African National Public Health Institutes (NPHIs) Network of Training In Integrated Health Informatics And Data Sciences, Scaling Up Infectious Disease Modelling.

A European-African consortium proposes a five-year project to establish the EpiScientia Network, an African National Public Health Institutes (NPHIs) Training Network in Integrated Health Informatics and Data Sciences, designed to scale up infectious disease data analytics, modelling and strengthen NPHI resilience. The project spans both formal training (24 months for master’s students and up to one semester for certificate trainees) and a 36-month follow-up phase, ensuring the initiation and sustainability of dissertation research and collaborative, policy-driven studies at each NPHI. Building on existing collaborations with the African Center of Excellence in Data Science (ACE-DS, www.aceds.ur.ac.rw) at University of Rwanda (UR), an ACE-DS hosting institution within the World Bank’s Eastern and Southern Africa Higher Education Centers of Excellence (ACE II) Project, the EpiScientia Network will train 45 highly skilled African professionals in two cohorts: 10 trainees in a Work-Based Learning Master’s programme in Biostatistics, incorporating data mining and machine learning selective courses, and 27 trainees in Certification Programmes in Big Data Analysis and Data Science. Both programmes are already accredited by local and international institutions and are offered by ACE-DS since 2016. Trainees will complete practical assignments at nine newly designated NPHIs, focusing on scaling up infectious disease data curation, quality handling, analysis, modelling improvements, and real-time data visualisation. These efforts will leverage a scalable, interoperable, open-source federated network integrating harmonised health data from multiple sources. The core project partners will drive its scalability to additional NPHIs in Africa, equipping them with a new generation of epidemiologists, data scientists, and health informatics experts to lead evidence-based, policy-driven disease surveillance, outbreak response, and public health intelligence across Africa.