By Muhammad Amaan
Malaria Consortium and eGov Foundation are strengthening collaboration to expand digital solutions across Nigeria’s health sector, with a focus on improving data accuracy, supply chain tracking and community-level healthcare delivery.
Malaria Consortium’s West and Central Africa Programme Director, Dr Kolade Maxwell, said this on Wednesday when the Global Chief Executive Officer of eGov Foundation, Santhosh Nagaraj, led a delegation to his office.
Maxwell said the visit provided an opportunity to explore deeper collaboration on health service delivery across Nigeria and other African countries through innovative digital public infrastructure solutions.
According to him, discussions highlighted the growing role of digital platforms in improving the planning, implementation and monitoring of large-scale health interventions, particularly malaria prevention and child survival programmes.
He said the digital platform supported the delivery of health interventions to more than 20 million children across 14 Nigerian states during implementation activities conducted in 2025.
“The campaign is expanding further in 2026. Over the years, we have learned together, grown together and strengthened our collaboration.
“We are now looking at opportunities to expand this partnership beyond Nigeria into countries such as Côte d’Ivoire, Chad, Togo, Burkina Faso and Mozambique.”
Maxwell said governments were increasingly recognising the value of digital tools in addressing complex development challenges that cut across health, agriculture and other critical sectors of the economy.
He cited ongoing discussions with the Kebbi State Government on leveraging technology to support rice farmers while addressing increased malaria risks associated with expanding irrigation farming activities.
“As irrigation activities increase, mosquito breeding sites also increase, which can lead to higher malaria transmission.
“The government is interested in using technology to identify farmers, manage agricultural inputs, map breeding sites and deploy larvicides more efficiently.”
According to Maxwell, digitisation will improve programme management, reduce operational inefficiencies and provide governments with reliable data needed for timely and evidence-based decision-making across sectors.
He said the DIGIT platform offered capabilities including household registration, beneficiary tracking, commodity distribution management, supervision, monitoring and evaluation, as well as real-time reporting and accountability mechanisms.
Also speaking, Santhosh Nagaraj, Global Chief Executive Officer of eGov Foundation, said digital technology’s greatest advantage lied in creating transparency throughout the entire service delivery chain.
“When a bed net is delivered to a household, the platform can record exactly where it was delivered and who delivered it.
“That level of visibility strengthens accountability and ensures resources reach the intended beneficiaries.”
Nagaraj said the platform could scan and track individual commodities such as insecticide-treated bed nets, enabling programme managers to verify distribution records during independent monitoring and evaluation exercises.
“In countries such as Chad and Burundi, we have used this functionality to link every bed net to a specific household.
“It creates a verifiable record and increases confidence in programme implementation.”
He added that the platform could track beneficiaries over time, particularly during Seasonal Malaria Chemoprevention (SMC) campaigns where children were expected to receive multiple treatment doses.
“By maintaining a beneficiary registry separate from monthly transaction records, we can ensure that the same child receives all required doses.
“This improves programme effectiveness and contributes to better health outcomes.”
Nagaraj further noted that long-term use of a common digital platform could significantly reduce operational costs by lowering training requirements and improving efficiency as programmes expand.
“As health workers become familiar with the system, training requirements decrease.
“The tool becomes intuitive to use, which improves efficiency and allows programmes to scale more easily,” he said.
