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What is the value of data? Across Africa, this question is being asked, though rarely in laboratories or journals. It surfaces instead in ministries, parliament and board rooms.

In many African countries, governments face immediate, visible demands: roads that must be built, hospitals that need equipment, energy systems that must function, and economies that must grow. Against that backdrop, data can feel abstract. It does not pour concrete or lay asphalt.

Research continues. Papers are published. Biobanks grow. But the connection to the everyday lives of Africans remains fragile. With this, African data sits in a space of quiet neglect, not because it lacks value, but because it has not yet been embraced as urgent and essential.

The answer lies in translation, not across languages, but across worlds: from data to decisions, from discovery to delivery, from journals to policy. Policymakers do not fund complexity; they fund clarity. They do not invest in possibility; they invest in outcomes. If data cannot clearly show how it improves treatment decisions, reduces healthcare costs, or strengthens health systems, it will always stand behind roads and infrastructure in the queue of national priorities.

But here lies a deeper irony. Africa is not poor in data. It is rich in data in ways the world is only beginning to grasp. The continent holds the greatest human genetic diversity on Earth. Every variation, every adaptation, every evolutionary pathway tells a story that began here. Humanity did not merely pass through Africa. Humanity began in Africa.

So how is it that the most genetically diverse populations on the planet are the least represented in the datasets shaping the future of the world? This has real consequences: a borrowed lens can never fully reveal a landscape. A model trained elsewhere is applied here. A prediction is made and a decision follows. But what if the model is wrong and assumptions do not hold?

As an African proverb reminds us: “Until the lion learns to write, every story will glorify the hunter.” For too long, Africa has been the subject of data, not its author. The measurements exist; the meaning is shaped elsewhere.

This is why translation is not optional. It is urgent. Data generated in Africa must use the language of policy to answer Africa’s most pressing questions. When those answers become clear, something shifts. Data stops competing with infrastructure and becomes part of it, not roads of asphalt, but roads of knowledge that guide better decisions for improved lives.

This is not a hypothetical shift. It is already visible in the work of the Climate Amplified Diseases and Epidemics consortium, known as CLIMADE, which links genomic surveillance directly to public health response across Africa and beyond.

Rather than treating sequencing as an end in itself, CLIMADE produces regular summaries written specifically for policymakers, translating findings on dengue, cholera, Rift Valley fever, and other climate sensitive pathogens into guidance that health ministries can act on.

When cholera spread across Malawi, CLIMADE researchers adapted whole genome sequencing protocols in real time to trace its movement. When dengue was found circulating quietly in West Africa, CLIMADE mobilised reagents and sequencing capacity to characterize it properly. This work is led from within the continent by scientists such as Prof Tulio de Oliveira at the Centre for Epidemic Response and Innovation (CERI) at Stellenbosch University.

This is translation in practice: data that does not stop at publication, but feeds into surveillance systems and policy documents that ministry officials can use to make informed decisions and save lives in affected communities.

But translation alone is not enough. It must be accompanied by ownership. Data must not simply leave the continent to be analysed elsewhere. Capacity must not be temporary. Training must not end at workshops. African scientists must not only participate in global science, they must lead it.

So the path forward is not mysterious, even if it is difficult. We need to build systems that generate African data at scale, validate tools within African populations before deploying them, and integrate data insights into healthcare systems in ways clinicians and policymakers can actually use. Engage policymakers, clinicians, and communities not at the end of research, but at its beginning, from the first objective to the very last. And, most importantly, research funders should make evidence of translation into clinical practice, public health, or policy part of how research success and continued support is assessed.

This is not a call for Africa to catch up. It is a call for Africa to lead. Because when the most genetically diverse populations in the world are fully represented in the data that drives health systems, the benefits will not be local. They will be global.

And perhaps then we will finally answer the question we began with. What is the value of data? It is not in how much we collect. It is in how many lives we improve.

Text: Elvis Poku-Adusei

News date: 2026-09-15

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