African countries need to rethink how digital health systems are funded and developed if they are to have greater ownership of the systems they rely on, Minister of State for ICT and Innovation Yves Iradukunda has said. While speaking at the Africa HealthTech Summit in Kigali on Thursday, October 1, Iradukunda said health systems remain vulnerable because of dependence on external funding and procurement, calling on African countries, innovators, philanthropies and funders to consider how ownership of digital systems can be increased. ALSO READ: Govt moves ahead with data sharing platform to go live in 2026 “Our health systems have been vulnerable because of the challenge of ownership. I want to challenge us to think about what ownership means when we have effectively left the responsibility of funding and developing our own systems to others,” he said. Iradukunda noted that greater ownership should go hand in hand with cooperation between African countries, mainly when it comes to health data and research. He said having strong systems in one country would not be enough if countries cannot share data and work together. “Even if one country has all the best practices, they will not serve the broader needs of the continent. We need greater alignment of policies and systems across countries, and we welcome the efforts of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention to develop frameworks for data exchange. Regional blocs, including the East African Community, should continue working towards greater harmonisation,” Iradukunda said. In Rwanda, data governance involves several government institutions, the National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda holds data-governance custodianship, while the Ministry of ICT and Innovation has policy ownership and the Rwanda Information Society Authority oversees the infrastructure and platforms used for data sharing. He said chief digital officers in government ministries, supported by data professionals, help apply data governance within individual sectors. “It cannot be done only at the level of the Ministry of ICT and Innovation, it has to be decentralised in the sense that we have the national infrastructure and the frameworks, but ultimately, each sector is unique in how they can leverage this infrastructure.” He said health requires its own data-access frameworks, systems and ethical guidelines because of the nature of the information involved. Iradukunda said responsibility for data should run from the way it is collected and stored to how it is analysed and shared, with policymakers, regulators, researchers, academia and the private sector all having a part to play. He said health data should not be treated separately from information collected in other sectors. “We shouldn't look at health data in isolation. We need to look at data that enables better service delivery to our citizens because the same person may interact with health, agriculture, financial, education and transport systems. We need to consider how these systems work together,” he said. Rwanda approved its National Data Sharing Policy in May 2025 in a bid to provide a framework for data exchange between public institutions, while putting safeguards around privacy and access to restricted data. The country is working on a Shared Government Data Hub and a Data Interoperability Platform. According to RISA, the Data Hub is moving into implementation, with the existing Data Sharing Platform serving as an interim system for data governance, data discovery and access. Iradukunda said the wider infrastructure should support research and the use of technologies such as artificial intelligence, and ensure researchers can access data securely.
