The Application, Effectiveness and Limitations of Digital Health and Innovative Technologies in the Management of Public Health Emergencies and Humanitarian Crises in Africa – A scoping review

This project is a scoping review that aims to systematically map and synthesize evidence on the application, effectiveness, scalability, sustainability, and limitations of digital health and innovative technologies (DHITs) in the management of public health emergencies and humanitarian crises in Africa between 2000 and 2025. Africa continues to face recurrent infectious disease outbreaks, natural disasters, and complex humanitarian crises, often in contexts of weak surveillance systems, limited laboratory capacity, inadequate coordination mechanisms, and poor real-time data availability. Digital health and innovative technologies, including artificial intelligence, machine learning, mobile health applications, telemedicine, geospatial information systems, digital surveillance platforms, and big data analytics have increasingly been deployed to strengthen preparedness, detection, response, and recovery efforts. However, implementation remains uneven, and the overall evidence base on their effectiveness and sustainability across African settings has not been comprehensively synthesized. This review seeks to identify the types of technologies implemented, their functions across the emergency management cycle, their reported outcomes, and the contextual challenges influencing their impact. It also aims to identify gaps in the current evidence base and propose future research priorities to strengthen digital public health emergency management capacity in Africa. Expected outcomes include a comprehensive evidence map of DHITs used in African emergency contexts, a synthesis of reported effectiveness and implementation challenges, and policy-relevant recommendations to guide future investment, research, and scale-up of sustainable, interoperable digital health solutions across the continent.