World Health Day 2026: Standing with Science to Build a Healthier Africa—The Story of Dr. Muna Ali

𝑻𝒐𝒈𝒆𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒓 𝒇𝒐𝒓 𝒉𝒆𝒂𝒍𝒕𝒉. 𝑺𝒕𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒘𝒊𝒕𝒉 𝒔𝒄𝒊𝒆𝒏𝒄𝒆.

When Dr. Muna Ali was a child growing up in the Somali region, she witnessed the struggles of women in her community. For those who suffered the tragedy of a miscarriage, the lack of infrastructure made the pain unbearable. In those moments, these women had to trek long distances just to seek basic medical care.

As the eldest child, Dr.Muna saw these journeys firsthand, witnessing a level of physical and emotional distress that no one should have to endure simply due to a lack of access That memory became the catalyst for her life’s work.

It inspired her to build healthcare solutions that are just a call or message away leveraging digital health to bring care closer to home. From that defining experience, Musod Med was born: an AI-powered preventive health and occupational wellbeing platform dedicated to facilitating medical care for mothers, their families, and the wider workforce.

As the global community celebrates World Health Day 2026, the Entrepreneurship Development Institute (EDI) is proud to highlight the transformative power of innovation in the healthcare sector.

Through the Sustainable Employment through Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Development (SEED) program a flagship initiative led by EDI in partnership with the Mastercard Foundation we are empowering a new generation of health-preneurs who are bridging the gap between medical science and digital accessibility. Among these pioneers is Dr.Muna Ali, a digital health entrepreneur whose journey from a small border town to the forefront of African health-tech embodies this year’s global theme.

Dr. Muna’s story begins in Awubare, near Jijiga, Ethiopia, a town defined by its proximity to Somaliland. Raised by an Ethiopian father and a Somaliland-born mother, Dr.Muna grew up in a household where borders were not barriers, but points of connection. As one of seven siblings, she witnessed firsthand the challenges of regional mobility and the disparity in access to essential services. This unique upbringing shaped a global perspective that drove her to facilitate cross-border healthcare access for clients across East Africa seeking care in Ethiopia.

While her academic background is in dentistry, Dr. Muna’s ambition always extended beyond the clinic. She recognized early on that while medicine provides the science of healing, technology provides the scale for delivery. To bridge this gap, Dr.Muna joined the SEED program through the Orbit Innovation Hub, where she received specialized training, business development support, grant funding, and facilitated access to credit.

The support transformed her vision into a scalable reality. Even before the financial growth, the impact of her work was evident through the hundreds of cross-border patients and local families she assisted in navigating complex health systems.

The results have since grown even more remarkable: her business has created two permanent jobs and successfully branched out to Addis Ababa. Her financial trajectory mirrors this impact, with her capital surging from 50,000 ETB to half a million ETB in a short period.

Today, the 30-year-old Founder and CEO leads Musod Med with a focus on high-risk industries. By utilizing AI-driven health monitoring and fatigue detection, the platform provides daily health check-ins for employees and risk dashboards for employers to strengthen Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) compliance.

The impact is already tangible; in late 2025, Musod Med signed a landmark Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with one of Ethiopia’s largest construction companies to deliver digital health and fatigue monitoring for their extensive workforce.

Dr.Muna’s vision also led to the creation of a Solution, an interoperability platform based on Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR). FHIR is the global standard for electronic health records, acting as a universal language that allows different medical software systems to talk to one another. This ensures that a patient's medical data follows them securely and seamlessly across different hospitals. The potential of this science-backed solution was recently validated on the national stage when Muna’s team took first place at the National Digital Health Hackathon.

On World Health Day 2026, Dr. Muna Ali stands as evidence of what happens when we Stand with Science. Her work does not just treat illness; it prevents it.

Through the partnership between EDI and the Mastercard Foundation, the SEED program continues to invest in entrepreneurs like Dr. Muna —individuals who are building a safer, healthier, and more productive Africa, one digital solution at a time.

Together for health. Stand with science. Stand with the future.