MWE Correspondent
Tanzania is accelerating efforts to transform primary healthcare through digital technology, with the government calling for stronger institutional collaboration, interconnected systems and greater use of local technical expertise to improve the delivery of health services.
Director of ICT at the Prime Minister’s Office – Regional Administration and Local Government (PMO-RALG), Erick Kitali, said the success of the country’s digital transformation agenda will depend on visionary leadership, collaboration among institutions and ensuring that the right technical experts are involved in decision-making.
Kitali made the remarks on September 10, 2026, in Arusha during a dialogue on strengthening primary healthcare through public digital infrastructure and Tanzania’s transition towards digitally paying community health workers.
He said government systems need to be connected so that information can move efficiently between institutions, enabling authorities to access timely data and improve services delivered to citizens.
“We need to talk about collaboration and systems interoperability. Make sure the right people are at the decision-making table,” Kitali said.
His remarks come as Tanzania advances a broader digital health agenda aimed at improving the way health information is collected, shared and used to support decision-making.
The Ministry of Health says its Data Use Partnership (DUP) is helping strengthen the national health system through better use of health information, including the development of digital health systems, governance structures, policy reforms and local capacity.
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A major component of the transformation is the digitalisation of payments to community health workers (CHWs).
The government, working with development and technology partners, has been establishing a national framework for digitally paying CHWs. The initiative supports Tanzania’s Integrated and Coordinated Community Health Worker programme, which aims to recruit, train and deploy 137,294 community health workers by 2028, with workers receiving monthly stipends through digital payment systems.
The programme is also significant because it brings several government institutions into a common digital infrastructure. The initiative has involved the Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Health, PMO-RALG, the e-Government Authority and the University of Dar es Salaam, alongside technical development partners.
Kitali said Tanzania is increasingly relying on local experts to design, develop and manage digital systems used in healthcare, including systems supporting registration, payments and information management.
He said the government has developed a digital technology blueprint for community health workers, including plans for a common dashboard that would bring information from different systems together.
According to Kitali, the dashboard would allow authorities to monitor service delivery and payments from the community level to the national level while helping identify problems such as delayed payments more quickly.
Building One Connected Health Information System
The move towards interoperability addresses a long-standing challenge in digital health, where different institutions and programmes can operate separate systems that do not easily exchange information.
Tanzania has previously pursued efforts to improve interoperability among digital health systems, with its national e-health strategy calling for greater integration of health-related systems to reduce duplication and improve the use of information across the health sector.
The latest approach places greater emphasis on using existing public digital infrastructure rather than creating isolated systems for individual programmes.
The digital CHW payment platform, for example, is designed to exchange information between financial, human-resource and performance-management systems, supporting the registration, tracking and payment of community health workers.
Digital Technology Reaches Communities
The digital transformation is already extending beyond payments.
In March 2026, the World Health Organization reported that 400 community health workers in Songwe Region across five councils had been trained to use electronic event-based surveillance tools to identify and report potential disease outbreaks in real time through mobile applications, USSD and SMS.
The experience demonstrates how digital tools can allow information originating at community level to reach health authorities more quickly, potentially improving the speed of public-health responses.
Tanzania has also developed digital applications supporting primary healthcare operations, including systems such as GoTHOMIS and M-MAMA, which are among the electronic services listed by PMO-RALG.
Kitali stressed that technology alone would not guarantee successful digital transformation. He called for continuous research, monitoring and evaluation to identify implementation challenges early and allow authorities to respond before they affect service delivery.
The broader objective is to create an integrated digital health environment in which information, payments and service monitoring can move more efficiently across government institutions.
For Tanzania, the shift could ultimately mean that a community health worker’s registration, performance information and payment are connected through interoperable public systems—while decision-makers at district, regional and national levels have faster access to the information needed to improve primary healthcare.
The government’s message is therefore increasingly clear: digital transformation in healthcare will depend not simply on introducing new technologies, but on connecting systems, strengthening local expertise and ensuring that institutions work from the same information.
