In the summer of 2014, as Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, grappled with the specter of a fast-moving Ebola outbreak, the country’s health systems and digital infrastructure were strained to the brink. What began with a single imported case from Liberia would escalate into 20 confirmed infections and eight deaths. The fatality rate, forty percent, was a grim reminder of just how fragile even the most robust surveillance systems could be.

During the crisis, Amina Ahmad was part of a project team working around the clock to bolster Nigeria’s Ebola response. The urgency was unrelenting: contact tracing, symptom monitoring, and rapid containment efforts were all hampered by fragmented, ill-adapted digital tools. For Amina, newly returned to Nigeria after studying computer science and software engineering and a brief stint in Kuala Lumpur, the outbreak was more than a national emergency; it was a turning point.

What she saw on the ground unsettled her. Data systems meant to support public health efforts were often misaligned with reality. Cold numbers floated free of human context. “During the pandemic, we were struggling without the right data,” she recalls. While working with eHealth Africa on the Ebola response, she observed promising prospects in their platform's ability to track and pinpoint location of patients. However, it also became clear: information without nuance can mislead. Technology, when inattentive to context, can do more harm than good. "May be that Ebola system inspired me in a way," she says while underscoring that using data without the human component was generic observation in public health.

That insight led her to found Datharm in 2015, a company whose name fuses the idea of being “armed with data” with a warning: data, unless processed ethically and applied responsibly, can wound as much as it informs. Since then, Datharm has quietly become one of the continent’s most trusted architects of digital public health systems, building tools that bridge the chasm between technological abstraction and everyday reality. 

Today, Amina Ahmad is widely regarded as one of the most influential women in Africa’s digital health landscape. (In 2025 She was named one of the top 26 African women in Digital health, by Digital Health Africa). Under her leadership, Datharm has partnered with institutions ranging from the Gates Foundation and UNICEF to the Africa CDC and Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Health. The company’s work spans everything from real-time disease surveillance and equitable vaccine distribution platforms to digital tools for community health workers.

Amina visited Ethiopia alongside officials from Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Health. The delegation sought to learn from Ethiopia’s experience in health resource mapping, financing coordination, and digital integration. During her stay in Addis Ababa, she sat down with Shega’s Etenat Awol to discuss Datharm’s origin story, the promise and pitfalls of digital health, and what it takes to ensure that data-driven systems remain rooted in the people they’re built to serve.

Shega: You describe Datharm as “a response to harm caused by data misuse in humanitarian contexts.” What experiences made this issue urgent for you?

Amina: When I returned to Nigeria and joined eHealth Africa, I became part of a team working on the country’s Ebola outbreak response at e-health Africa. The need for timely, reliable data was urgent; we had to track contacts and monitor symptoms, but the digital tools we relied on were fragmented and poorly adapted to local realities. That experience underscored how vital it is to have the right data at the right time, and it pushed me to think beyond writing code to consider how systems are designed, who they serve, and how data can either support or undermine crisis response efforts. It deepened my belief in building technology anchored in empathy, context, and accountability, particularly in humanitarian settings.

My turning point came during that brief time at eHealth Africa. I saw how data was often used without a human perspective, numbers were prioritized over people, especially those from marginalized communities. That disconnection drove me to establish Datharm. The name, a blend of “Data” and “Harm,” reflects both the potential and the danger of data. It’s a call to be “armed with data” in a responsible way. It also serves as a warning, if used carelessly, data can reinforce harm rather than reduce it. So, basically our mission is to build ethical, context-aware data systems that are truly responsive to the needs of the communities they aim to serve. 

Shega: Before, founding Datharm, you worked across tech, humanitarian aid, and policy. When did you first realize those fields were speaking past each other, and what were the consequences of that disconnect? 

Amina: I didn’t work as a public servant, but I often engaged with government actors. The two sectors, tech and public service were speaking completely different languages. In meetings, government officials would express real and urgent needs, but developers often hadn’t spent time in those environments. They didn’t understand the construct public actors were navigating.

And in a way I ended up being the translator, between software engineers and public health officers, between product roadmaps and community needs. The tools weren’t collaborative in a way that could create real value on the front lines. That leads to low adoption, parallel reporting systems, and decisions made without quality insights.

That’s why I tell my engineers to join me on field visits. They need to know who they’re building for. You can’t make assumptions from a desk. Datharm was created to help bridge that divide to help tech and public service meaningfully connect so both can work better for the people they serve.

Shega: What does Datharm do on the ground? 

Amina: At its core, Datharm builds digital platforms that are actionable and rooted in context. That’s really important, especially in a place like Africa where you can have different tribes and languages even within the same town. So being rooted in context really matters.

For example, at the community level, we support frontline health workers with digital tools that help them identify zero-dose children, refer them for services, and track those referrals. At the national level, we’re working with Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Health on a resource mapping and expenditure tracking platform. That’s actually one of the reasons we visited Ethiopia to learn from their efforts. 

Shega: Datharm is a social enterprise. How do you balance mission and market? who pays, who benefits, and how do you sustain both impact and revenue?

Amina: Our business model is largely project-based. We’re commissioned to design and deploy digital solutions tailored to real-world challenges in health and governance. Often, the funding comes from donors supporting national systems or specific interventions like helping identify children who need immunization.

Sometimes, we come up with ideas ourselves. We pilot them in-house, then approach the government and donors. We make sure the government has an appetite for it first, then pitch it to donors based on alignment with both community needs and donor priorities.

The beneficiaries are always the communities, frontline health workers, governments, and development partners. To sustain impact and revenue, we stay lean, invest in in-house engineering capacity, and focus on usability and scalability.

Shega: You’re currently in Ethiopia. What brings Datharm here? 

Amina: We’re in Ethiopia for a study tour with the team from Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Health. We brought six officials, three from the sector-wide approach unit and three from the department of planning, research, and statistics. From Datharm, three of us joined.

The goal is to learn from Ethiopia’s experience with health resource mapping and financing coordination. We’re not deploying anything here right now. But given the similarities with Nigeria, large populations, similar health challenges, donor-dependent systems, we’re exploring potential partnerships with local and international actors.

Our tools are built to be flexible and adaptable. They work offline, which is crucial in low-connectivity settings, and we’re very intentional about designing with local ownership and government systems in mind. 

Shega: What aspects of Datharm could be replicated in Ethiopia or across Africa? What similar challenges and experiences do Ethiopia and Nigeria share, especially regarding non-communicable diseases? What does the cutting of USAID funding mean for both countries’ response mechanisms? 

Amina: The issues and challenges we face in Nigeria are similar across many African countries. Our tools are built to be user-centered, offline-first, and grounded in contextual intelligence. We make sure they operate in low-resource settings and model them to adapt to different priorities.

Both Ethiopia and Nigeria have large populations, widespread poverty, and face growing challenges from non-communicable diseases. Both are also heavily aid-dependent. The USAID funding cut is seen as a wake-up call for African countries to strengthen internal systems for financing and coordination. We can’t depend on donors forever.

Shega: You’ve been named one of the most influential women in digital health in Africa. Why digital health specifically? What gaps did you see in how health systems were digitizing, and how Datharm is addressing them differently?

Amina: It was an honor to be named one of the most influential women in digital health. But for me, digital health is not just about systems, it’s about people and the impact we can make. 

I was drawn to it because I saw how technology could improve lives, especially in underserved communities. But too often, that potential is lost when tools are built without understanding the people they’re meant to serve. Many systems focus only on data collection for reporting not on how that data will be used by the health worker or planner.

At Datharm, our work is deeply human-centered. We co-design with users, spend time in the communities, include even village heads in review meetings. We don’t just ask what data needs to be captured; we ask what decision it’s meant to inform and how to make the process intuitive and respectful. 

Shega: Impact in trauma-aware tech is notoriously hard to measure. Once your systems are deployed, especially for development or humanitarian partners, how do you track real-world outcomes? 

Amina: We have a strong monitoring and evaluation framework. Success isn’t just the deployment or usage of metrics. We ask, are our tools helping with real decision-making? Are frontline workers acting on alerts? Are policies being shaped by our dashboards? 

We also hold review meetings to collect community feedback. And we try to measure trust. For example, in Ethiopia, we heard of communities where pregnant women stay in maternal waiting shelters before labor. That kind of system wouldn’t be sustainable in some parts of Nigeria because of security and trust issues.

If people start trusting and relying on the system, if caregivers proactively seek services, that to us, is success. In one review meeting, we asked: does this system help someone feel seen, supported, and better served? If the answer is yes, we know we’re making an impact.

Shega: Have you raised any funding, grants, equity, or otherwise? How do you navigate funding in a space where tech, ethics, and health aren’t always easy for investors to grasp?

Amina: We’re a social enterprise. Most of our tools are open source and built for governments. We’re not the kind of startup that pitches a product and gets equity investment. Our funding comes from grants, international donors, service contracts, and sometimes government. 

We’re deliberate about aligning with funders who understand that our work sits at the intersection of digital innovation, public health, and social impact. It’s not an easy space to fund. But we’ve been fortunate to find partners who support not just the technology, but the intention behind it. We pilot ideas first, generate evidence, and then approach funders with demonstrated impact. One of our biggest supporters has been the Gates Foundation. We have been fortunate to find partners who support not just the tech, but the intention behind it. We pilot first, generate evidence, and then approach funders. 

Shega: What have been some of your biggest achievements to date? And as you look to the future, how do you define Datharm, an approach, a product, a movement, or something else?

Amina: Some of Datharm’s major milestones reflect its growing role in reshaping how data is used within Nigeria’s public health system. The organization partnered with the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA) to develop a digital quality assessment tool aimed at improving service delivery in primary health centers. It also created a Human Resources for Health Information System to monitor and manage the distribution of health workers across regions an essential tool in addressing workforce gaps. 

Another key initiative is ARMET (Aid Resource Mapping and Expenditure Tracking), a platform designed to align donor funding with national health priorities, increasing transparency and efficiency. 

Datharm has also supported civil society-led demand generation strategies in the fight against polio, reinforcing the importance of community-driven approaches. One of its flagship tools, MCHtrack a maternal and child health platform, is now active in 478 communities. It identifies zero-dose children and pregnant women, facilitates referrals, gathers qualitative data on service uptake, and embeds gender equity into its design and execution. 

Looking ahead, Datharm envisions itself not just as a platform, but as a methodology a movement dedicated to building ethical, human-centered digital infrastructure for public systems across Africa, not just health systems. The approach has already begun to extend beyond healthcare, with pilot initiatives in education and plans to expand into sectors like agriculture.