From Agreement to Action: Strengthening Africa’s Health Security Through Data

The Pandemic Agreement, adopted by the World Health Assembly in May, is a historic step toward strengthening global systems to prevent, detect, and respond to epidemic and pandemic threats. Yet many low- and middle-income countries face significant political and technical challenges in ratifying and implementing the agreement.

No country is fully prepared for a future pandemic or epidemic. National implementation of the Pandemic Agreement will require sustained political will, policy reforms, investments in capacity building, and ongoing transparency, monitoring, and accountability.

NTI, the Brown University Pandemic Center, and Economist Impact are partnering with African experts to provide new data on health security and pandemic preparedness targets through the African Health Security (AHS) Index. Because as Dr. Talkmore Maruta of the African Society for Laboratory Medicine noted, “what gets measured, gets fixed.” 

From Data to Action 

This data-driven approach was the focus of a September webinar, “From Adoption to Action: Data-Driven Solutions for Implementing the Pandemic Agreement”. The discussion highlighted the many ways that African nations are already prioritizing data to drive solutions to health security challenges, including:

• Upscaling local manufacturing, which has reduced dependencies on imports of vaccines and other health products, advancing health security and self-reliance on the continent.
• Expanding real-time genomic surveillance, which has strengthened the ability of African nations to detect, monitor, and respond to infectious disease outbreaks.
• Bolstering regional biosecurity and biosafety, through Africa CDC’s Biosafety and Biosecurity Initiative five-year strategic plan which supports compliance with international best practices while addressing unique regional risks and opportunities.

While these efforts have advanced health security across the continent, African nations face unique challenges in building resilient health systems:

• Continued limited access to essential medical countermeasures, such as diagnostics and vaccines, hinders progress towards pandemic preparedness on the continent, especially as local manufacturing needs time and consistent funding to scale.
• Fragmented systems across African nations impedes data interoperability, leading to inefficiencies in infectious disease surveillance.
• Health financing challenges, such as the sharp declines in official development assistance, have curtailed Africa’s health sector.
• Health impacts of climate change, such as changes in temperature and rainfall patterns, that drive a surge in infectious disease outbreaks.

With limited resources, data-driven decisions will be essential to develop practical, effective strategies to close preparedness gaps and both ratify and implement the Pandemic Agreement across African nations.

Advancing Pandemic Preparedness in Africa

Investments in capacity building require analysis and interpretation of objective, reliable, and accurate data. The Global Health Security (GHS) Index has proven to be a critical tool in advancing these efforts.

Africa CDC has utilized the GHS Index to identify progress and areas for growth across the continent. Analyzed in parallel with other resources, such as regional reports on climate change and Joint External Evaluation (JEE) assessments, “[Africa CDC] had identified that coordination was very weak…laboratory capacity was also a major issue,” explained Dr. Ngashi Ngongo, Principal Advisor to the Director-General and Continental Incident Manager for Mpox at Africa CDC, highlighting the utility of the GHS Index.

Building on the GHS Index, the AHS Index will provide new data on health security across Africa, including indicators that link health and climate security. By providing objective, reliable, and up-to-date data, the AHS Index will enable leaders to track progress and strengthen pandemic readiness.

The ratification of the Pandemic Agreement is proof that a broad swath of the international community can unify to address epidemic and pandemic risks. The opportunity now is to harness this momentum and channel it into practical steps that build a safer world. The AHS Index, launching in 2026, will provide African leaders with a powerful tool to strengthen resilience against biological catastrophe across the continent.