Experts call for local investment, digital innovation to fix Nigeria’s primary healthcare crisis

Health experts, policymakers, and private innovators have renewed calls for local investment and intentional digital innovation to address Nigeria’s long-standing primary healthcare crisis.

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The experts made the call at the third edition of the Insights Learning Forum (ILF) on Wednesday in Abuja.

Organised by eHealth Africa and its partners, the 2025 ILF spotlighted the urgent need for homegrown digital solutions, structured financing, and community-based health strategies that reflect Nigeria’s realities.

The event themed, “Local Investments for Connected Communities: The Power of Digital Health Networks in Public Health Transformation” captured the cross-sector consensus that meaningful change must begin at the local level and be driven by Nigerians.

In his opening remarks, Muntaqa Umar-Sadiq, the National Coordinator of the Sector-Wide Coordinating Office-Programme Management Unit (SCO-PMU) for the Nigeria Health Sector Renewal Investment Initiative (NHSRII), highlighted the urgency of leveraging data and innovation to strengthen health systems.

Mr Umar-Sadiq noted that Nigeria’s health priorities, particularly reducing maternal and newborn mortality, require scalable and locally owned digital solutions.

“The government has prioritised digital health as an important component of its one plan. In addition, we have stakeholders here today that are committed to a country owned, locally led solution using innovations in service delivery as well as digital in health,” he said.

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He added that the discussions on digital health will create the kind of consensus that defragment all the siloed digital in health initiatives that are ongoing in the country.

Host pushes for deeper collaboration

The Executive Director of eHealth Africa, Atif Fawaz, highlighted the evolution of the ILF from a small webinar to a growing regional forum.

Mr Fawaz described the event as a key platform for driving long-term partnerships between government and implementers, noting that formalising collaboration through instruments like tripartite agreements is essential to aligning vision with action.

“The government has the vision, the direction and us as implementing partners, we have the mandate to make this happen. Signing a tripartite agreement with the Kano State government just emphasises the role of every person or every entity in improving healthcare and improving the solution.

“The signing opens conversations and allows us to know what’s required and what we can do to help the government. So, this just makes everything more of a partnership rather than a client relationship. So this is a game changer for us.”

Speaking on Innovation and entrepreneurs, Mr Fawaz encouraged the young generation, especially young innovators, researchers to bring their ideas forward, noting that the innovation can be used not only in the e-commerce sector or in the private sector but also in the health sector.

He also called on the media to play a greater role in spotlighting health sector challenges and opportunities, urging more visibility for efforts that promote health equity.

“A healthy nation is a strong nation. So, we need to work more on health, so we have a stronger and healthier generation coming up. This is where I think the media’s turn will come to spotlight all of these things,” Mr Fawaz said.

State of PHCs in Nigeria

Primary Health Care system is the foundation of any effective health delivery services but most of the country’s over 30,000 primary health care centres are under-resourced, understaffed, or non-functional, especially in rural communities.

Despite primary health care accounting for nearly 75 per cent of citizens’ health needs, poor infrastructure, shortage and uneven distribution of healthcare professionals, lack of essential drugs and weak implementation of healthcare funding mechanisms have made the system fragile and inefficient.

Digital tools crucial for frontline care

Speaking on the sidelines of the event, Ifunaya Ilodibe, Chief Executive Officer and Chief Medical Officer at EHA Clinics, stressed the importance of investing in local communities to achieve health equity.

Ms Ilodibe noted that digital tools are no longer optional but essential for expanding healthcare access, especially in a country facing severe workforce shortages.

“Nigeria currently needs 237,000 doctors, and there are 35,000 of us. So digital health is not just a nice-to-have, It’s the only way to drive access. It is the only way to drive equity and the only way for us to guarantee some measure of quality within the healthcare service delivery in Nigeria,” she said.

She added that there’s a need to enhance the use of digital tools amongst community health extension workers who are the core of delivering healthcare in the communities.

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“The use of digital tools to drive access helps to improve healthcare outcomes, and also to drive policy changes within the government that empower these healthcare workers to continue to deliver quality care.”

Also speaking, Ota Akhigbe, Director of Partnerships and Programmes at eHealth Africa, challenged the idea that digital health is overly complex.

Ms Akhigbe noted that innovations such as electronic health records, digital logistics, and planning tools can dramatically increase efficiency in health systems when deployed intentionally.

She also stressed the importance of leadership, accountability, and sustained usage of locally developed tools in building health systems that last.

“We talk about using what we have, creating ideas locally that we can eventually export more efficiently. So, I think that is really what the focus is around here. Bringing our resources, bringing our insights, bringing our ideas to make sure that we’re heavily invested in the capacity that we have.

“Investing in our healthcare systems, investing and actually being intentional around budgeting for these healthcare items in our budgets and also even for private sector organisations investing a lot more in what we have here.”

Key to unlocking health equity

Delivering a spotlight presentation on innovation in primary healthcare, Francis Ohanyido, Founding Director General of the West African Institute of Public Health (WAIPH), highlighted the structural challenges facing Nigeria’s healthcare system, especially the chronic neglect of primary healthcare.

Mr Ohanyido noted that 75 per cent of the country’s healthcare needs lie at the primary healthcare level, yet most funding and infrastructure are disproportionately directed towards tertiary healthcare.

“Primary healthcare is not a level, it’s a process. If we make primary healthcare work, every other part of the system will work. But we’re still spending 75 per cent of our healthcare budget on tertiary care, building beautiful hospitals that don’t address the real needs,” he said.

He also pointed to success stories across Africa, including Rwanda and Ghana, where intentional government policies and digital integration have helped expand access to health insurance and community-based care.

He urged Nigerian policymakers and developers to leverage indigenous systems of social support like ‘Ajo’ and other communal models as blueprints for digital inclusion in healthcare financing.

He ended with a reminder that Africa’s health sector is a growing economic opportunity.

“By 2030, Africa’s healthcare market is projected to hit $16.6 billion. That’s where the goldmine is and this is not just in population, but in systems that actually work.”