DHIS2 News: DHIS2 and HISP play key roles in Norway-Africa CDC agreement on strengthening public health in Africa
The new memorandum of understanding between the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and the Kingdom of Norway emphasizes building capacity, data for decision making, and leveraging DHIS2 for national and regional disease surveillance.
On 18 March 2025, Dr. Jean Kaseya, the Director General of Africa CDC, and Norway’s Minister of Health and Care Services, Jan Christian Vestre, signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to formalize the partnership between Africa CDC and the Kingdom of Norway. The MoU builds on several years of cooperation on public health between Africa CDC and three Norwegian institutions, including the HISP Centre at University of Oslo (HISP UiO), which collaborates with Africa CDC on digitalization and use of health data through DHIS2, as well as the University of Bergen and the Norwegian Institute for Public Health (NIPH).
The signing took place during a seminar at the NIPH offices in Oslo, which marked the first official visit by Africa CDC to Norway. Guri Rørtveit, Director of NIPH, opened the event by acknowledging the achievements of Africa CDC since its founding as an autonomous health agency of the African Union in 2017, and noting the importance of international collaboration, particularly in a time of crisis. “Better health for all cannot be achieved without global partnerships,” Rørtveit remarked. “In facing this shared challenge, our strength lies in collective action.”
This message was reinforced by Vestre, who observed that “global health is local health and vice versa,” and that “no country is stronger than the weakest link,” meaning that it is in every country’s interest to work together—an interdependence that was made clear by the Covid-19 pandemic. The best prevention for future disease outbreaks is strong public health systems in all countries, and this has been the background of the ongoing collaboration between Norway and Africa CDC.
This collaboration has been guided by the Lusaka Agenda, a consensus-based document finalized in December 2023 that provides a foundation for coordinated action on five key shifts for the long-term evolution of global health initiatives and identifies short-term priorities. Dr. Kaseya emphasized the importance of this agenda in his remarks, placing particular emphasis on domestic health financing and transparency of external funding flows to ensure that health funding is going to support the priorities that African member states themselves have identified.
Dr. Kaseya also discussed the increasing prevalence of infectious diseases outbreaks in Africa, up 40% from 2022 to 2024, and the global health risk this represents. “If there is a pandemic today, it’s not just Africa but the world that will be affected,” he said. He illustrated how Africa CDC has been supporting continental outbreak response, offering mpox as one example where Africa CDC established a team to coordinate the work of the World Health Organization and 29 other partners across the affected countries. The decisions of this team are informed by “one monitoring and evaluation mechanism, using DHIS2.”
Professor Kristin Braa, Director of the HISP Centre, represented HISP UiO and the DHIS2 team at the event. In her presentation, she shared how DHIS2 is already used in 90+% of African countries as a national-scale health information system, helping stakeholders analyze population health and make informed decisions about public health programs. She also explained the role of the HISP network in working with national Ministries of Health and regional organizations like Africa CDC to co-design locally owned DHIS2 systems for routine health data and disease surveillance, and to strengthen local capacity to ensure their effective use and long-term sustainability.
Throughout the event, all speakers emphasized that the joint work between Africa CDC and Norway is a collaboration between equals, and Dr. Kaseya stressed the importance of respect and listening to local voices, which has often been missing in the global north’s interactions with the global south. During the panel discussion following the signing of the MoH, the moderator, Frode Forland of NIPH, asked each participant to reflect on what respectful, action-oriented partnership means in the context of this collaboration. Professor Braa’s response summed up the vision that has guided the HISP network’s collaboration with health stakeholders in Africa for more than 30 years:
“Equal partnership. That’s what we do. That’s the HISP approach. It’s all about capacity, it’s all about the people … co-creation and building capacity locally, so that systems are locally owned and can draw on global resources. The answer for how to do respectful collaboration is to build capacity for co-creation… so that it works not just in the lab, but in reality.”
Dr. Kaseya reinforced this message in his closing remarks, saying:
“When we talk about health system strengthening, what does it mean?… Let us sit and listen, because when you come to us with a concept you have already designed and say ‘implement it’… it won’t move. What is the ownership? … The main message today is let us come, sit, listen and implement together.”
HISP UiO is proud to be a part of the MoU between Africa CDC and Norway, and we look forward to continuing our collaboration on strengthening public health in Africa through the co-creation, implementation, and use of locally owned information systems built on DHIS2.
