Africa is advancing AI-driven disease modelling by aligning innovators, public-health leaders, and funders around decision-ready use cases.
At WHO Hub in Dakar (6-8 August 2025), the focus was turning promising AI methods into trustworthy tools for burden-of-disease estimation and infectious-disease surveillance, while lowering the barrier to modelling across low and middle income settings.
Led by WHO/AFRO and the Gates Foundation together with Africa CDC, national public-health institutes, leading universities, and technology partners, the convening prioritized practical, high-impact applications.
The University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM) DHIS2 Kab, represented by Simon Machera and Vincent Minde, contributed to use-case prioritization, co-design sprints, and integration discussions, alongside demonstrations such as Google’s cholera-modelling work and a funder’s panel aligning investment to needs.
The approach emphasized governance and ethics (including data sovereignity), standards-based and interoperable multi-source integration (genomics, epidemiological/clinical, and environmental data), and equitable partnerships to scale.
Agreed next steps include co-design with Google Research, advancing HIE interoperability evaluation with Africa CDC, establishing research links with Uganda collaborators, and a forthcoming closed Gates Foundation RFP for institutions engaged at Dakar.