In Brazzaville, the World Health Organization (WHO) in the African region marked Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Day on 19 November by launching the AFRO Geodatabase (AFRO GDB), a platform designed to enhance the use of trusted administrative boundary data and strengthen geospatial governance for data-driven health decisions across Africa. The platform enables countries to store, manage, and share verified health and administrative boundary datasets, while supporting integration through APIs, allowing seamless data exchange with other health systems and platforms.
The AFRO GDB acts as a centralized digital repository, consolidating key geospatial data on administrative boundaries, health facilities, and population figures. Developed collaboratively with country endorsement, the platform ensures official and validated data, promoting accuracy, ownership, and consistency across the region. By providing updated administrative boundaries, the platform facilitates linking field-collected and national data, supporting population-based analyses that improve timely, data-driven decision-making for polio eradication and other health programs.
The platform offers a dynamic, user-friendly environment for managing and validating geospatial information. Verified users can upload updates on geographies, population figures, and health facility lists, which are automatically checked for quality and compared with previous versions before validation and approval. Countries retain primary responsibility for providing authoritative geospatial data, and GIS focal points at the national level, including WHO country offices and ministry of health data managers, are being onboarded to ensure routine updates.
The AFRO GIS Centre will provide training, maintenance, and integration of geospatial datasets with regional and global sources. This support helps countries harmonize baseline data, improve mapping accuracy, and calculate indicators consistently, thereby enhancing public health information management and data dissemination. Kebba Touray, head of the WHO AFRO GIS Centre, emphasized that reliable, integrated data is fundamental to effective health planning and emergency response, allowing countries and partners to work from a single trusted source.
Through the AFRO Geodatabase, Ministries of Health can efficiently upload and maintain official data on health facilities, administrative boundaries, and population coverage, improving data accuracy, interoperability, and regional coordination. This initiative underscores WHO Africa’s commitment to leveraging digital technologies to enable faster, coordinated, and evidence-based health decisions, advancing the organization’s vision of improving health for everyone, everywhere.
