Fostering innovation and building youth capacity in global health: design, implementation, and evaluation of a youth-led digital health hackathon

African countries face significant challenges in their healthcare systems, including inadequate human resources, insufficient budgetary allocation, and poor leadership and management. Digital health solutions hold immense potential to address these challenges, but a digitally capable healthcare workforce is crucial for harnessing this potential. We designed and implemented Federation of African Medical Students’ Associations (FAMSA) AfroHack ‘24, a four-day virtual hackathon, to empower African medical students to develop and implement innovative digital health solutions for critical public health issues. This four-day virtual hackathon brought together medical students from across Africa. Participants received training in design thinking, innovation in the African context, and effective pitching. They then collaborated in teams to develop digital health solutions addressing key themes like HIV/AIDS prevention, non-communicable diseases, and infectious disease outbreaks. Pre- and post-hackathon surveys were conducted to assess changes in participants’ skills and confidence. Narratives from the open-call proposals were analyzed to identify emergent themes. The hackathon attracted applications from 21 teams across six African countries. Five teams were selected. The mean age was 23.88 years (SD: 2.60), 70.6% were male, and 53% were from Nigeria. The proposed solutions leveraged technologies like mobile health applications, AI/machine learning, and wearable devices. Participants self-reported improvements in teamwork (70.6%), pitching (41.2%), and design thinking (23.5%) skills. Common challenges included team coordination (23.5%), internet connectivity issues (17.6%), and time constraints (17.6%). The AfroHack ‘24 hackathon was a valuable platform to foster innovative ideas to address global health disparities in African countries, build digital health innovation capacity, and establish collaborative relationships with experienced global health professionals. Future innovation events may build on these strategies to empower healthcare trainees.