Nigeria’s Healthcare Isn’t Broken—It’s Disconnected

At first glance, long queues and delayed care make Nigeria’s healthcare system seem broken. In reality, too many hospitals and clinics operate in isolation. Patients move from one facility to another with only a handwritten referral letter. Key details get lost. Doctors repeat tests. Families pay again for services they’ve already used. Countries like Rwanda, Kenya, and India treat health data as shared infrastructure. Patient records follow individuals across every clinic and hospital. Nigeria has passed data protection laws and begun digitising in some states, but most facilities remain offline. To fix this, three steps are essential: build interoperable digital systems, replace paper referrals with secure data transfers, and design data protection hand in hand with data sharing. The technology exists. What’s missing is the network.

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