A digital response using proven digital innovation can help the African continent curb the spread, strengthen resilience and better address the impact of the global Covid-19 pandemic.

Currently, the health, economic and social impact of Covid-19 across Africa continues to evolve.

There are more than 12 000 deaths, in excess of 540 000 confirmed cases and millions of livelihoods destroyed.

A new report by the European Investment Bank (EIB), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and BearingPoint has identified potential digital solutions after analysing the impact of Covid-19 with policymakers and business leaders across Africa.

‘Africa’s digital solutions to tackle Covid-19’ shows that African countries can quickly launch powerful digital projects to better tackle the pandemic.

“In Africa, the Covid-19 pandemic is disrupting millions of people’s livelihoods, with disproportionate impact on poor households and small businesses. This creates urgency to secure supplies of essential products, contain the spread of the virus, support health systems, stabilise financial systems and help businesses to survive,” said UNDP assistant administrator and regional director for Africa Ahunna Eziakonwa.

“This paper comes at a time when Africa has demonstrated leadership in digital innovations in the area of financial technologies replicated across the world, such as mobile money. Building on this progress, it is time to invest more aggressively in digital capabilities for the socioeconomic transformation of Africa.”

Global investment required to carry out the high impact digital solutions in the 30 African countries studied has been estimated at €680-million in the first year.

“The digital solutions presented in this study are good examples of investment that we intend to support together with our partners,” said EIB innovation and development VP Ambroise Fayolle.

The survey reviewed more than 100 digital solutions in Europe and Africa and interviewed 50 respondents from 30 African countries in charge of coordinating digital investments related to the Covid-19 outbreak.

Among the identified pioneering and innovative digital solutions deemed easy to implement and affordable solutions is a telephone-based application for contact-tracing in Kenya, an online learning platform in Tanzania for students and teachers in secondary schools and drones spreading messages in rural areas in Ivory Coast and delivering samples to medical laboratories in Ghana and Rwanda.

Further digital solutions reviewed are a self-diagnosis application available in 15 African countries, a platform to organise and monitor food and non-food distribution to the poorest people and a system to map the effects and responses to the Covid-19 pandemic through social media data.

The study reveals that investment needed to implement information and communications technology solutions is not massive compared with other development programmes and financing initiatives, and has the capacity to generate tremendous benefits in terms of saving life and safeguarding economic and social resilience.

The partners plan to host discussions among policy and business leaders from across Africa over the next few days to enable practical and proven solutions to be shared.