The professor says African institutions must develop their own research capacity rather than depend entirely on imported artificial intelligence systems.
Nigerian born academic Celestine Iwendi has been recognised in the Scholarly Index Top1000 Scholar 2026 rankings for Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare, drawing attention to his work in intelligent systems and medical technology.
The Centre of Intelligence of Things at the University of Greater Manchester, which Iwendi heads, said he ranked 57th worldwide and second in Great Britain for the 2021 to 2025 impact period. The ranking placed him within the top 0.69 per cent globally and recorded an impact score of 96.93 and an H index of 36 for that window.
For lifetime research impact, the index placed him 125th globally and sixth in Great Britain, with an impact score of 96.20 and an H index of 46. The figures were announced by the university centre and refer specifically to the index’s healthcare AI category.
Iwendi credited colleagues, students, collaborators and mentors for the recognition, saying that research should ultimately be judged by its ability to address practical problems rather than by league table positions alone.
He identified earlier diagnosis, disease prediction, hospital efficiency and access to specialist knowledge as areas where AI could improve healthcare. However, he warned that such systems must be explainable, trustworthy and suitable for the communities expected to use them.
The professor urged Nigeria and other African countries to invest in universities, young scientists, data infrastructure and partnerships between industry and researchers. Without those investments, he said, the continent risked remaining primarily a buyer of technologies created elsewhere.
His centre works across artificial intelligence, connected devices, medical applications, cybersecurity and computer vision. Iwendi said future work should place ethical deployment, privacy and measurable human benefit at the centre of technological development.
