Leveraging Digital Innovation to Advance Universal Health Coverage in Africa: Opportunities and Challenges

Universal health coverage (UHC) aims to ensure that all individuals can access essential health services without financial hardship and remains a central policy priority across Africa. Digital health innovations, including telemedicine, mobile health applications (mHealth), electronic health records (EHRs), artificial intelligence (AI), and digital financing tools, are increasingly promoted as pathways to expand access, improve efficiency, and address persistent health-system constraints. While these technologies offer important opportunities, their contribution to UHC is not automatic. This commentary argues that digital innovation advances UHC only when aligned with governance capacity, equity objectives, and economic sustainability, and may otherwise reinforce fragmentation and unequal access. Drawing on selected examples from African contexts, the paper examines the opportunities, systemic risks, and policy trade-offs associated with scaling digital health initiatives. It concludes by outlining priority policy considerations to ensure that digital transformation supports universal, rather than selective, health coverage across the continent.