Digital Public Infrastructure for Health Security: Operationalising One Health in Africa
@GIZ
Across Sub-Saharan Africa, the spread of infectious diseases is accelerating under the combined pressures of climate change, urbanisation, ecosystem degradation and other factors. Between 2001 and 2022, the region experienced more than 1,800 public health emergencies, a sharp increase compared to the previous decades (Moyo et al. 2023). The majority of these emergencies were driven by emerging infectious diseases, underscoring the region’s growing vulnerability to complex health threats. At the same time, zoonotic diseases—those transmitted from animals to humans—have surged. Outbreaks of Rift Valley Fever, Avian Influenza, COVID-19, Ebola, and other zoonoses have become increasingly frequent. Between 2012 and 2022 alone, zoonotic outbreaks in the region rose by 63 percent compared to the preceding decade (WHO Africa, 2022).
In an increasingly interconnected world, such threats don’t respect national borders or disciplinary silos. Yet, critical data required to effectively monitor, predict, and respond to these outbreaks often remains trapped in disparate institutions, sectors and countries. Data is often collected in isolated, incompatible systems, constrained by persistent concerns around data security, sovereignty, and ownership. Compounding these challenges, limited trust between stakeholders continues to undermine coordinated action.
GIZ’s One Health Data Alliance Africa (OHDAA) project, implemented on behalf of Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), has been focusing on addressing these systemic barriers to unlock the transformational potential of data for health security in Africa and by extension, the world. By demonstrating how diverse data sources can be integrated safely and responsibly, the project offers a practical pathway to generating actionable insights that protect communities, strengthen preparedness, and ultimately save lives.
Forging institutional partnerships for coordinated action
OHDAA’s One Digital Health approach recognizes that the wellbeing of humans is fundamentally interdependent with the wellbeing of domestic and wild animals and the environment. Ensuring the safety and wellbeing of humans, animals and our shared environment, requires collaboration and a trusted platform to facilitate such collaboration.
The project has been addressing these fundamental requirements by catalysing an inter-institutional partnership of regional and national partners including the African Union Inter-African Bureau for Animal Resources (AU-IBAR), Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), Regional Economic Communities such as Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), Smart Africa, national ministries and One Health institutions across Africa into an alliance that collaborates on critical One Health related use cases.
The project started with the policy phase and establishing joint “rules of the game” to create a basis for cooperation between the member states and institutions This was achieved by the development of the African Union Digital One Health Information Policy and Architecture, supported by OHDAA and co-created by an Intergovernmental technical expert group that represented all regions and AU member states. The document was endorsed by the African Union in November 2023 and published for use and adoption by the countries.
From Vision to Reality: African Union Digital One Health Platform
Once a foundational framework for cooperation between the member states and other One Health entities was put in place, the technical phase was initiated to demonstrate how multisectoral data could be exchanged securely in practice between agencies thus enabling its utilization for health security. Thus, the African Union Digital One Health Platform came into life.
The African Union Digital One Health Platform (AU DOHP) embodies member states’ and ministries’ call for interoperable, decentralized, and sovereign data management ecosystem. It provides an open-source technology-based framework that preserves national control over data while enabling streamlined integration and secure, well-governed cross-sectoral data sharing.
This technological innovation was borne out of close collaboration between international technology experts from Speedykom who translated the specific requirements of the African Union and member states into the functioning platform.
The AU DOHP utilizes the latest “data mesh” technology which so far has been mainly used in the private sector to manage data exchange between different departments. This technology has been redesigned for use for intersectoral and cross-country cooperation. With the “data mesh” architecture each country or institution maintains full control over its own data while facilitating the seamless flow of information based on digitalised data sharing contracts. Data contracts define which data is shared when, in which standard and with whom. By embedding governance principles directly into the technical architecture, the platform translates policy commitments on data protection, sovereignty and trust into operational reality. This governance-by-design approach is a defining feature of digital public infrastructure and reduces institutional and political risk in cross-sector collaboration.
The African Union Digital One Health Platform is a platform aimed at addressing serious gaps when it comes to the application and implementation of One Health. To implement One Health, you need to communicate, you need to share information, you need to coordinate. But how do you do this? You can only achieve this if you are able to integrate data from the three sectors of One Health
Prof. James Wabacha, Animal Health Expert at the AU Inter African Bureau for Animal Resources
The AU Digital One Health Platform has been widely recognised as a significant milestone in addressing the complexity of convening diverse stakeholders and operationalising the One Health approach through digital technologies. In recognition of this achievement, OHDAA received the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) Prize in 2025, awarded by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in the category of international cooperation projects, for its outstanding success in uniting multiple stakeholders to deliver practical digital One Health use cases.
Translating Trust, Data and Technology into Action: The Implementation of Use Cases
Using the platform as a technological layer to operationalize the One Health use case has been the next move for the OHDAA project. This is where theory becomes practice, by demonstrating the tangible value of cross-sectoral collaboration, data exchange and analytics for improved decision making. The focus centred first on high-priority national and regional use cases such as Cholera, zoonotic threats such as Rabies and Anthrax, as well as climate-sensitive vector-borne diseases such as malaria.
In Cameroon, Malawi and Rwanda the existing One Health governance structure, information systems and data platforms were assessed together with the relevant stakeholders. Based on these first assessments the countries identified priority use cases for data integration and modelling. Malawi focused on the integration of Rabies data from humans and animal sectors, Rwanda integrated wildlife data into their electronic Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response system while Cameroon deployed the AU DOHP fully as a national instance, bringing the Cameroonian One Health Information System (COHIS) to life. Under the leadership of the national zoonotic platform of Cameroon, it involved the critical exercise of dissolving the data walls between ministries that had long operated in isolation. Ministries worked together to map the flow of their respective data and developed a governance mechanism for the sharing of data. This resulted in the development of high-impact dashboards, designed around key disease threats such as Rabies, Malaria, antimicrobial resistance and Anthrax, providing specialized, data-driven insights that help authorities respond more effectively. Using the information from the dashboards, regular policy briefs are developed for the office of the Permanent Secretary.
In the words of Madam Elsa Dibongue, the Deputy Vice Secretary of Cameroon’s One Health Platform :
The objective (of working together) is to improve the decision-making process. For us, it is important in our system to have the data coming from the Ministry of Public Health and the Ministry of Livestock together so that we have a very good understanding of the burden of disease in Cameroon.
In the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) region, the ultimate cross-sectoral data source – satellite data – was leveraged. In the region, climate impacts on malaria were modelled using openly accessible satellite data generated under the Copernicus Program by the European Space Agency (ESA). By combining variables like rainfall, temperature, and vegetation cover with historical disease data, the project developed predictive tools to forecast outbreaks which has the potential to be scaled to other regions across the continent.
Data Spaces: A framework for multilateral partnerships
The OHDAA project has been demonstrating the transformative power of digitalisation by enabling African governments and institutions to overcome fragmentation, facilitate cross-sectoral and cross-border data sharing, and translate data into timely, coordinated action. With the AU Digital One Health Platform now operational and jointly steered by AU-IBAR and Africa CDC, the foundations are in place for a continental monitoring and early warning system that safeguards lives and livelihoods while fully respecting national data sovereignty. Anchored within African Union institutions and designed as an open and reusable architecture, the platform represents digital public infrastructure that can be scaled to allow additional countries, sectors and data sources to be integrated without rebuilding systems from scratch.
Beyond health security, the approach pioneered by OHDAA also offers a model for international collaboration for global and multilateral initiatives such as the AU, EU, WHO, FAO and others by making available interoperable data spaces that enable sovereign and differentiated data collaboration – from date sharing and integration to advanced analytics. This vision extends beyond outbreak response and public health decision-making, unlocking new opportunities for research, innovation, and economic value across sectors.
As OHDAA enters its next phase in 2026, the project will continue to scale, innovate, and expand with its various partners, positioning Africa as a leader in digital transformation while also providing a partnership model for knowledge and data sharing and utilization on the continent and beyond.
This article is part of a series on strengthening health security in Africa through The One Health approach. While this piece explored how digital infrastructure enables data-driven coordination, the next article focuses on the people behind these systems — and how building data and analytical capacities is key to translating information into action.
👉 Continue reading: The Digital Frontline – Africa’s One Health Champions
One Health Data Alliance Africa (OHDAA) Team
March 2026