Job #: req38274 Organization: World Bank Group Sector: Health/Nutrition/Population Grade: EC3 Term Duration: 1 year 0 months Recruitment Type: Local Recruitment Location: Nairobi,Kenya Required Language(s): English Preferred Language(s): Closing Date: 9/25/2026 (MM/DD/YYYY) at 11:59pm UTC
Description
Do you want to build a career that is truly worthwhile? The World Bank Group is one of the largest sources of funding and knowledge for developing countries; a unique global partnership of five institutions dedicated to ending extreme poverty and promoting shared prosperity. With 189 member countries and more than 120 offices worldwide, we work with public and private sector partners, investing in groundbreaking projects and using data, research, and technology to develop solutions to the most urgent global challenges. For more information, visit www.worldbank.org.
We need the best and brightest talent focused on our region in order to harness the potential and innovation happening across the continent. Home to about 700 million of Africa’s people, Eastern and Southern Africa is a geographically, culturally and economically diverse region of 26 countries stretching from the Red Sea in the North to the Cape of Good Hope in the South. The subregion harbors some of Africa’s protracted conflicts, rendering many of its countries fragile, while significant gaps in education, health, and skills development continues to keep people from reaching their full potential. This creates a huge development challenge, impacts heavily on the lives and livelihoods of people, and hinders regional integration and trade. But it also creates an opportunity to work closely with country leaders, civil society, development partners, and young people to chart a brighter course for the future. We are looking for dedicated professionals to join our innovative and diverse team to improve people’s lives.
The central contribution of the HNP Global Practice to the World Bank’s twin goals is to enable the achievement of Universal Health Coverage (UHC), in which all people are effectively covered by essential health services, and nobody suffers undue financial hardship because of illnesses. The HNP Global Practice includes staff members in Washington, DC and many country offices. The HNP Global Practice works with and across multiple sectors, in recognition of the fact that HNP outcomes often depend on actions that lie outside the HNP sector. The HNP Global Practice supports country and regional efforts to: (i) improve health outcomes, especially for the poor and most vulnerable; (ii) expand access to high-quality HNP services, interventions and technologies that give the most value for money; (iii) strengthen health systems for results; (iv) establish and improve health financing mechanisms that promote efficiency, equity and sustainability of investments; (v) strengthen health-relevant institutions within and outside the health sector; (vi) harness multisectoral policies and investments for better health outcomes; and (vii) develop and learn from rigorous impact evaluations.
Africa's health systems stand at a genuine inflection point in digital health. Across the Africa East (AFE) region, there is a genuine opportunity to leapfrog older, incremental digitization pathways by building diagnostic tools, administrative systems, and AI-enabled platforms directly on newer digital rails such as mobile connectivity and cloud infrastructure.
The World Bank is supporting the digitization of countries' healthcare systems and prioritizing improved access to essential health services. This is being done through various lending operations and technical assistance in the post-COVID era.
In order to build an interconnected and secure digital ecosystem to support Universal Health Coverage (UHC), the Government of Kenya enacted the Digital Health Act and established a Digital Health Authority (DHA) with the mandate to lead the country's digital health transformation agenda. DHA’s core responsibilities include developing and managing a Comprehensive Integrated Health Information System that allows for real-time health information exchange across public and private health facilities; establishing unified national registries for patients, health facilities, healthcare workers, and medical products; serving as the national regulatory authority for all digital health solutions; and ensuring data sovereignty. This institutional structure gave Kenya's Ministry of Health the stewardship mechanism required to coordinate investments and pursue transformation at national scale.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a comprehensive national digital health information system remains at an early stage of development. Nevertheless, the Government has already launched a number of digital transformation initiatives aimed at improving access to and the quality of healthcare service delivery across the country. Currently, the national health information system is primarily anchored on the District Health Information Software 2 (DHIS2) platform and relies on routine data collected which combines paper-based reporting mechanisms from local health facilities through intermediate levels up to the Ministry of Public Health. In response to growing demand for more efficient, data-driven health services, the Government has embarked on an ambitious health digitalization agenda.
As part of this effort, the Ministry of Public Health established the National Agency for Clinical Engineering and Health Digitalization (ANICNS), which has developed a national digital health master plan currently under implementation. The strategy is founded on key pillars including interoperability of health systems, homologation digital health solutions, strengthened governance frameworks, and infrastructure. A central objective of this initiative is to progressively connect health facilities nationwide to DHIS2, thereby enhancing health data collection, management, analysis, and utilization.
In Rwanda, the Health Intelligence Center (HIC) functions as a national strategic platform that gathers, processes, and analyzes real-time health data drawn from across the entire healthcare system. It integrates inputs from a wide range of sources, including the DHIS2 health management information system, electronic medical records (through e-Ubuzima and cEMR), civil registration and vital statistics, logistics management (eLMIS), population health tracking (WelTel), emergency medical services, and health workforce data. Using a six-layer digital architecture and artificial intelligence, the HIC supports disease surveillance, early outbreak warning, resource allocation, and evidence-based policymaking, and it has been recognized internationally as a model for embedding AI into national health governance.
The e-Ubuzima (eBuzima) initiative is the locally developed electronic medical records platform that feeds directly into the HIC and forms the operational backbone of Rwanda's push toward full health system digitization by the end of 2025. It synchronizes patient records across public health facilities, giving both patients and providers real-time access to medical history, which helps reduce waiting times, ease hospital congestion, and improve prescription accuracy. Much more is needed to further improve the interoperability of various data sources and to enhance evidence-based, timely decision-making at various levels.
Uganda has made major progress in digital health, moving from a fragmented, pilot-heavy “e-chaos” environment toward a more coordinated national system. Key foundations include the National eHealth Policy (2016), eHealth Strategy (2017), and the National Digital Transformation Roadmap 2023/24–2027/28. DHIS2 remains the backbone of the national health information system, supporting routine data use across more than 7,000 facilities. Spatial connectivity gaps, staff turnover, limited data-analytics capacity, and continued paper-based reporting still affect data quality, use, and leverage of digital systems.
Uganda’s digital health agenda is now aligned with NDP IV, Vision 2040, and the national health compact. A new generation Digital Health Strategy is under preparation to support national health policy objectives at a time technologies like Machine Learning and AI promise to elevate digital capabilities from traditional resources and information management system to direct service delivery levers. The country is more determined to achieve interoperability across various information and digital systems in the next 5 years. Overall, the country is seeking to shift from donor-supported pilots to sustainable, nationally owned, and financially resilient digital health systems.
The ETC will support digital health transformation across country operations by providing technical assistance on strategy, governance, interoperability, data use, responsible AI, capacity building, and implementation of practical solutions that strengthen health systems and improve service delivery.
Artificial Intelligence for Health, Capacity Building, and Knowledge
Selection Criteria
The ideal candidate will bring strong digital health, health information systems, and health systems strengthening expertise, and work effectively across multidisciplinary and cross-cultural teams. Selection criteria include:
World Bank Group Core Competencies
As per WBG policy, an Extended Term (ET) appointment is subject to a lifetime maximum of three (3) years. Former and current ET staff who have completed or are in the process of completing their third-year ET appointment are not eligible for future ET appointments.
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The World Bank is a vital source of financial and technical assistance to developing countries around the world. Our vision is to create a world free of poverty on a livable planet.
We are not a bank in the common sense; we are made up of two unique development institutions owned by 189 member countries: the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and the International Development Association (IDA).
Each institution plays a different but collaborative role in advancing the vision of inclusive and sustainable globalization. The IBRD aims to reduce poverty in middle-income and creditworthy poorer countries, while IDA focuses on the world's poorest countries.
Their work is complemented by that of the International Finance Corporation (IFC), Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) and the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID).
Together, we provide low-interest loans, interest-free credits and grants to developing countries for a wide array of purposes that include investments in education, health, public administration, infrastructure, financial and private sector development, agriculture and environmental and natural resource management.
