Why Digital Health Literacy Matters in Rural Sub-Saharan Africa: How Bridging the Digital Health Literacy Gap Could Improve Access to Health Services and Social Equality

Abstract

Why Digital Health Literacy Matters in Rural Sub-Saharan Africa:How Bridging the Digital Health Literacy Gap Could Improve Access to Health Services and Social Equality Ismaila Ouedraogo, Roland Benedikter, Borlli Michel Jonas Some, and Gayo Diallo Digital Health Literacy Matters Around the world, mobile phones have been used for quite some years now to put healthcare systems into interactive action through various mobile health applications. The results regarding efficiency, access, greater social equality, and interconnectivity are proven, and they promise to mitigate economic and educational gaps. All this is increasingly the case in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), where the technological prerequisites are quickly evolving. About 500 million people in SSA—more than 46 percent of the region's population—were subscribing to mobile services in 2020, and their numbers are forecast to reach 615 million in 2025 (GSMA 2022). In the meantime, coverage works also in the structurally poorest areas. In 2020, 2G mobile network coverage in Burkina Faso was 81 percent for the territory and 92.4 percent for the population (ARCEP 2020). The high penetration rate of mobile phones and the increasing coverage of the mobile network has created a vast variety of opportunities for health provision. Mobile devices can no longer be ignored in practical health delivery and disease prevention workflows. The positive potential of the application of digital health tools is obvious, and it is often said that mobile devices will be a key vehicle on the road to achieving universal health coverage in the Global South. Despite this promise, the deployment of digital health tools in SSA faces many challenges, such as an urban-rural gap, a gender divide, low digital literacy, and a shortage of electricity and interconnectivity [End Page 134] (Holst et al. 2020). Poorly designed, unsustainable, unsafe, and irresponsible digital health products circulate that waste time, energy, and physical and financial resources. Digital health literacy increasingly correlates with digital inclusion—a situation where people can access and use information and communication technologies to take charge of and improve their health. Inversely, digital health technologies become useless when users do not have the skills, connectivity, mutual exchange, or understanding to use them, or do not have access when they need them. Designing digital health solutions that fit with the digital literacy prerequisites and skills of low-qualified users matters crucially in SSA for sustainably sufficient coverage. The ability to find, understand, and use e-health resources is critical for consumers to be able to use current and future health services. Digital health literacy is therefore no longer an option but has become a fundamental requirement in SSA in the design of inclusive solutions. Innovative Mobile Health Initiatives in SSA during the COVID-19 Pandemic The advent of the global COVID-19 pandemic, which began in 2020, has accelerated the pace at which mobile technology is becoming commonplace in people's healthcare. In many countries, healthcare systems rapidly shifted to enabling medical consultations digitally. The increase in mobile phone usage was correlated with an increase in access to information, with phones acting as information relays. Cell phones were used to disseminate pandemic-related information to disadvantaged communities in SSA. Several examples catch the eye. In Burkina Faso, Viamo is a social enterprise that understood this paradigm shift early. It attempted to connect disadvantaged individuals and organizations with appropriate information via mobile devices to enable them to make better decisions (Sandwidi 2020). Through its mobile services, it had played an integral role in bridging the information gap among communities in rural areas long before the advent of the pandemic (UNDP, n.d.). Among other initiatives, it partnered in 2010 with Orange Burkina, a primarily national telecommunication company, to launch a mobile service that allows underserved communities to have free access to information in four of Burkina Faso's most spoken local languages: Mooré, Dioula, Fulfulde, and Gourmanché. Viamo instructions are provided mainly orally, in the same four languages, to include those who cannot read. These approaches, hailed by many customers, have evolved over time. Since 2017, Viamo's platform has covered many themes, including COVID-19 orientation, family planning, health, agriculture, early childhood development, weather forecasts, news, and entertainment. Each theme is usually subdivided...