Human cytomegalovirus (CMV) is a ubiquitous betaherpesvirus that infects about half of adult populations in high-income countries (HIC) and nearly all adults in low- and middle- income countries (LMIC). Congenital CMV is the leading cause of nongenetic infant hearing loss and accounts for more cases of life-long disabilities than more commonly known conditions. In LMICs, there is a paucity of knowledge on the prevalence of human cytomegalovirus (CMV) due to resource limitations reducing their capacity to perform seroprevalence studies and/or diagnostic testing. For HICs, there is evidence suggesting the cost effectiveness of targeted or universal congenital CMV screening though only 13 states have passed legislation regarding congenital CMV screening. Thus, there is a critical need for low-cost, non-laborious, and more sensitive assays to enable CMV research in low-income settings and decrease barriers to universal testing in high-income settings. We developed epitope-specific quantitative IgG enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISAs) and isothermal quantitative CRISPR/Cas12a-based DNA assays for the evaluation of maternal and congenital CMV. We clinically validated our assays using a mother-infant dyad cohort from Sierra Leone and started CRISPR/Cas testing implementation through laboratory capacity building efforts with our partners at the Kenema Government Hospital. We report the performance of each assay as well as the cost-savings and added clinical value compared to gold standard tests in both American (New Orleans, Louisiana), and West African (Kenema, Sierra Leone) contexts.