Governments, development partners, funders, innovators and healthcare organisations have made 10 major commitments to accelerate digital health transformation and strengthen health systems across Africa.

The commitments were announced at the conclusion of the Insights Learning Forum (ILF) 2026, which was held in Abuja from July 28 to 29 and brought together more than 400 delegates under the theme, “Insights. Partnerships. Inclusion. Interoperability. Investment.”

Hosted by eHealth Africa and the Dala Africa Group, the two-day forum moved beyond discussions of the challenges facing digital health to focus on practical actions, investments and partnerships capable of delivering measurable improvements across African health systems.

A key feature of the forum was the Commitment Session, through which participating governments, development partners, funders, healthcare providers, innovators, youth leaders and implementing organisations pledged to take concrete steps towards advancing digital health.

Unlike conventional conference declarations, the commitments are expected to be reviewed at future editions of the forum, creating a framework for tracking what was promised, what was delivered and what lessons emerged from implementation.

The commitments cover several areas considered critical to strengthening healthcare delivery across the continent. These include increasing financing for scalable health innovations, improving the quality of primary healthcare, advancing maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health, supporting women-led enterprises and expanding access to quality healthcare.

Participants also committed to promoting ethical health data sharing and interoperable digital health systems, while strengthening Africa’s innovation ecosystem through locally led partnerships, support for entrepreneurs and young innovators, knowledge sharing and efforts to reduce fragmentation across digital health initiatives.

The Coordinating Minister of Health, represented at the event by the Director-General of the National Institute for Pharmaceutical Research and Development, Dr Obi Adigwe, said the work being undertaken by organisations such as eHealth Africa demonstrated the importance of collaboration in strengthening Nigeria’s health system.

“Our focus now is to build on this momentum by fostering stronger partnerships, accelerating innovation and creating an ecosystem where digital health solutions can thrive and deliver lasting impact,” he said.

The Minister of State for Health and Social Welfare, Dr Iziaq Adekunle Salako, also reaffirmed the Federal Government’s commitment to developing resilient and digitally enabled health systems.

Salako said Nigeria and other African countries needed to move beyond isolated pilot projects and fragmented interventions towards integrated systems capable of delivering measurable results.

“Innovation is the engine of transformation, and digital health is its nervous system,” he said.

Dr Muntaqa Umar-Sadiq, National Coordinator of the Sector-Wide Approach Coordination Office, said sustainable health system transformation could not be achieved through isolated projects.

He stressed the importance of strong institutions capable of coordinating investments, aligning partners and ensuring accountability.

“The future of healthcare depends on our ability to move from fragmented interventions to coordinated action,” Umar-Sadiq said.

The Executive Director of the National Primary Health Care Development Agency, Muyi Aina, similarly said investment alone would not be sufficient to strengthen healthcare systems.

He called for greater collaboration among government, the private sector, development partners and communities, alongside the effective use of data to improve health outcomes.

“By bringing together government, the private sector, development partners and communities, and by using data to generate actionable insights, we can build more responsive, inclusive and resilient health systems that reach everyone, including those in the most underserved communities,” Aina said.

For Atef Fawaz, Executive Director of eHealth Africa, the forum was established to provide a platform through which governments, development partners, innovators, researchers and implementers could collaborate on common health challenges.

He said the organisation wanted African countries to look beyond national boundaries and work together to develop solutions that could be applied across the continent.

“Our goal is not simply to make commitments, but to track them. Each year, we intend to review what was promised, what was achieved, what worked, what did not, and what lessons can be carried forward,” Fawaz said.

Jean Philbert Nsengimana, Chairman of the Africa HealthTech Summit and Chair of the Africa Digital Health Network, said stronger continental integration would be essential to unlocking the potential of digital innovation in Africa.

He identified donor dependency, fragmentation and limited pathways for integrating innovations into public health delivery systems as some of the challenges that must be addressed.

“Integration is important to realise the full potential of innovation on our continent,” Nsengimana said, calling for infrastructure that would enable African startups and founders to scale more rapidly.

The Director of Partnerships and Programmes at eHealth Africa, Ota Akhigbe, said the forum was deliberately structured to convert dialogue into coordinated action.

“Partnerships are central to everything we do at eHealth Africa, and they are equally central to the vision of the Insights Learning Forum,” she said.

Akhigbe said the Commitment Session reflected the forum’s emphasis on meaningful and measurable action rather than the volume of pledges made by participants.

“We are focused on quality rather than quantity,” she said, adding that aligning stakeholders with appropriate investments and resources could create the conditions for lasting impact.

The commitments emerging from ILF 2026 therefore represent an attempt to establish a more accountable approach to digital health transformation in Africa, with future reviews expected to provide an opportunity to assess progress and identify areas requiring further action.

For a continent where digital health initiatives have often developed in parallel rather than through coordinated systems, the emphasis on interoperability, local innovation, sustainable financing and measurable implementation could prove critical to turning individual projects into stronger and more connected health systems.