How Nigeria Health Watch Uses AI to Preserve Institutional Knowledge

“You might as well not have those materials, because they are scattered all over the place and you can’t access them. You might not even know they exist,” Chibuike Alagboso said.

Nigeria Health Watch is building an internal wiki to preserve its organizational memory and streamline access to scattered digital files, wan-ifra.org reported. The communications and advocacy non-profit, which operates with more than 60 permanent and freelance staff and volunteers, launched the initiative as part of its participation in the NextGen AI Leaders program. The project is run by WAN-IFRA in partnership with the Google News Initiative to support young media professionals through responsible technology deployment.

Building the Brain of the Organization

The non-profit launched in 2007 as a two-person blog focused on health care coverage in Nigeria. Over nearly two decades, the operation expanded into community health monitoring, research, advocacy, and solutions journalism. As the staff grew, historical documents, multimedia files, and project reports accumulated across local hard drives, servers, and online platforms. Staff members frequently spent excessive time tracking down specific concept notes or photographs for current projects.

Alagboso, who serves as the Director of Media Programmes at Nigeria Health Watch, took on the wiki project to create a centralized repository for institutional knowledge. Before the NextGen AI Leaders program, the organization had experimented with AI tools for transcription, summarization, document analysis, and social media management. The internal wiki represents the organization’s most ambitious AI-driven initiative to date.

Developing the Prototype and Infrastructure

Alagboso began by creating a vibe-coded prototype to visualize the concept before presenting it to the organization’s IT department. That visual draft allowed him to communicate his operational goals clearly without relying on abstract descriptions. According to wan-ifra.org, the development timeline faced delays due to the organization’s annual conference and a simultaneous website overhaul.

The IT team has since completed the frontend interface, the backend infrastructure for resource uploads, and the supporting cloud architecture. The organization decided to prioritize multimedia assets—specifically photographs scattered across Microsoft SharePoint, Google Drive, and local hard drives—during the initial uploading phase.

Leadership Drafts Internal Policy to Manage Artificial Intelligence

The program shifted Alagboso’s approach to change management within media operations. Rather than facing resistance to new technology, the team encountered challenges with the overuse of AI. Leadership responded by drafting a dedicated internal artificial intelligence policy to establish clear boundaries for where automated tools can and cannot be applied.

Deploying the Working Version Before Year-End

The final phase involves populating the repository with historical project files, stories, and operational assets. Leadership targets a working release for internal team use by the end of the year. Vivianne Ihekweazu, Managing Director of Nigeria Health Watch, noted that the project reflects the organization’s commitment to creative communication and knowledge preservation for future teams.

The digital archive will establish historical context for incoming staff members, allowing teams to build upon past projects rather than starting from scratch. Once fully operational, the organization plans to share its implementation framework with other non-profits seeking to build similar knowledge-management tools.