standards so that health professionals understand how the AI reaches conclusions, and safeguards against bias in clinical decision-making tools.

    4. Interoperability

    Many digital health tools are isolated across countries and institutions, meaning they can not share data with each other. In this light, CIPESA recommends the adoption of national interoperability standards, including the WHO SMART Guidelines, to ensure secure and efficient health data exchange. Also, all digital health vendors should adhere to interoperability standards and the utilisation of shared infrastructure.

    5. Equity and Inclusion

    The digital divide continues to expand in most African countries and limits access to digital health services. CIPESA recommends conducting “equity impact assessments” before launching new systems, continued availability of offline options, and supporting digital literacy initiatives.

    6. Stronger Governance

    CIPESA holds that technology fails without clear leadership and coordination between health and technology departments. Therefore, creating clear governance structures for accountability and embracing a multi-stakeholder approach in decision-making processes are vital for resilient health systems. Other recommendations are the publication of institutional AI and digital health use policies and mandatory human rights impact assessments for high-risk systems.

    7. Sustainable Financing

    Many digital health initiatives rely on short-term donor funding, resulting in countries being dependent and unable to scale such programmes. Additionally, gaps in workforce capacity constrain implementation. CIPESA urges governments to invest in domestic financing of digital health systems and training of health and technical personnel.

    In conclusion, CIPESA’s submission emphasises that while digital technologies offer significant opportunities to strengthen health systems and improve service delivery, without strong safeguards, digital health risks reproducing and scaling existing inequalities in new, technologically mediated forms. A rights-based, inclusive, and accountable approach is therefore essential to ensure that Africa’s digital health future is not only innovative, but also equitable and just.

    Read the full submission here.

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