In a significant step to ensure artificial intelligence (AI) delivers real, measurable benefits to healthcare in resource-limited settings, three leading global philanthropies have announced a joint $60 million investment to fund rigorous, locally led evaluations of AI tools in health.
The Evidence for AI in Health (EVAH) initiative, launched on February 20, 2026, during the AI Impact Summit in New Delhi, India, is a collaboration between the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Novo Nordisk Foundation, and Wellcome. The program aims to generate high-quality evidence on how AI can improve health outcomes in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), with a strong focus on sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia.
The announcement comes at a time when AI is increasingly seen as a game-changer for addressing Africa’s healthcare challenges, including severe shortages of health workers, limited diagnostic capabilities, and uneven access to care in rural and underserved areas. However, experts emphasize that without robust, context-specific evidence, the technology risks being overhyped or misapplied, potentially widening inequalities rather than closing them.
“AI has the power to significantly improve health care and accelerate development in Africa, but its success must ultimately be measured by the tangible improvements it brings to people’s lives,” said Dr. Bosun Tijani, Nigeria’s Minister of Communications, Innovation, and Digital Economy, in a statement supporting the initiative.
The first Request for Proposals (RFP) under EVAH is now open, inviting applications from research teams particularly those based in the target regions to evaluate AI-enabled clinical decision support tools (CDSTs). These tools are designed to assist frontline health workers in primary and community care settings with key tasks such as:
Triage of patients
Diagnosis support
Referral decisions
The evaluations will focus on tools that are ready for real-world deployment, aiming to provide decision-relevant data for ministries of health, implementers, and funders. This includes insights on effectiveness, value addition, responsible integration into health systems, and potential for responsible scale-up.
The initiative is being delivered in partnership with the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) and the African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC), which will handle coordination, technical support on study design, evidence synthesis, and collaboration with local research teams.
Proposals are due by April 1, 2026 (10:00 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time / 4:00 p.m. Central Africa Time / 7:30 p.m. Indian Standard Time), with notifications expected in June 2026. This marks the second investment under a broader $300 million global health R&D partnership established by the three organizations in 2024.
EVAH addresses a critical gap: While AI shows promise in diagnostics, workflow optimization, and remote care potentially saving over one million lives in Africa by 2030 according to some projections most evidence comes from high-income settings. Local evaluations are essential to account for unique challenges like infrastructure limitations, data biases, language barriers, and cultural contexts.
The initiative aligns with other recent developments in AI for African health, such as the Gates Foundation and OpenAI’s Horizon1000 project, which commits $50 million to deploy AI in 1,000 primary health clinics starting in Rwanda, and broader efforts to build sovereign AI capabilities across the continent.
By prioritizing locally led research, EVAH seeks to empower African institutions and researchers to shape the narrative around AI adoption, ensuring tools are not just imported but proven effective and equitable in real-world use.
For more details on the RFP and application guidelines, visit the J-PAL website or the official EVAH initiative page.
This philanthropic-driven evidence-building effort underscores a growing consensus: AI’s transformative potential in global health depends on rigorous, inclusive evaluation particularly in the regions that stand to benefit the most.
