“Locally tailored innovations are showing immense promise to yield benefits for healthcare in African and other low- and middle-income countries,” writes Friends of the Global Fight in its insights report stemming from a convening of African health supply-chain innovators discussing how supply chains can deliver equitable access to health.

Co-led by the Bay Area Global Health Alliance, the discussion on February 8, 2023 involved more than 80 global health stakeholders from multiple sectors. A number of challenges were identified, such as understanding unmet needs before developing solutions, harmonized and actionable data, surfacing data consumption at all levels, digital literacy and training, and financing. Opportunities for progress included grounding efforts in existing national government systems to ensure the greatest changes for scale, sustainability and equitable systems, driving a human-centered design approach to ensure innovations best serve the experiences of the people and communities we serve, and pooled and regionalized procurement.

The report, “Digitizing Healthcare Demand and Supply in Africa: A People-Centered Approach,” spotlights the chatbot technology from Nivi that is increasing access to healthcare in under-resourced communities. Thanks to Chevron for its partnership in these efforts.