Scaling Up Health Innovations in Africa: Prospects and Challenges

Health practitioners have successfully developed evidence-based health innovations to solve public health problems. However, challenges remain in translating and scaling up these innovations to save and improve lives in Africa. Scaling Up Health Innovations in Africa focuses on the lessons learned from scaling up health innovations across the continent.

Obidimma Ezezika provides engaging and insightful evidence on the challenges and triumphs of taking health innovations to scale, drawing from hundreds of interviews with practitioners on the ground. The book includes stories, anecdotes, and lessons from experiences in eleven African countries, including Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Uganda, and Mozambique. It addresses the unique socio-cultural, financial, and logistical constraints faced in these regions, alongside insights, successes, and next steps for scaling innovations within the African context.

The book critically emphasizes the importance of understanding how implementation science can aid in scaling up innovations in Africa. While there have been disparate works on scaling specific health innovations in Africa, a unified series of cases is needed from an implementation science perspective to create generalizable lessons and principles. Ultimately, Scaling Up Health Innovations in Africa offers valuable insights around implementation strategies that translate health innovations to achieve broad impact.

Obidimma Ezezika is an assistant professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences and the director of the Global Health and Innovation Lab at Western University.