With Professor Sharifah Sekalala, and Tatenda Chatikobo, University of Warwick

Abstract

The promise of digitalisation in achieving Universal Health Coverage in post-colonial contexts is being confronted with the realities of insufficiently resourced public healthcare systems. Private health insurance is, therefore, often seen as an essential part of healthcare delivery in these contexts. This is increasingly becoming digitalised as providers use the promise of behavioural economics to provide better and more efficient services. While an increasing number of studies focus on digital health, in this paper, we particularly focus on the less explored question of how digital health behavioural economics models work within postcolonial settings. Using the case study of Discovery in South Africa, we analyse how digital health insurance schemes reinforce inequalities due to their approach of commodifying health care through an assemblage of financing and techno-solutionism. We argue that legal infrastructures are central to the process of framing and reinforcing commercial digital health practices in ways that lead to unequal benefit sharing as a long-standing structural design of colonialism. Our socio-legal critique of digital health complements ongoing debates on structural forms of post-colonial social inequalities through a focus on health injustice.

Speaker

Sharifah Sekalala 

Sharifah is an interdisciplinary researcher whose work is at the intersection of international law, public policy, and global health. I am primarily interested in global health crises and the impact of law in curbing inequalities. I often use a human rights framework in my analysis.

She is currently leading a Wellcome funded interdisciplinary research project on health apps in Sub Saharan Africa. The project team will evaluate the data protection regimes and engage with key stakeholders in Kenya, South Africa and Uganda, to establish the extent to which they protect their citizens’ health data, especially in cross-border Health activities. Since January 2025, Sharifah is also leading an ESRC funded project on health data justice in the UK, Canada and Germany which explores the concept of health data justice for marginalised communities. Sharifah won the Feminist Legal Prize in 2024 with Ania Zbyszewska for an article that called for a re imagining of supply chains in accordance with feminist approaches that place care at the centre of supply chains for pandemics as being central to imagining Global Health law.

Please note: If you are a King's staff member or student and wish to attend in person, please select the King's ticket option or contact Dr Gabrielle Samuel at gabrielle.samuel@kcl.ac.uk. For all other attendees, the event will be available online only and the link will be sent once you register.