Nigeria: Ebele Mogo, a doctor of public health who promotes well-being in African cities

Researcher in global public health, entrepreneur, public health advocate…Dr Ebele Mogo creatively combines her different hats to create an impact on people’s lives and promote well-being and health especially in African cities.

If Dr. Ebele Mogo’s work could be summed up in a single word, it would be “IMPACT.” In her research, entrepreneurship, and advocacy, the Nigerian thinks only in terms of impact. According to her, there is no effective investment or public policy in health and well-being unless it makes a genuine difference in people’s lives.

It was at an early age that she realised that her dream was to improve people’s lives. There was no doubt in her mind that she would become a medical doctor. The little schoolgirl could already see herself wearing a white coat and caring for her patients. She pursued her dream until her first years of university in Canada. « I always knew I wanted to work in the field of well-being and health. But my path has not been smooth, “she tells Africa Women Experts.

While studying biomedical sciences at the University of Waterloo in Canada, she discovered a more global lens on health issues by chance. « I remember, it was during the holidays. I was reading various things on the internet, and I read about international initiatives that were looking at the well-being of populations, but more at a global level. And I thought, ‘Wow, I would like to do this one day, after becoming a doctor,“she recalls. One of her earliest explorations of this path was through supporting the implementation of a medical waste management initiative in Lagos, Nigeria. This started to connect the dots between the health issues people presented at the clinic and the societal context that created the diseases.

After an unsuccessful application to medical school, she decided to make a detour. In 2009, she flew to Scotland, where she enrolled at the University of Edinburgh for a Master’s degree in “Global Health and Public Policy.” At this point, her growing interest in population level impact became combined with another growing interest – social innovation. After working to coordinate population level studies into the causes of ovarian cancer, she enrolled in 2013 at the University of Colorado in the USA for a DrPH. She focused her research on urbanization and the rise of noncommunicable diseases in Lagos, Nigeria, one of the world’s most populous cities and the city of her birth.

But despite her choice, she still remembers that she never stopped questioning herself. “I was constantly asking myself how I was going to apply these findings,”she recalls.

Gradually, she managed to find her way.She narrowed her focus to application; bridging research findings with innovations and policies to promote the well-being of populations. This brought her to McGill University in Canada from 2017 to 2019 where her work focused on testing a digital tool to improve access to information for children with disabilities, and testing applications of crowdsourced data to improve access to health resources.

A move to a global health collaborative at the University of Cambridge allowed her to apply this experience to the population that held the most interest for her – rapidly urbanising African settings.

Evidence-based health investments and policies

In 2017, she created « ERIM Consulting », an innovative consulting firm. Through her company, she combines her hats as a researcher and an entrepreneur. She conducts in-depth solution-focused research that she transforms into ideas for investors, governments, and international organizations, so that they take into account the well-being of populations in their investments and public policies throughout the world. In particular, she collaborated with the WHO to design a strategy to improve people’s health and well-being around the world over the next few years, and has worked with venture funded startups to design and implement initiatives.

She is constantly on the look out for African innovations that address the difficult problem of access to improved health. With them, she works as a technical partner to design for impact, and bridge access to crucial partners that can make their solutions more available to the general public. « I ask myself, ‘How do I support them? How do we connect them to funding opportunities? How do we evaluate their solutions to strengthen their impact on access to improved health ?, “she explains.”

For the researcher and entrepreneur, there is no better way to wear both hats than to focus on concrete initiatives that impact people’s lives. “I like research that aims to document, test and scale health solutions.”, she says.

Enabling long-term health and well-being policies in Africa

For Ebele Mogo, “health is not just about taking people to the doctor. Health is about thinking about all the factors around it ».After realizing that in Africa, most discussions around health focused only on communicable diseases such as HIV-AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, together with other African scientists and health enthusiasts, she also created a platform, ‘Engage Africa Foundation’, to address issues related to non-communicable diseases in Africa, often due to poor lifestyles. “In Africa, people suffer enormously from cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, but at this point there were no serious discussions about this. These are diseases for which long-term strategies are needed,” she explains.

The platform enables dialogue between local actors and high-level policy makers such as the WHO on systemic health and development challenges. The aim is to ensure a healthy future for Africans. It also highlights innovative African initiatives that aim to address mental health issues, cardiovascular diseases, well-being and long-term planning for the health of Africans. In 2020, they worked on a project to improve the accessibility of COVID-19 messaging by crowdsourcing translations in 19 African languages. Even more recently, they ran the EAF Festival, engaging a wide range of public health actors in Africa to share insights, strategies, leading to a communique on creating a healthy African future.

Today, Ebele Mogo continues to challenge herself to find new ways to improve health and well-being. In the coming years, she aims to build more partnerships with African social innovators to test new ways to solve health challenges. The scientist also wishes to publish a collection of short stories. Who said science and literature don’t rhyme together?

Danielle Engolo