The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has announced a$50 million partnership with OpenAIto help African countries adoptartificial intelligence (AI)to strengthen their healthcare systems.
The initiative, calledHorizon1000, will work closely with African governments and health authorities to identify practical and impactful ways to use AI in healthcare delivery. The programme will initially launch inRwanda, which has already taken steps toward integrating AI into its health sector by establishing an AI health hub in Kigali.
Announcing the partnership in a blog post, Bill Gates said that AI has the potential to be agame-changer for low-income countries, particularly those facing severe shortages of healthcare workers and weak health infrastructure. He described AI as one of the most transformative technologies ever developed, capable of expanding access to quality medical care.
“In poorer countries with enormous health worker shortages and limited health system infrastructure, AI can dramatically expand access to quality care,” Gates said.
Under the Horizon1000 initiative, the foundation aims tosupport 1,000 primary healthcare clinics and their surrounding communities across multiple African countries by 2028. The programme will focus on improving diagnostics, decision-making support for health workers, and overall health system efficiency.
The launch comes at a challenging time for global health efforts, as many lower-income countries are grappling withsignificant reductions in international aid budgets. Gates noted that funding cuts contributed to thefirst increase in preventable child deaths this century, as reported late last year.
Highlighting the urgency, Gates pointed out thatsub-Saharan Africa faces a shortage of nearly six million healthcare professionals, making AI-driven tools particularly valuable in bridging gaps in care delivery.
