Community Participation in Helath Informatics in Africa: An Experiment in Tripartite Partnership in Ile-Ife, Nigeria

Abstract

Participatory Design has mainly been practiced in Europe and North America. Our seven-year experience in Nigeria suggests that user participation is a must in developing countries also. However, the scope of participation needs to be expanded. For instance in health informatics, not only computer professionals and health providers need to be involved, but also the communities served by the health facility in question. This paper presents an experiment in tripartite partnership in systems design for Primary Health Care by designers, users/providers and community representatives in Ile-Ife, Nigeria. The experience was extremely encouraging.