Across Africa, AI now reads chest X-rays for TB, helps community health workers decide who needs referral, answers patients’ health questions on WhatsApp, and processes medical insurance claims. Done well, it can extend scarce clinical expertise to millions of people who rarely see a doctor. Done badly, it can miss disease, give unsafe advice, widen health inequities and expose the most sensitive data people have. This course trains health professionals to govern AI so it does the first and not the second.

Who it’s for

Hospital and health system managers, clinicians and nurses in digital health roles, health informaticians, quality and patient safety leads, Ministry of Health and county or state health officials, medicines and medical device regulators, research ethics committee members, digital health start-ups, NGO and donor programme staff, and health insurers and medical schemes. No technical background or coding is needed: everything is built up from first principles, with health examples throughout.

What you’ll be able to do

• Explain how machine learning, generative AI and AI agents work in health care, and how they fail.
• Map where AI is used across African health systems, from hospitals to community health.
• Apply ethics, equity and patient rights to AI in clinical care and public health.
• Identify the medical device, health, data protection and research ethics rules that apply in African countries, and international guidance such as WHO’s.
• Design an AI governance framework for a health organisation, linked to clinical governance and patient safety.
• Judge whether an AI tool has been properly validated for your patients, and keep clinicians meaningfully in control.
• Write an organisational AI policy, procure AI safely (including donated tools), and bring shadow AI under control.
• Monitor and evaluate AI in use and provide internal compliance assurance.

How it works

Twelve modules, about 45 hours in total, including assignments and the capstone, at your own pace. Each module mixes short readings with interactive practice set in fictional African hospitals, clinics, programmes and digital health services. Practice is never marked.

Assessment: a quiz after each module, four applied assignments marked against a published rubric, a timed final exam, and a capstone in which you design AI governance for a fictional African health organisation, with peer review and assessor marking.

Certificate

Complete every step to earn the Certificate in AI Governance for Health, a verifiable digital certificate and Open Badge. Your capstone result (pass, merit or distinction) is shown on it.