Africa CDC, member states advance framework for Behavioural Intelligence in Public Health
By Ojoma Akor
The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), African Union Member States, and technical partners have advanced efforts to establish a harmonized continental framework for using behavioral, social, community, and information-environment evidence to guide public health decisions across Africa.
The initiative, known as Behavioral Intelligence and Infodemic Management (BIIM), is designed to help countries move beyond collecting data and signals to systematically turning them into decision-ready intelligence and public health action.
The development followed a five-day technical engagement in Mombasa, Kenya, held from August 30 to September 3, 2026, bringing together public health leaders and technical experts from Burundi, Ghana, Kenya, Mauritania, Sierra Leone and Zimbabwe, as well as representatives of the ECOWAS Regional Center for Surveillance and Disease Control (RCSDC), WHO’s Africa Infodemic Response Alliance and other partners.
From fragmented signals to actionable intelligence
Africa CDC said the initiative responds to a longstanding challenge facing public health systems: the problem is often not a lack of data, but the fragmentation of behavioral, social, community and information-related evidence across programs and institutions.
BIIM is intended to integrate and triangulate multiple evidence sources, including community feedback, social listening, behavioral and social data, service-delivery and program information, rapid research and information-environment signals, and translate them into intelligence that can inform decisions.
The continental approach is built around the principle that Member States own BIIM, Africa CDC provides continental stewardship, while partners and funders support implementation.
Africa CDC highlighted that BIIM is not intended to create another database, digital platform or parallel reporting mechanism.
It connects existing national capabilities and evidence systems and establishes common continental standards for quality, governance, interoperability, and shared learning.
Kenya’s Principal Secretary in the Ministry of Health, Mary Muthoni Muriuki, emphasized the importance of national ownership, saying the initiative should strengthen existing national systems rather than establish a parallel structure.
She also agreed to champion BIIM across Africa, aiming to strengthen Member State leadership and political engagement around its institutionalization.
Linking intelligence to action
A key focus of the Mombasa meeting was developing a clear pathway for turning signals into public health decisions and action.
The proposed architecture follows a sequence from priority questions to signals, integration and triangulation, interpretation and diagnosis, prioritization, decision-ready intelligence, decision, action, tracking and learning.
Under the approach, a community concern, rumor, survey finding, service-delivery problem or social-media trend is treated as a signal. It becomes intelligence when it is verified, combined with other evidence, interpreted within its behavioral and public health context, prioritized and translated into recommendations for decision-makers.
Africa CDC said the system could support a range of public health priorities, including emergency preparedness and response, immunization, primary healthcare, community trust and service uptake.
Dr Lul Pout Riek, Special Representative of the Director General for the Eastern Africa Regional Coordinating Center at Africa CDC, said BIIM’s success would ultimately depend on its institutionalization.
“The technical architecture is important, but institutionalization is the real test,” Riek said, stressing that behavioral intelligence must become part of routine public health decision-making.
Dr Priscilla Madzinga-Kusena, Head of Social and Behavior Change and Advocacy at Africa CDC, said the continent’s challenge was less about generating information and more about connecting fragmented evidence to decisions.
“Africa does not have a shortage of data or signals,” she said, adding that BIIM would provide an architecture for integrating behavioral, social, community, information-environment, program and service evidence.
She said the ultimate test would be whether intelligence reached the appropriate decision-maker, triggered action, and generated learning from that action.
The framework brings together existing behavioral evidence and measurement approaches with community intelligence, program monitoring, service-delivery information, rapid research, and information-environment evidence, without creating separate intelligence streams.
Countries to determine how BIIM is implemented
The Mombasa process placed Member States at the center of the emerging continental framework.
Country delegations assessed the proposed architecture against their national realities and identified institutional, governance, workforce, digital, data and financing requirements for implementation.
The process also established that continental harmonization would not require countries to adopt identical institutional arrangements or technologies.
Instead, common minimum functions and standards would provide continental coherence, while Member States retain flexibility in how they institutionalize BIIM within their health systems.
Mme Ouhaida Alioune of Mauritania’s Ministry of Health said the approach allowed countries to shape the continental model using their own national experiences while retaining flexibility over implementation.
ECOWAS backs regional coordination
Regional institutions and technical partners are expected to support implementation by strengthening capacity, sharing peer learning, exchanging cross-border intelligence, and aligning existing investments.
The participation of the ECOWAS RCSDC and WHO/AIRA allowed the process to build on existing regional investments in social listening, infodemic management, community intelligence, and digital systems, rather than creating duplicative structures.
Patrick Lansana, Vice President of the ECOWAS RCCE Network, said the regional body welcomed the framework as a step towards a harmonized intelligence-to-action approach across Africa.
He stressed that harmonization should build on functional country systems while preserving Member States’ ownership of their data and operational tools.
From framework to implementation
The Mombasa engagement marks a transition from developing and harmonizing the BIIM framework to institutionalization and implementation.
The proposed roadmap provides a phased approach through which Member States can establish minimum capabilities, apply BIIM to priority public health challenges, integrate the function into routine national systems, and progressively strengthen governance, workforce, technology, interoperability, and sustainable financing.
Immediate priorities include consolidating the Continental BIIM package, supporting countries in defining national institutionalization pathways, identifying priority public health applications, strengthening regional coordination, and aligning technical and financial support with country-defined priorities.
The long-term ambition, Africa CDC said, is not to establish a single continental database or technology platform, but to create an interconnected African public health intelligence capability.
Under the proposed model, countries would generate, own, and use behavioral intelligence nationally while benefiting from regional coordination, common standards, and continental learning.
The emerging framework is therefore anchored on four principles: national ownership, regional coordination, continental coherence, and intelligence-to-action.
BIIM is ultimately intended to strengthen African public health institutions’ ability to understand how communities respond to health threats, identify emerging information and behavioral risks, and use that intelligence to design and adapt interventions.
The initiative positions behavioral intelligence not as a stand-alone data project, but as a public health capability embedded within national systems and connected across the continent.
During the meeting, participants reviewed and validated key components of the emerging Continental BIIM package, including a framework, strategy, digital and data architecture, and a roadmap for institutionalization and implementation.
