Nigeria has taken a leading role in advancing a Pan-African initiative to consolidate and share clinical trials and health data.
This positions the country as a central hub for research collaboration across the continent.
African health researchers and policymakers convened in Abuja on Tuesday to discuss strategies for harmonising clinical trial data sharing across the continent.
The event was co-organised with the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, and the West African Network for Tuberculosis, AIDS and Malaria.
The researchers emphasised Nigeria’s central role in advancing health research in West Africa.
Scientific Lead of the One Health Consortium, Prof Assane Jaye, highlighted the importance of consolidating high-quality health data from across West Africa.
According to Jaye, this is to address emerging challenges such as multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, malaria drug resistance, and evolving HIV subtypes.
He said that the consortium had developed the Health Data Research Platform West Africa, which served as a repository for research data.
“This enables secondary analysis and fosters collaboration among scientists across the continent, ‘’ he said.
He stressed the need for a Pan-African approach to data governance, ensuring that African institutions control and utilise their data to improve health outcomes.
He also discussed the use of advanced technologies to interpret complex health data.
“Nigerian PhD students are applying artificial intelligence (AI) to TB diagnosis, analysing clinical variables including lung imaging.
‘’Also, language models are being leveraged to interpret broader clinical anomalies such as blood pressure irregularities.
“The work underscores how local capacity in AI and data analytics can enhance research productivity and disease management across the region,” the researcher said.
Prof. Dorothy Yeboah-Manu, a Ghanaian microbiologist and first female Director of the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research (NMIMR) at the University of Ghana, highlighted the critical role of women in clinical data collection.
Yeboah-Manu said that women were central to family health, providing accurate information for children, spouses, and elderly relatives, which made them indispensable in community-based research.
She emphasised the need to build more capacity for women scientists in Africa.
“One Health Consortium includes specialised training programmes for female researchers to strengthen clinical research leadership across the subregion,” she said.
Government representatives and partners from WAHO and Africa CDC affirmed the importance of data sharing for policy formulation.
They described the initiative as pivotal in consolidating fragmented clinical research data and enhancing collaboration between institutions.
Accessible, secure, and well-governed data is expected to strengthen institutional capacity, while guiding evidence-based health policies across Africa.
Prof. Toyin Togun, a Professor of Global Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, underscored Nigeria’s centrality in the initiative, citing its population size, diversity, and leadership in regional health organisations.
Togun highlighted the challenges of collecting and standardising data, ensuring its security, and maintaining quality to make it actionable.
He said that harmonised data allowed countries to avoid redundant clinical trials, optimise research resources, and ultimately improve health outcomes.
He also noted the planned Abuja Declaration, which will formalise commitments from researchers and institutions across more than 12 West African countries to enhance data excellence.
He, however, said that the contents of the declaration remained under wraps until the official release.
The gathering brought together ministries of health and international partners, including the West African Health Organisation and the Gates Foundation.
The workshop sought to strengthen collaboration among African researchers, explore approaches for an enabling data sharing ecosystem, and contribute to shaping a sustainable, Africa-led governance framework.
It also provided a platform to exchange experiences on data management and data sharing across the continent, while addressing existing cultural, technical, and institutional barriers.
The meeting also highlighted a shared commitment to building robust African research infrastructure, ensuring secure data governance, and empowering local scientists, particularly women, to lead in clinical research.
The initiative aims to create a Pan-African data platform that supports cross-border collaboration, informs public health interventions, and improves healthcare delivery across the continent.