AFRICAI-RI: Building Africa's First Federated Medical Imaging Infrastructure

Background. Access to high-quality medical imaging data and AI technologies remains highly unequal across the world. Despite a growing burden of respiratory diseases such as tuberculosis and pneumonia, many regions in Sub-Saharan Africa face limited access to imaging infrastructure, imaging specialists, and representative datasets for developing trustworthy medical AI.

Project. AFRICAI-RI (A Pan-African Research Infrastructure for Collaborative Biomedical Imaging and Artificial Intelligence) is a €5 million Horizon Europe Global Health EDCTP3 project bringing together partners from ten African countries and four European institutions. The initiative aims to establish Africa’s first federated medical imaging research infrastructure, enabling collaborative AI research while preserving local data ownership and privacy.

My Role. I serve as Erasmus MC Principal Investigator and Work Package Lead for Infrastructure Development and Data Management. Together with our partners, we are developing a FAIR and federated imaging infrastructure that enables institutions to collaborate on data-intensive AI research without transferring sensitive patient data.

Impact. Through federated learning, capacity building, training programmes, and international collaboration, AFRICAI-RI aims to accelerate the development of trustworthy AI solutions for imaging-based diagnosis of respiratory diseases while strengthening local expertise and sustainable research infrastructure across Africa.

Vision. AFRICAI-RI embodies my broader mission of making medical AI clinically valuable, globally accessible, and representative of the populations it aims to serve. By combining open science, trustworthy AI, and international collaboration, the project contributes to a more equitable future for healthcare innovation.