Focusing on Israel’s export of medical knowledge to African states from 1957 to 1973, we examine how the development of health aid constructs and fractures racialized national identities. Situating our historical discussion within the framework of the politics of health, we critically analyse how Israel sought to utilize health aid for its strategic interests by forming a set of interconnected sites we designate as a health archipelago. Through the archipelago, Israel mobilized medical knowledge, personnel and infrastructure that resonated with racialized perceptions while culturally dislocating itself from Africa. Based on archival work, this analysis of Israel’s medical archipelago illuminates the infra-political actions that shape state-centred development schemes. It uncovers how medical knowledge was not only imported from outside Africa but rather circulated through data collection, manipulation of limited resource and governance of immigration in ways that reorganise cultural hierarchies and national identities. Hence, discussing Israeli interventions in Africa enables us to pinpoint the transregional circulation of medical knowledge as it is inscribed in national identities, and to construct regional geopolitics through the movement of materials, individuals and knowledge between Africa and the Middle East.