Africa’s push to use artificial intelligence to close long-standing healthcare gaps received a major boost this week after the Gates Foundation and OpenAI unveiled a $50 million partnership aimed squarely at strengthening health systems across the continent.
Announced on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, the initiative dubbed Horizon1000 will begin in Rwanda before expanding to other African countries, with the goal of reaching 1,000 primary healthcare clinics and surrounding communities by 2028.
The programme comes at a time when many African governments are grappling with shrinking international aid budgets and deep shortages of healthcare workers.
Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft and one of the world’s most influential technology philanthropists, said artificial intelligence could help African countries protect health gains made over the past two decades.
“In poorer countries with enormous health worker shortages and lack of health systems infrastructure, AI can be a game-changer in expanding access to quality care,” Gates wrote in a blog post published yesterday announcing the partnership.
Speaking to Reuters in Davos, Gates warned that recent cuts to global aid had already contributed to the first rise in preventable child deaths this century.
“Using innovation, using AI, I think we can get back on track,” he said.
The Microsoft co-founder added that his priority was ensuring “that revolution will at least happen in the poor countries as quickly as it happens in the rich countries.”
Under Horizon1000, AI tools will be deployed to support frontline health workers rather than replace them, helping with clinical decision support, patient triage, record-keeping and multilingual communication, areas that often overwhelm overstretched clinics.
Rwanda’s minister of ICT and innovation, Paula Ingabire, said the focus would be on practical impact. “It is about using AI responsibly to reduce the burden on healthcare workers, to improve the quality of care, and to reach more patients,” she said.
Gates is no stranger to Africa’s development landscape. Through the Gates Foundation, he has spent more than two decades funding and championing initiatives in vaccines, HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis and maternal and child health across sub-Saharan Africa.
The foundation has backed Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, supported polio eradication campaigns, invested heavily in malaria research, and funded digital health systems and agricultural innovation programmes aimed at smallholder farmers.
In his blog post, Gates reiterated that closing the innovation gap remains central to his Africa strategy. “People in poorer parts of the world shouldn’t have to wait decades for new technologies to reach them,” he wrote.
For African health systems under pressure, Horizon1000 signals a growing belief that AI, if deployed responsibly, could become a critical tool in delivering care across the continent.
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