Driven by an increase in the availability of cheap low-cost mobile phones and a jump in the number of telecom subscribers, the African gaming world is booming. Most importantly, it has opened an opportunity for rural communities to have an almost identical mobile phone experience than people living in urban areas. It has also opened an opportunity to leverage this high penetration of mobile devices to design mobile-based applications such as mobile serious games. The latter assists individuals living in these communities to modify, change or shape their behaviors and attitudes desirably. This paper reviews mobile serious games in healthcare education, especially those intended to improve health literacy in rural Africa. The challenges and issues encountered in the design and use of persuasive mobile games as a tool can promote behavior change among people living in the rural African communities.

Mobile technology is widely used in healthcare. However, designers and developers in many cases have focused on developing solutions that are often tailored to highly literate people. While the advent of the pandemic has called for people to seek and use Covid-19 related information to adapt their behaviors, it is relatively difficult for low literate to get easily access to health information through digital technologies. In this study, we present a Mobile based Interactive Voice Response service designed particularly for low-literate people which provides validated Covid-19 related health information in local African languages. We conducted a field study, among high school students, through a usability study to assess users’ perception. The service received an excellent numerical usability score of 78.75

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