Experts urge Nigeria to integrate AI across public health, governance

By Ojoma Akor

Nigeria could accelerate public health gains, cut costs and improve decision-making by integrating artificial intelligence (AI) across government and other sectors, experts have said.

The experts spoke at the fourth Annual Scientific Symposium of the International Research Center of Excellence (IRCE), Institute of Human Virology Nigeria (IHVN) in Abuja. The symposium was themed “Shaping the Future of Public Health Research: Sustainable Funding, AI/ML and Innovation.”

Renowned virologist Prof. Oyewale Tomori said Nigeria is making efforts to improve its health system but could achieve much better results by deploying AI more extensively.

Tomori said AI could enable government and researchers to process vast amounts of information, analyze data faster, and make better-informed decisions across multiple sectors.

“I think the program or the message is about using AI to do things better. We are making efforts, but not enough. We could do faster with AI and turn this country around much faster than what we do,” he said.

According to him, AI should not be restricted to disease surveillance, but should be deployed across government planning, budgeting and other areas that influence public health.

He explained that health outcomes were closely connected to developments in other sectors, including water supply, transportation, agriculture and education.

“If you give your people good water supply, then you reduce waterborne diseases. If you improve your roads, it means people can get quick access to services,” he said.

Tomori said AI’s ability to bring together information from different sectors could help government move away from working in silos and achieve better outcomes with available resources.

He said, “The Ministry of Agriculture is working on its own. Health is working on its own. Education is doing its own. But AI will bring all of this together because each of them is actually doing something for the good of this country.”

He added that such integration could save time and money while enabling government to maximize the impact of its investments.

The Executive Director of IRCE, IHVN, Prof. Alash’le Abimiku, said the symposium was designed to give researchers a platform to discuss how to respond to the twin challenges of declining or limited research funding and the rapid emergence of AI and machine-learning technologies.

She said researchers must examine not only the opportunities presented by AI but also the ethical safeguards, policies and data-governance frameworks required to ensure responsible use.

She said, “The scientific symposium here is to encourage individuals to really share what they’ve been doing in terms of the challenging times that we find ourselves in. One is that research funding is limited. The second is the fact that we have innovative tools that are available to most people — machine learning and artificial intelligence.”

She called for collaboration between researchers and government to develop policies governing data sharing and protecting national and community data.

Abimiku also urged Nigerian researchers to use their expertise and innovations to help the government understand AI’s implications for national sovereignty, public health, and citizen protection.

She highlighted that the growing availability of AI tools presented a major opportunity for young researchers, but stressed that technical knowledge alone was insufficient.

According to her, a hackathon held ahead of the symposium showed that young researchers had strong knowledge of AI tools but needed a deeper understanding of how to apply them to practical public health challenges.

She advocated closer collaboration between young and established researchers so that emerging technologies could be translated into solutions to Nigeria’s health problems.

Associate Professor of Infectious Diseases, Genomics and Epidemiology at Adeleke University, Dr. Kolawole Oladipo, said AI could also transform whole-genome sequencing (WGS) and accelerate the development of new health products.

He said combining AI with genomic data could support the development of biologics, therapeutics and diagnostic biomarkers.

“We Nigerians and Africa at large need to leverage AI for health and for the improvement of health in humanity,” Oladipo said.

However, he warned that Africa’s limited ownership of AI technologies and datasets remained a major challenge.

He said most existing AI systems were developed in Western countries using datasets that might not adequately represent African populations.

“The message we are preaching now is that we need African AI that is developed using African datasets and implemented by Africans, so that most of the results that we’ll be having from that AI will be tailored to the usage of the African population,” he said.

Oladipo further called for a national policy framework to regulate the use of AI in scientific research, particularly in genomics and other areas where the technology could create serious ethical and security risks.

He cited recent research demonstrating that AI could be used to generate novel viruses as evidence of the need for effective safeguards.

According to him, without appropriate regulation, individuals could conduct potentially dangerous experiments using AI-enabled technologies outside established scientific and regulatory systems.

The Director-General of the National Agency for the Control of AIDS (NACA), Dr. Temitope Ilori, said locally generated evidence was crucial to developing interventions capable of reaching Nigeria’s most vulnerable populations.

She said her agency was exploring AI to improve data analysis and health services, adding that lessons from the symposium could strengthen public health practice, particularly disease surveillance.

The experts therefore called for a coordinated national approach that combines investment in research, responsible AI governance, African-owned datasets and stronger collaboration between government, researchers and young innovators.

They said that with the right safeguards and investments, AI could help Nigeria move from fragmented, reactive public health approaches to faster, data-driven, and more integrated decision-making.