From COVID-19 to Mpox to Ebola: Reusable, African-Led Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure for Epidemic Response, and a Roadmap toward Continental Zoonotic Disease Intelligence

Mpox surveillance, forecasting, vaccine planning and misinformation management have repeatedly tested the same fragile chain in African epidemic response, and each new pathogen has typically triggered fresh, disease-specific mobilisation that discards infrastructure and relationships built for the last one. We report the first-year contribution of the Artificial Intelligence for Mpox Network (AI4MPOX), a seven-country network, spanning Burundi, Cameroon, DR Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria and Senegal, that drew on the standing institutional roles of its own team leaders, several of whom chair national mpox or disease-modelling advisory committees or task forces, together with AI and modelling infrastructure and government and community relationships carried over from the COVID-19 response. Drawing on these connections, teams delivered locally nuanced analyses that monitored mpox transmission, predicted resurgences, characterised emergent hotspots, identified higher-risk individuals, stratified patients, and identified gendered vulnerability, translating these into staged vaccine-delivery plans for priority populations, alongside tools addressing mpox-related mis- and dis-information. The DRC’s AfiaGap platform, built for mpox surveillance, is now being extended by its developers to support Ebola virus disease response and preparedness. Several of these models have become the official tools governments use in national and sub-national policy dialogue, including Burundi’s national Mpox Intra-Action Review, Senegal’s National Health Security Action Plan 2026 to 2030, and Ethiopia’s national AI-in-health governance frameworks, and teams have established ongoing monitoring to keep these tools equitable and effective as outbreaks evolve. We set out the lessons this experience adds to Africa’s COVID-19 modelling response and a roadmap for consolidating the network into a standing, continental capability for emerging and zoonotic disease intelligence.