LocationsEvent Report: AFRI CONVERSE 2026 #2
Designing a World Without Distance: Delivering on “Leave No One Behind” from Okinawa to Africa
Panel Discussion on Reimagining Healthcare Access Beyond Distance
The second session of AFRI-CONVERSE 2026, titled “Designing a World Without Distance: Delivering on ‘Leave No One Behind’ from Okinawa to Africa,” was held on May 15, 2026, at the JICA Okinawa Center in a hybrid format. The event was co-organized by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) as part of the follow-up to the Ninth Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD 9).
The session focused on disparities in healthcare access caused by geographical and social “distance,” drawing on shared challenges and strengths between Okinawa and Africa for discussions on realizing healthcare that “leaves no one behind.” Key topics included community-based healthcare systems, the use of digital technology, innovation driven by startups, and the construction of solutions through Japan-Africa co-creation.
A total of 308 online participants and 59 in-person participants attended the event, bringing together a wide range of stakeholders, including government, international organizations, researchers, private companies, and startups. The discussions highlighted the lessons Okinawa’s remote island healthcare model offers for health challenges in Africa, the future of healthcare access opened up by digital technology, and the importance of continuously asking what it truly means to leave no one behind.
< Speakers >
Opening
・Mr. Toshiyuki Nakamura, Special Advisor to the President, JICA
Congratulatory Remarks
・Mr. Masahiko KIYA, Ambassador in charge of Okinawan Affairs, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan
Keynote: “No One Left Behind - Even Across Distance: Africa’s Health Tech Future”
・Ahunna Eziakonwa, Assistant Secretary General and Regional Director for Africa, UNDP
Panel Discussion: “Reimagining Healthcare Access Beyond Distance”
・Mr. Kuniyuki Furuta, Founder & CEO, SOIK
・Mr. Noudehouenou Credo Adelphe Ahissou, Specially Appointed Researcher, Graduate School of Health Sciences, Department of Global Health, University of the Ryukyus
・Dr. Akiko Hagiwara, Senior Advisor (Health), JICA
Opening
Mr. Toshiyuki Nakamura, Special Advisor to the JICA President, outlined three reasons for selecting “distance” as the central theme of the session. First, Okinawa and many parts of Africa share common challenges in healthcare access shaped by the geographical constraints of remote islands and rural areas. Second, “distance” is not merely a matter of physical access but a complex, layered challenge involving health worker shortages and the resilience of health systems. Third, Okinawa’s postwar experience in rebuilding and improving public health represents a practical model with direct applicability to Africa.
Mr. Nakamura noted that the Chūzai Hokenfu model — a public health nurse station system in the community developed as Okinawa overcame challenges such as island geography, infectious diseases, and infant mortality — set a precedent for delivering high-quality primary care in remote settings, offering concrete lessons for health system strengthening across Africa. He expressed his hope that “distance be seen not as a barrier, but as a design condition for innovation.”
Opening Remarks by Mr. Toshiyuki Nakamura, Special Advisor to the President, JICA
Congratulatory Remarks
Mr. Masahiko Kiya, Ambassador in charge of Okinawa Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, spoke as one of the founders of Africonverse. He emphasized the significance of this first-ever session held in Okinawa, noting that Africonverse began in 2018 at the United Nations University in Tokyo as a dialogue series aimed at engaging civil society and stakeholders ahead of TICAD 7. He introduced Japan’s three-pillar approach to Africa policy: first, achieving peace in Africa; second, creating a virtuous cycle of growth between Africa and Japan; and third, realizing a society in which all people can feel prosperous, through co-creation with youth.
He highlighted Okinawa’s unique strengths as a contributor to the Japan-Africa partnership: the potential to pilot digital and green technologies in a remote island environment; the applicability of subtropical climate-derived expertise in public health, agriculture, and disaster risk reduction to Africa; and the island’s historical role as a hub for multicultural exchange. He called on participants to move “beyond dialogue and toward concrete action.”
Congratulatory Remarks by Mr. Masahiko Kiya, Ambassador in Charge of Okinawan Affairs, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan
Keynote
Ahunna Eziakonwa, Assistant Secretary-General and Regional Director for Africa at UNDP, delivered a keynote centered on “Leave No One Behind,” addressing healthcare challenges and opportunities across Africa. She noted that Africa bears approximately 24 percent of the global disease burden while having only 3 percent of the world’s health workforce, with more than half the population living more than five kilometers from a health facility. Physical distance and infrastructure gaps, she observed, severely constrain healthcare access. She emphasized the need to reframe remote areas not simply as “problems” but as “frontiers of resilience and innovation.”
She introduced the UNDP’s Timbuktoo Initiative, which provides African youth entrepreneurs with funding, mentoring, and networks, and highlighted two concrete examples:
- MobiHealth International: A comprehensive telemedicine platform connecting over 100,000 healthcare professionals and patients, delivering low-cost video consultations, e-prescriptions, and diagnostic services across Nigeria through solar-powered, satellite-connected clinics.
- BetaLife: A health-tech startup using AI-driven predictive analytics to forecast blood demand before shortages occur, optimizing blood supply management.
She also noted commonalities between Okinawa and Africa — including young populations and community-oriented values — and observed that the ethos of communal interdependence and mutual support resonates with Africa’s Ubuntu philosophy, serving as a source of resilience and wellbeing.
Keynote by Ahunna Eziakonwa, Assistant Secretary-General and Regional Director for Africa, UNDP
Panel Discussion: Rebuilding Healthcare Access Across Distance
The panel convened around the theme of "Rebuilding Healthcare Access Across Distance," exploring challenges and solutions as well as the conditions required for sustainable scale-up.
Round 1: Challenges and Solutions
Dr. Akiko Hagiwara, Senior Advisor (Health) at JICA, explained that the postwar Okinawa and its remote island contexts are similar to rural areas in Africa. She emphasized that “distance” is not merely a matter of physical travel but a complex, layered challenge involving health worker shortages, fragile health systems, and socio-cultural barriers. Drawing on a JICA maternal and child health projects in Sudan as well as Knowledge Co-Creation Programs conducted with the Okinawa Prefectural Nursing Association, she identified three lessons from Okinawa: the importance of community-based primary healthcare; support systems that prevent remote health workers from becoming isolated; and collaboration among local governments, healthcare providers, and communities.
She also noted that Sudan medical team was particularly impressed during their visit to Izena island where they observed Okinawa’s telemedicine system for remote island healthcare. Through this system, a physician stationed at island clinic can consult online with specialists in hospitals on the mainland. She stressed that by equipping frontline health workers with digital tools, quality care can be brought closer to where people live. In this context, she emphasized that “high-tech for high-touch” is essential—digital technology must ultimately serve as a tool to support human-centred care.
Mr. Noudehouenou Credo Adelphe Ahissou, Specially Appointed Researcher at the University of the Ryukyus, presented a stark comparison: the maternal mortality ratio in Benin stands at 518 per 100,000 births, compared to just 3 in Japan — a more than hundredfold difference in the risk of dying in childbirth. He argued that “Leave No One Behind” is not solely a matter of distance but the result of multiple compounding barriers, including social constraints, cost, and access to appropriate care.
He introduced digital health tools from Benin — including the medical ID platform Kea Medicals and GoMedical, which integrates appointments, payments, and health records — while also flagging the risks of fragmentation from a proliferation of stand-alone digital tools. He cited Okinawa’s cloud-based integrated perinatal information network (OPeN II), which connects more than 30 facilities and remote island clinics in real time, as a model for building a single, integrated digital network driven by and for local communities.
Mr. Kuniyuki Furuta, Founder and CEO of SOIK, presented the rollout of SPAQ, SOIK’s maternal digital health platform, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). After six years of building trust with local communities while collecting data, it became clear that the challenge was not a shortage of data but a shortage of accurate data.
SOIK developed optical character recognition and AI tools to automatically read blood pressure data, along with an AI-assisted ultrasound diagnostic system enabling community volunteers to conduct health screenings. SOIK also integrates these individual examination functions with electronic medical records, providing an integrated platform that allows data entered in the field to be aggregated and visualized remotely. Through such aggregation, it was revealed that fewer than 10 percent of necessary antenatal checks — including malaria, HIV, and syphilis tests — were being conducted, findings that , through a workshop with the provincial health authorities, triggered a cycle in which data flowed up to the ministry, decisions flowed back to the field, and community feedback rose back up. Mr. Furuta characterized “distance” as “the information gap between what is happening in the community — namely what is happening in women’s bodies — and what we know about it.”
Panel Discussion: Round 1 – Challenges and Solutions
Round 2: Conditions for Scale-Up
The second round examined how health technologies of this kind can be deployed sustainably and at scale.
Mr. Furuta identified a key obstacle to spreading health tech in Africa: innovative technologies are often evaluated under the same procurement standards as conventional equipment. He argued that achieving sustainable universal health coverage in remote areas requires system design that integrates electronic medical records and insurance reimbursement mechanisms, covering device procurement, human resource development, and digital maintenance as a whole. He also described how SOIK has built a track record in the DRC through Japanese ODA programs, delivering maternal and child health services to more than three times the originally targeted population in conflict-affected areas, and noted that “trust built one community and one government partner at a time is the foundation for scale.”
Dr. Hagiwara stated from JICA’s perspective that integrating effective innovations into national systems requires redesigning health systems —including regulatory frameworks, financing, and institutional capacity. She also noted that public support for early-stage risks helps private startups enter the market, and that once viable business models are established, this contributes to the long-term sustainability of innovations within the redesigned health system. Citing a SOIK-JICA pilot project in Gabon, she suggested that the ongoing digitalization of healthcare in Africa could also offer insights for Japan’s own healthcare digital transformation.
Mr. Ahissou warned that the proliferation of digital health tools must be addressed through early government-led coordination, or it will become a long-term barrier. He emphasized that subnational government ownership — as demonstrated by Okinawa’s perinatal information network — is what makes systems sustainable over time. He also recalled that women in Okinawa’s remote islands once had the freedom to choose where and how they gave birth and who attended them, observing that “it is not only the quality of care that can be lost, but the choices themselves.” He concluded that the question of “Leave No One Behind” must be asked continuously and without pause.
Panel Discussion: Round 2 – Conditions for Scale-Up
Q&A Session
The Q&A session featured lively discussion on public-private partnerships in community healthcare, digital infrastructure development, and administrative challenges.
A participant working in the IT sector raised the question of how to reconcile community-level problem-solving with the realities of working through bureaucratic hierarchies. Mr. Furuta explained that SOIK implements its tools within existing administrative reporting systems, improving the speed of information flow through digital means while respecting established institutional processes. Moderator Mr. Yannick Gayama added that building a concrete prototype and using it as the basis for stakeholder dialogue is essential.
A participant engaged with Africa in the education sector emphasized that electricity and communications infrastructure are foundational not only for healthcare but for education as well, and that siloed, sector-by-sector thinking must give way to cross-sectoral, integrated approaches.
Q&A Session with Participants
Closing
In closing, Mr. Gayama reflected that “solutions developed under the constraints of Okinawa’s remote island context can become solutions for the world,” and called on Okinawa’s local innovators and institutions to share their resilience and ingenuity on a global stage. He also addressed the concept of “reverse innovation,” stressing that “innovation is innovation — its value does not change depending on where it was born.”
The discussions made clear that addressing healthcare access challenges requires confronting not only geographical distance but the full complexity of compounding “distances.” They also demonstrated, in concrete terms, that the path to realizing “Leave No One Behind” lies in bidirectional co-creation — Okinawa’s historical experience and Africa’s tech innovation learning from each other in equal measure.
