SEATTLE/KIGALI – The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has announced a major partnership with OpenAI to deploy artificial intelligence-powered healthcare solutions across Africa, with an initial $50 million pilot program launching in Rwanda. The initiative, named “Horizon 1000,” aims to reach 1,000 primary healthcare clinics and their surrounding communities by 2028.
Announced in a blog post by co-chair Bill Gates on Wednesday, the partnership seeks to address critical shortages of healthcare workers and resources by developing AI tools designed to support, not replace, frontline medical staff.
“In sub-Saharan Africa, which suffers from the world’s highest child mortality rate, there is a shortfall of nearly six million healthcare workers, a gap so large that even the most aggressive hiring and training efforts can’t close it in the foreseeable future,” Gates wrote. “These huge shortages put health care workers in these countries in an impossible situation.”
The Horizon 1000 program will integrate AI tools at primary care clinics, within communities, and at the household level. The technology is intended to improve diagnostic accuracy, optimize the allocation of limited medical resources, and bolster data-driven decision-making within national health systems.
The initiative aligns with and will support Rwanda’s ambitious digital health transformation. Gates cited Rwandan Health Minister Dr. Sabin Nsanzimana, who recently announced the launch of a government-led AI-powered Health Intelligence Centre in Kigali.
Dr. Nsanzimana has characterized artificial intelligence as the third transformative breakthrough in medicine, following vaccines and antibiotics—a perspective Gates endorsed. “I strongly agree,” Gates noted in his post.
Rwanda has already established itself as a regional leader in digital health infrastructure, providing a foundation for the new AI rollout. In April 2025, the country launched the National Health Intelligence Centre (NHIC) AI Lab, which uses real-time data to improve patient outcomes and guide health financing.
This system integrates data streams from community health workers, health centers, and hospitals to inform policy and clinical decisions. At the community level, Rwanda has digitized the work of over 12,000 community health workers through a system called Community EMR (cEMR), which replaced manual registers that previously captured only about five percent of relevant patient data.
Further integration occurs at primary and secondary healthcare facilities through platforms like E-Ubuzima and E-Fiche, which track patient journeys and feed comprehensive data to the NHIC.
The Gates Foundation has a history of investing in AI-driven health projects in Africa, including support for vaccine development and disease surveillance. This new collaboration with OpenAI represents a significant scaling of that effort, aiming to create a replicable model for AI-enhanced healthcare that could eventually expand beyond Rwanda to other African nations facing similar challenges.
The Horizon 1000 initiative underscores a growing focus on leveraging advanced technology to solve systemic public health challenges, positioning AI as a critical tool for bridging equity gaps in global healthcare delivery.
