Artificial intelligence in African malaria control programs: opportunities and risks

Malaria remains a major public health challenge in Sub-Saharan Africa, contributing to significant morbidity and mortality despite decades of control efforts. Conventional interventions – including vector control, chemoprevention, and diagnostics – face limitations due to drug and insecticide resistance, climate variability, and health system constraints. Artificial intelligence (AI) offers transformative potential to strengthen malaria control programs by enhancing surveillance, predicting outbreaks, improving diagnostics, optimizing treatment, and guiding resource allocation. This narrative review synthesizes current applications of AI in African malaria programs, highlighting case studies such as Kenya’s drone-assisted vector surveillance, Nigeria’s mobile health platforms for real-time case reporting, and Tanzania’s climate-informed forecasting models. We further discuss AI-driven bioinformatics for Plasmodium genomic surveillance, modeling of parasite life cycle dynamics under environmental stress, and network-based analyses of vector–parasite molecular interactions. Challenges, including data quality, ethical considerations, infrastructure limitations, and potential inequities, are critically examined. By integrating practical examples with emerging AI methodologies, this review underscores both the opportunities and risks of AI in malaria control and provides guidance for policymakers, researchers, and public health practitioners aiming to leverage AI to accelerate malaria elimination in Africa.