30 Africans Breaking Barriers in Healthcare

Publisher’s Note

Hello and welcome to this special edition of the Business Elites Africa! In this issue, we unveiled 30 Africans Breaking Barriers in Healthcare; also blended with incisive articles, industry and business analysis, executive interviews, and exclusive company reports.

This issue sheds light on selected African Elites that are breaking boundaries in the global healthcare space. The faces behind these thrilling success stories all share one thing in common – purpose and unwavering mind.

The stories of Dr. Tagbo Arene, a Nigerian, and revered Psychiatry Specialist in the United States; Dr. Olurotimi Badero, a renowned Heart and Kidney Specialist who saw his purpose hidden behind his adversities; Dr. Folake Owodunni, leading the largest network of First Responders in Africa; Dr. Ambrose Bryant Chukwueloka, a medical doctor who turned oil mogul; Dr. Jay Osi-Samuels; Afe Babalola; Oluyinka Olutoye; just to mention a few.

At Business Elites Africa, we are purposed to tell the stories of Africa’s Elites. We reinvent brands, entrepreneurs and business managers. Africa remains largely the worst in the world in healthcare index. According to IFC’s new report, more than $30 Billion in new investment will be needed to meet Africa’s health care demands in the next decade.

Business Elites Africa is determined to elevate the continent of Africa. We’ll use the instrument of story-telling to accelerate entrepreneurs and transform business thinking. Our core mission is to ensure that each edition of our esteemed publication delivers stories that matter.

Africa cannot embark on full scale transformational changes desired for effecting growth in the continent without retooling. Hence, Business Elites Africa, your conduit for business analysis, executive briefs, company reports, and actionable articles.

Enjoy the read!

ETHELBERT NWANEGBO

Publisher/ Editor-in-Chief ethelbert.n@glimpse33.com

Disclaimer: The information on this magazine is for information purposes only. Business Elites Africa Magazine assumes no liability or responsibility for any inaccurate, delayed or incomplete information, nor for any actions taken in reliance thereon. All information can be withdrawn or changed without notice. Whilst every care has been taken in producing the information on this magazine, this does not guarantee the accuracy of the information. Business Elites Africa is not responsible for any opinion, expressed by its authors. Materials contained on this magazine are subject to copyright and other proprietary rights. No material on this magazine can be reproduced, adapted, distributed or stored in a retrievable system or transmission without a prior written consent from Business Elites Africa Magazine. © 2022 Business Elites Africa Magazine. All tights reserved.

NIGERIA :

5, Ogusiji Street, off Allen Avenue,Ikeja, Lagos, Nigeria

Tel: +234909 943 0429 +234916 473 4106

USA: 6620 Southpoint Drive S. Suite 511, Jacksonville, FL 32216 Tel: +904-240-7044

SOUTH AFRICA: 73 Booysens Road Conner Withycombe Street Johannesburg 2091, South Africa.

By Dimeji Akinloye

How Nigerian Doctor Tagbo Arene Became a

Sought-After Psychiatrist

in the US

Dr. Tagbo Arene is a revered Psychiatry specialist in the United States. But his journey started back in his home country, Nigeria, where he schooled and worked sacrificially in the health sector with little or no financial reward.

After finding his calling in whole-person medical treatment – physical and mental healthcare – he knew the abysmal Nigerian system would stifle his dream. So, like many Nigerian medical practitioners, he sought greener pastures in the United States. However, he had no idea of the challenges that awaited him in the US. Thankfully, he beat the odds.

Dr. Tagbo Arene is now the Medical Director of one of the biggest clinics, San Bernardino County, in California, and also the largest county in the United States by area. In this interview with Business Elites Africa, he shares his interesting story of strife, triumphs, and more.

How was your experience at the University of Port Harcourt Medical School leading up to when you left Nigeria?

I went to Government College, Umuahia, Abia State, and then to the University of Port Harcourt. I completed my Housemanship at the University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital (UPTH), then proceeded to do my National Youth Service Corps(NYSC) at Jigawa State. I was the medical officer covering the entire Maigatari local government primary healthcare center, which was very intense. But we did a lot of programs there, community-based programs that helped the community.

Then, my interest in mental health spiked while I was working with new mothers in Maigatari. So I looked at available programs and some foreign postgraduate programs, and luckily for me, I was able to relocate to the United States. My interest in the US was based on what we call “Diagnostic Statistical Manual (DSM) in Psychiatry. It was developed and published in the US.

DSM was the first official manual of mental disorders to focus on clinical use.

Of course, I didn’t just go straight to do my postgraduate program. You have to write all the United States Licensing exams, and you also have to work to support your family. It wasn’t an easy task. But I think the background in Nigeria, where there are so many uncertainties, and you still have to evolve despite all the uncertainties, created this resilience you must keep pushing. So, despite all the challenges, I took all my exams and came out with flying colours.

What sparked your interest in mental healthcare?

In Jigawa State, I ran a program where I worked with new mothers that were traumatized by ethnic conflicts. I was at Maigatari, a border town between the Niger Republic and Nigeria. And there were these pregnant/ new mothers that were underage indigents and migrants. They had what we call uterovesical fistula and were urinating (incontinence) on themselves.

The issue was not even healing the condition but the psychological trauma itself. I had to visit them weekly, and I realised that talking about just physical health is not where it ends; you have to look at the whole person. It’s like you can put a bandage on a wound, but if you don’t get to know the person, understand where they’re coming from, understand the stresses they have experienced in life, the traumas they have

experienced in life, the person is not going to heal.

I tell every patient, ‘I’m going to give you this medication, but it doesn’t end there; you have to be connected with a counselor, you have to be connected with a therapist.’

And also, as I’m prescribing medication, I infuse applicable psychotherapy into what I do. In Maigatari, I had a New mothers’ group. So, as I’m repairing fistulas, doing Caesarean Section and Appendectomy, treating malaria, etc., I would sit with these new mothers and talk about their trauma, which was eye-opening for me. You would see somebody that cannot speak, and they would think it’s a spiritual attack. No, it’s not a spiritual attack! It is trauma related presentation.

Coming back home, I have also had very close relatives with mental health issues. They take them to the church and all that. But when I got involved and started the person on the medication, I started seeing significant improvement. So, it’s not just what I see outside; I have friends and family members who have been through this. And I understood that mental health was something missing in Nigeria.

How did your career take shape after postgraduate?

Okay, so I did four years postgraduate and became a board certified Diplomate, American Board of Psychiatry & Neurology. I did it at

“ I’m focused on individuals with severe mental illnesses that require a particular medication they call ‘Clozapine.’

I’m among the few Psychiatrist that prescribes this medication in the United States. It’s a medication that helps when everything else has failed.

Loma Linda University Health California. To be competitive, I also did a Master’s in Public Health with an emphasis on community health. When I finished my postgraduate, I started working in a local government’s Department of Behavioral Health. I started as a staff psychiatrist, treating complex neuropsychiatric problems. Then I became the clinical medical director of the whole clinic/program. I’ll say it’s one of the biggest clinics in California for individuals with severe mental illness.

I’m focused on individuals with severe mental illnesses that require a particular medication they call ‘Clozapine.’ I’m among the few Psychiatrist that prescribes this medication in the United States. It’s a medication that helps when everything else has failed. They refer these very bad cases to me, which is what I do in this clinic, and managing other physicians. I’m also an assistant professor at Loma Linda University, Health, Western University of Health Sciences in California, and the California University of Science and Medicine. I nurture new doctors in neuropsychiatry.

Sadly, listening to you reminds me of Nigeria’s brain drain problem. Imagine if we didn’t lose you and many other brilliant medical doctors to the west. Is the problem with our healthcare system irredeemable?

Just to let me give you a background. You won’t believe that all through the time I was working in Maigatari, taking all the risks, part of my team was threatened with an attack on two occasions. The irony is that they don’t pay you a living wage when they pay.

This is why I call it economic migration instead of brain drain. You work for like six months, no salaries. I supported some of the projects we were doing in Maigatari through what we call moonlighting or private practice. You work in a private hospital in addition to your regular assignment, just to feed yourself. So it’s not like doctors don’t like Nigeria; it is very shameful.

If you look at the strikes that are going on, it’s due to nonpayment of salaries; it doesn’t make sense. I listened to the news during the COVID epidemic; the hazard allowance wasn’t paid. Do you know how many doctors died in Nigeria from COVID? Imagine a doctor who doesn’t have a house and can’t pay his rent. He can’t even put fuel in your car. What are you giving to your patients? So, you come into the office hungry, thinking about rent payment and buying fuel for your vehicle. Just imagine that kind of picture.

Sometimes last year, the Minister of Labour and Employment, Dr. Chris Ngige, described Nigeria’s medical treatment as “fairly okay.” Do you agree?

No, I don’t see it this way. Just to let you know that I’ve been involved in many consultations in-person and via zoom, where I educate Nigerian doctors on treatment recommendations. It’s not like the doctor doesn’t know, but there is something we call continuous medical education. That means you have to be updating your knowledge. If I don’t do it here, I will lose my license. There is an exam I have to take once in a while, even at my level as a consultant.

I’m a diplomate of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology and a Life Fellow of the American Psychiatry Association. I still have to maintain that certification. It’s not like the doctors don’t know you have to update, but when you think about feeding and paying your bills, how will you have time or money to do all these? I’m not saying that the doctors are not good, but we are lacking in all those areas. We lack the facilities to make this happen. What many Nigerian doctors are doing is managing what they have. Why are they setting drips for everybody? You come into the hospital, and they put a drip on you because that’s all they have.

What is the standard practice?

They call it Evidence-Based practice. It means that guidelines are developed based on tested and proven treatments that have yielded results. The testing is what we call randomized controlled trials, where you say, ‘I gave this person this medication, what was the outcome? I have done this procedure for the last 20 years, and a new procedure has been introduced as a modified version of the older one. Let’s compare the outcome.’ So, you have to test everything; that is the essence of science.

Science is not absolute, and medicine is an art and a science. I’m not saying there is no indication for drip, don’t get me wrong. I’m trying to say that a lot of the things that are being done, the “software” (knowledge/skills/attitude), need to be updated. The government has a significant role since most consultants are in government hospitals.

We know that the problems are there. In your opinion, what needs to be done to get things right?

I’m still an advocate of what we call Private-Public partnerships. Government has to partner with the private sector. I believe there should be an investment in training to monitor/evaluate medical education. I think there should be international collaborations with many doctors in the diaspora.

I participate in a lot of medical education in Nigeria from here. I do many activities through my foundation, TAF, and other non-governmental organizations owned by people like medoctors in the diaspora – are doing a lot in Nigeria. If you go to rural places during holidays like Christmas, you’ll see many free health care programs. Most of these free health programs are organized by doctors in the diaspora.

why did we make this error? Are we likely to make this error? Or what can we do to prevent errors we are not even sure would happen? It’s like a constant stress test.

I think there must be more coordinated activities between every local primary health care and private sector—local and international private sectors. The key, to me, is equipping our primary health care centers, not even buying too much equipment but grassroots innovation, where you are training the health care at grassroots on evidence-based methods of treating people that are readily accessible and sustainable. This is not something that should start from the top, and it should be a grass root thing, where the local governments play a significant role.

What are the life lessons you have learned on your journey?

Some of the life lessons I’ve learnt include not giving up. Keep pushing, don’t settle,

and keep questioning the system. When I have meetings here, and everybody tells me everything is okay, I’d say, ‘No, that means things are not working well. We have to test the system.’ In Nigeria, we have leaders who don’t want to be questioned. We have people in positions that are hesitant to attract new graduates with new ideas.

You can’t be comfortable with how things are working. Even if it’s working well, you keep challenging the system, and that’s how you bring about constant development.

When I was in Nigeria, this chief executive didn’t want to allow experts to get involved because he had the ‘this is the way we do things’ mindset. But when I got to the US, I was surprised by how everything was questioned. You will hear something like,

I would say, don’t ever give up. Bad times will happen. If I tell you that it was smooth sailing for me, that would be a lie. I met some house officers when I visited Nnamdi Azikwe University Teaching Hospital around 2021. I told them that if there are no problems, what are we living for? If there are no challenges, what are we living for? You are going to fall flat, you’re going to fail, and it’s okay to cry. But you have to wipe your tears and keep moving. That is life.

I have colleagues who have done well in Nigeria. They are investing heavily in healthcare. Is it affordable for the average man? That’s another question for discussion. But they were committed that ‘I’m going to make the situation work for me, I’m not traveling,’ and they made it happen. Then there will be many disappointments for those who want to travel. Many of us came here and took all the exams, some didn’t pass, and some even passed, but the program couldn’t recruit them. So, the bottom line is this; life is all about challenges; just keep pushing.

Yes, I’m already investing. I do a lot of nonprofit activities in Nigeria. I collaborate with doctors at the medical centers, and many of my colleagues are consultants. We collaborate to do a lot of grassroots programs. I have a small office in my village in Nigeria that focuses on grassroots health. So, I’m not giving up on Nigeria. I hope to do more. We discuss innovative ways to bring about grassroots health, and that’s my main focus.

What do you tell a young Nigerian still struggling to achieve career success and probably looking to travel abroad for greener pastures?

You mentioned some of your friends are investing in healthcare in Nigeria; are you considering doing the same?

By Dimeji Akinloye

How I Became the World’s First & Only Fully Trained

Heart and Kidney Specialist - Olurotimi

Badero

If adversity were a person, that would be Dr. Olurotimi John Badero, the world’s first and only fully trained Cardionephrologist. From his childhood in Nigeria to when he relocated to the United States, he barely experienced success in his first or second attempts at anything, not because he was not qualified, but simply from obstacles in his path at nearly every turn of his life, but interestingly, his father had prepared him for it all

Eventually, when Dr. Badero began to break barriers in the US and his name became familiar in Europe, Asia, and Australia, the trials and tribulations he faced finally made sense to him. As he says, he was on a journey to destiny.

Dr. Badero shares his compelling story with Business Elites Africa in this interview. He talks about the accidents that almost took his life, the day he became a beggar at a Philadephia train station and more.

of times. I remember one night he invited me to his room. He had a conversation with me and told me that ‘if you study medicine, you’re going to follow the path of your destiny and you’re going to do something very special in the world, and you’re going to have a significant impact on the world.’

And lastly, he mentioned that his blessings follow me. Actually, that was why I decided to study medicine - when I heard that his blessing was going to follow me, and I guess he was just trying to make sure that I did what he wanted me to do. That’s how I ended up in medicine.

The work is never done, and I’m never satisfied. People always ask me, what is your motto? And for me, my motto is ‘11, never 12. This means that the clock never strikes 12 in my book. When the clock is about to strike 12, I bring it back to 11 and then start again.

I’ve learned that you can’t possess inheritance by ignorance, but you can possess ignorance by inheritance and what I possessed by inheritance from my parents was education and especially my dad, whom I was very close to. Being a physician or a doctor was never my choice. I never wanted to be a doctor. I actually wanted to be an engineer.

My dad was very persistent; he told me it was part of my destiny. I refused a couple

Basically, I never stay satisfied. I never stay complacent. There is always more to do. If you think you’ve done it all, that means you just don’t have a clear understanding of life. You have to understand that you can always get better. Only God is perfect. Nobody is perfect. If you think you’re perfect, then you’re mistaken. As long as you are in this world, you have the opportunity to keep doing things and keep getting better.

So, to answer your question, I don’t think I’m completely fulfilled. You can only be completely fulfilled in God. In terms of my professional career, I’m happy and grateful to God for what he has done. And I’m hoping that he gives me more grace and strength to impact more lives and leave a better legacy.

Was it your choice to study medicine or your parents’?

In hindsight, would you say that you’ve achieved your dream?

I grew up in a middle-class family. It was a large family of eight children. My dad is an erudite figure. He didn’t know his dad - his dad died when he was eight months old, and his last name was actually Onasoga, not Badero. His father’s first name was Badero, and everywhere he went, people would say he looked like Badero. So, to immortalise a man he never knew, he adopted Badero.

I grew up in a household where education was very big for my parents. My mom was a banker. I was the closest child to my dad, which really helped me because I stayed in his room. We actually slept on the same bed until I was ten years old when I attended secondary school.

He taught me a lot. He talked to me in parables and showered me with so much love. I was the the first one with a bicycle in my house. I was the first to attend a private school; all my siblings attended public schools and did well. But he was adamant that I would attend a private school. He showed me so much love, and he didn’t hide it. He didn’t spoil us because he didn’t have much money but placed emphasis on education.

I faced a lot of challenges as a child. When my mom was around five months pregnant with me, she went to Lagos Island maternity hospital, and in those days, the doctors were mostly Caucasians. An ultrasound was performed and there was no baby inside her womb. They told her she was not pregnant, and she said to them, ‘this is my seventh pregnancy; I know when I’m pregnant.’ Three months later, I was born.

Also, when it was time for elementary school, my dad wanted to enroll me in a private school which was quite difficult and competitive at the time. In a miraculous circumstance, I got in. I took the national common entrance and was accepted at King’s College. When it was time to resume, my name was taken off the list and replaced with a Northern student and the battles went on. As a compensation, I was given admission into Federal Government

College, Odogbolu, where I was one of the last admitted students. As God would have it, in my fifth year, I won an award for the best student in the country in a science quiz competition.

Every stage was quite tough. My dad always told me, ‘ born to win means born to fight. If you’re going to be special, you will be faced with many adversities.’ Anyway, I had a great childhood. I can’t complain. I grew up with what I would call the A and the B sides. I grew up with privileged kids and, at the same time, with kids that didn’t have anything. I think the ability to transcend that barrier and relate with different types of people shaped my adulthood.

Did you relocate to the US after University?

After graduating from Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile Ife, I completed my internship there as well and my Youth Service Corps (NYSC) in Lagos. I eventually relocated to the United States, which was quite challenging. I spent eight years in medical school at OAU Ife instead of six due to multiple student unrest and school closures. The day the final results were released, I hitched a ride to Lagos to inform my parents and I had a motor vehicle accident. The car flipped over multiple times, and were unhurt. It was only by the mercies of God that we survived

When I eventually got home, I never got a chance to celebrate being a doctor because I was told my younger brother had just had passed away. He was my closest sibling. He was very intelligent with a quiet and calm disposition. Wonderful human being. His name was Olanrewaju Badero

That was a tough time for me. When I eventually decided to relocate, my visa applications got rejected everywhere I applied. I then applied for a visa at the American embassy, and on getting there for my interview, the process had to be stopped for some reason. Eventually my interview was successful and was told to return later to pick up my visa. When I returned to pick up my passport with the included visa, I kept waiting until everyone had obtained

their passports with visas. I was the only one left, and the official asked me, ‘what are you still doing here? I said I was waiting for my passport, and he told me there was no more passport left. It turned out that one of the cleaners found my passport in the trash can. How the passport got in the trash can is still a mystery to me.

That just tells you the journey you have to embark on to get to your place of destiny or Rehoboth. I believe destiny has to go on a journey. In the Bible, David had a destiny but had to go on a journey. He was anointed king when he was young but didn’t become king immediately. He got to Saul’s palace, and Saul tried to kill him. He had to flee. The same thing with Joseph. He was sold into slavery and had to be in the pit before fulfilling his destiny. So, when you have a destiny, you must go on a journey. It’s not very straightforward and nice, but it’s something that you have to pass through. This is because you’ll discover God, your passion and destiny during that journey.

When you got to the US, did things just start working out for you?

No, things were not easy. Nothing is ever easy. I did all types of jobs. I worked as a security guard, and I did menial jobs. There were times I had to eat leftover food from a Chinese restaurant and could not afford McDonald burger when I was studying for my exams. I had no money.

I had to take 3 exams before starting post graduate medical training in the US. The first two were paid for by a sibling which I was grateful for. But I had to sort out the third one on my own and I didn’t have money to pay for the exam. God brought a total stranger to rescue me, an Ethipioan lady whom we studied together. Her name is Seble Wongel Bulcha. She gave me $1,000. The exam cost $1,200 at the time which was a big relief. I had to work multiple security jobs to raise the remaining $200.

This was an eight hour exam offered in Philadelphia which was the only site in the US, so everyone has to come to Philly to take the test. I didn’t even have transportation

Let’s talk more about your growing up in Nigeria. What was your background like?

money from New York. So, this same person had to give me some money for transportation.

When I arrived in Philadelphia, I didn’t have money for hotel or a place to sleep so I slept at the train station overnight, and the police had to wake me up in the morning to get up and then I went for the test. I had no food to eat throughout the whole exam. After the test was over, I didn’t have money to return to New York where I was staying at the time. I was stuck in the train station on market street where I had to beg passengers for money to get back to New York.

I wanted to be a Cardiologist but my dream was met with a lot of resistance related to personal politics which I didn’t want to get into. Despite being one of the best in my set and scoring high at the interview, my application was rejected. I eventually got into Nephrology training program at Emory University, which was very difficult to get into as an African-American, especially as a foreigner from Nigeria.

On getting to Emory, I wanted to be the best, so I was admitted to three concurrent programs simultaneously; Nephrology, Interventional nephrology and MSCR programs. The cardiology offer eventually came mid way through my Nephrology training which was pivotal point during my career and training. Thanks to Prof Moro Salifu who advised me to do both. I started my Cardiology training and the resistance started again when I wanted to apply for Interventional Cardiology training. I had to apply for a scholarship by the ABC (Association of black cardiologists) given to the best cardiology trainee in the country. I won that award in 2008 and lost it because I was not in my final year at the time, so I was not even eligible to apply for the grant. My academic path was blcoked everywhere I went. And that’s how I ended up in Cardio-Nephrology, Combined Heart and Kidney.

I never wanted to do it. I just wanted to be a cardiologist but God had other plans for me.

Thankfully, you were recognized as the only fully-trained Kidney and Heart specialist in the world.

Do you still hold that title?

I don’t pay attention to those things. As I said, I wanted to be a Cardiologist, and people stood in my way. Eventually, I got into Nephrology, and the same people that refused me later gave me the opportunity and at this time I was just halfway through my Nephrology training, and I was the only black trainee in my department at Emory. So, I was caught in between a rock and a hard place.

I spoke to some people; who told me Emory was a very good school and I should just finish my Nephrology training there. while others advised me to leave my program uncompleted and pursue my Cardiology training in New York. I spoke with my friend and mentor, Moro Salifu, who happens to is a Ghanaian and a wonderful person.

The first thing he told me was, ‘why don’t you do both? It’s never been done before. I said, how are we going to do it? So, he said we had to devise a strategy, and we did. I deferred my admission to Cardiology, finished in Nephrology, and then went back to study Cardiology. That’s how I became a cardio-nephrologist.

When the media people came to me for interviews, saying I was the first to do it, I said I was not interested because I’m a very private person. I don’t really like publicity, and they told me, ‘well, this is not about you. This is bigger than you. This has to be documented.

There is a doctor, Latunde Odeku who was actually the first black neurosurgeon in the US and nothing was written about him because of things like this. He died in

Nigeria. So I was told we don’t want you to be another Latunde Odeku

To answer your question, I don’t pay attention to the narrative. I’m thankful to the God that I was the first to do it, complete a full training and be certified in Cardiology and Nephrology. I hope there will be others in the future because it’s an important and emerging field.

I’m appreciative of the opportunity to do something special and represent Nigeria and indeed the African continent. It’s a blessing and could not have been achieved without God’s grace. It’s not because I’m the smartest person around, but just destiny, which was what my dad spoke about when I was 16 years old.

A lot of Africa’s best brains, like you, are thriving and making impacts abroad, but the healthcare space

in the continent is suffering. How can we get these assets to come home and replicate that success?

I grew up in an era of political contestation fragmented by a dominant military disposition. The military hegemonic oligarchy, which was once a dominant political construct in the Nigerian state, has now faded into the dust of political history but caused a lot of instability in the country.

In my opinion, that was the beginning of the brain drain in Nigeria. Before 1985, the Naira was stronger than the dollar. With the military in government, there was instability because it’s not the will of the people. There was no safety. Any one could be arrested and jailed.

And finally, when a democratic government was installed, people started leaving for economic reasons.

I also left because it was very difficult at the time I graduated. Doctors were not really paid much. You couldn’t even afford to buy a car, and people working in the banking industry were getting paid more than doctors. Many people left for greener pastures to develop themselves and live a better life.

Now that we have Nigerians breaking barriers worldwide, we have enough people to come back to Nigeria and make a difference. We must however create a fostering environment for people to come back.

The first thing is to ensure safety. Right now, Nigeria is not functionally safe. There are lots of kidnappings and other security challenges. Diasporans want to relocate back to their land but safety has to guaranteed for them and their families. That’s the first problem that needs to be fixed.

And also, the economy needs to be improved. People don’t have money to eat, so how will they afford healthcare when they can’t feed themselves? Healthcare in Nigeria is still a fee-for-service system. Unlike in America or the UK, where there is an insurance scheme. I know the insurance system is now available in Nigeria but it is till growing and not as robust and comprehensive.

The low income class people who really need insurance can’t afford fee for service healthcare. Healthcare also needs to be regularized. We have to ensure that our healthcare system, in terms of insurance, becomes more widespread for the average person in Surulere or Ajegunle to afford.

The other thing is that power has to be consistent and reliable. Nigeria’s power supply is still very intermittent. You have to spend a lot of money on diesel to generate power for your home or business. Guess what? That overhead cost will have be transferred to patients who can barely afford the essential things already.

If we fix these things, people will relocate back to Nigeria. People are relocating now albeit slowly. The truth is, Nigerians want to come back. They are one of the most patriotic people in the world. They want to improve the country, but you have to create an enabling environment and reach out to experts in different fields.

That’s why I think the leadership we need in Nigeria must be meritocratic as well as technocratic

We have to put somebody in there that is exposed and understands that things have to be based on merit. You don’t make somebody the minister of Petroleum when the person is not an engineer or make a lawyer the minister of health. The emphasis should not be on the person; the focus should be on the country because the vision is always bigger than the visioner. The vision always outlives the visioner.

What have been the most challenging moments of your career?

I’ve had many challenging moments, which I’m chronicling in my book. I’ll tell you a couple of them. I’ve already told you about my accident when I graduated from medical school. When I came to the United States, I had another accident. It was when I just started Cardiology, which was what I’ve always wanted to do.

I was rear ended on my way tom work on a bridge in New York and my car climbed the side rails and left hanging on the bridge. The car almost fell into the ocean. I had to crawl out through the window. I had a concussion and was in the hospital. My family didn’t even know about it because I didn’t tell many people.

What lessons have you learnt in your journey?

First of all, God has to be your essence. The rhythm of my existence is captured in my spirituality. God is the focus and essence of everything I do, hence my name, Oluwarotimi, which means God is always with me.

I have learnt that without commitment, you cannot start anything and without consistency, you can’t finish. You have to be persistent. Some of the key factors of success are time, persistence and work. The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary. And you have to believe in yourself.

My dad always told me,‘ born to win means born to fight. If you’re going to be special, you will be faced with many adversities

Folake Owodunni is Redefining How Africans Respond to Health Emergency

|| By Dimeji Akinloye

Growing up in a culture where government first responders are the last to show up in emergency situations, many Africans, by default, resort to self-help. But for someone like Nigerian entrepreneur Folake Owodunmi who lives in Canada, where the healthcare system is functional, it is an anomaly.

With a burning desire to solve one of Africa’s biggest problems, Folake returned to Nigeria to start Emergency Response Africa, a healthcare technology company building the largest network of First Responders in Africa, starting with Nigeria.

Folake tells Business Elites Africa that she’s determined to bring the incessant unnecessary deaths due to poor healthcare in Africa to the barest minimum. But how will she scale the systemic and economic hurdles in her path? She bares it all in this interview.

Why did you start Emergency Response Africa?

It came from my personal experience with my family. I have two children. And when my son was about a year and a half old, he had a medical emergency. It happened in the middle of the night, but it also happened in Canada, specifically.

And the only thing I needed to do was call 911, which I did. Within about ten minutes, an ambulance arrived with two paramedics. They came into the house, they attended to him and fortunately, it turned out to be a minor emergency. At the end of it, they said, ‘you really don’t need to go to the hospital. He seems to be fine.’ They advised that I may go and see my doctor in the morning if necessary, and that was the end.

And I remember thinking that if this had happened in Nigeria, I would probably have gone to my neighbour’s door and say, ‘please come and take us to the hospital.’ They would have driven us to the hospital, and the hospital near my house in Nigeria at the time had a very bad reputation.

So, I already knew that even if we got to the hospital, there was a risk that we would be delayed or sent to more than one facility, which happens very often. Knowing this is a gap in our system today and I have a background in public health, and I’ve always been very interested in how to make healthcare better and more accessible, I pursued the opportunity.

What’s your background in public health?

I studied Biology for my first degree and went on to do a Master’s in World Health and Development. And as a part of that, I was very interested in policy and program

design. I also recently completed another Masters in Business Entrepreneurship on Technology. So, Emergency Response Africa is a combination of those things.

How exactly does Emergency Response Africa work?

We are building the largest network of first responders, emergency vehicles and hospitals and putting them on a platform that allows us to coordinate them efficiently. What that means is whether you’re in Lagos, Abuja or Port Harcourt and, soon, many more cities across Nigeria, if you have an emergency and need help, you reach out to us, we will be able to get you a responder or an ambulance on the scene as quickly as possible.

People can reach out to us through our 24/7 toll-free line, which is 08000-2255-372. It means you can call us even though you don’t have airtime, and you will reach a medical dispatcher. This is somebody who’s trained as a paramedic but also understands how to triage your case over the phone and determine the type of care you need.

The second way people can reach us is via our mobile app called signal by ERA, which is available on both the Google play store and Apple store. Once your request is submitted through the app, the dispatch receives it on their end, and they can complete that process. Once that request is in progress, we send out our first responders to the

Interview

scene, and they treat the patient as much as possible. We deliver care at the emergency scene, and if the person needs to go to the hospital, we also facilitate that transportation.

I want to mention also that our first responders can arrive not just with an ambulance but also with a motorcycle, and when you think of a place like Lagos, that’s especially important because of the traffic.

opportunities to work with the government and collaborate with other brands interested in providing some sort of funding to subsidise our service delivery for those who can’t afford it.

I’ll give you an example. We often get calls that somebody has been knocked down on the road or somebody finds somebody unconscious, but there is nobody to take responsibility. One of the most difficult things for an emergency service provider is the inability to go in and address those situations. That’s because there is no clear path as to how we will identify the next of kin. Are we taking them to the hospital? Do they have insurance?

With any new business, you learn as you go, and there’s a lot you won’t know until you start. I think this point that I mentioned about low trust; I believe our team understood that this is not something that exists in a really strong way right now, which means that people are not used to it.

We find that people often reach out to emergency services as a last resort. Whereas it is supposed to be the first. We want to change that. I think conversations like this are a big part of changing that, helping people see that when you have something that strikes you as an emergency, don’t wait or try another method, pouring water and the like. Don’t do everything except reach out to an emergency provider. Let that be your first effort.

I think we’re starting to see that some people are learning a little more. I think the education that we’re doing is helping.

Those are all the things that need to be considered. As a business, we know that while we can provide our service to the individuals who can afford it and work with the corporates, a huge segment of the population needs to be covered. I think that’s where government collaboration comes in.

We have some of this coming up, which we are really excited about, but I can’t share too much at this stage. But I do think that’s really going to be the path to scaling our service delivery to cover as many Nigerians as possible.

If I had an emergency and called Emergency Response Africa, what’s

Can

an ordinary Nigerian afford your service, though?

What we do is try to find different ways to make it accessible. So, first of all, anyone can follow us, reach us, and use the service. However, there is a fee attached, and the truth is not everyone can pay for it. And that’s a big part of why some of the things we’ll be doing later this year are finding

It varies very widely because it depends on several factors. So, if someone is not being transported, there’s a certain price. If someone is being transported, it’s a different price. It depends on the level of care that is required. There is a very big difference between a basic life support ambulance and a mobile Intensive Care Unit (ICU). So, I can’t tell you that this is the price.

I would say that affordability is a challenge for many people on a single transfer or a single response basis. And that’s why we’re taking several measures. We’re starting to engage in partnerships with either community or corporate organisations to allow people to

It’s one thing to conceptualise an idea; execution is a different ball game. How was the experience, when you launched the business?

access it as a subscription. This means that you can pay less per person, and it’s a fee that covers you for a year so that if anything happens in that year, you’re taken care of.

We’re also looking to implement a buy now, pay later partnership. That’s something that we have in the works and what it means is that anybody who signs up with us through our app can prequalify for a certain number of credits. This means that if you need the service, whether it’s for yourself, your family member, or somebody else, you can receive it without worrying about paying right at the point of care. Then, you and that provider can work out a payment plan - whether you want to pay back in three or six months. So that’s another measure that we’re taking to make this more accessible to more people.

What do you enjoy the most about your entrepreneurship journey?

That’s an interesting question. I think two things. One of them is just the challenge of figuring out a problem and how to solve it. At the root of entrepreneurship is a desire to solve a problem. Oftentimes people shy away from doing hard things. For whatever reason, we picked perhaps one of the hardest things to do in healthcare, but I think that’s the fun.

There’s no doubt that we have not even come close to solving the problem. And for me, I think as long as the problem persists, we have a lot to do. The second one is the people. Entrepreneurs are truly some of the most incredible people I’ve met. Both in terms of their passion, and drive, and they are smart. It’s been truly fun and a privilege to meet with so many great people in the healthcare space and more widely across the business.

Are there times you feel so exhausted and feel like giving up?

Of course. Like yesterday. I don’t think there is anybody in business who doesn’t feel like that at some point. I think what helps is, number one, just a fundamental desire to see that problem solved. This is something I’m incredibly passionate about. Healthcare is a right. It is something that people deserve to have access to by virtue of being human. They don’t need any other qualifications. So, in order to be able to achieve that, we need people that able to pursue that impressively. And that’s something that reminds me that, ‘you know what, the problem still exists, there is still an opportunity to solve it. Today might have been difficult; take a step back, rest if you need to, but tomorrow we keep going.’

What are the lessons you have learnt?

One of the lessons I have learnt and still learning is being able to move quickly. The environment is always changing. The needs of patients, customers, and whoever you’re serving

are constantly evolving; keeping a pulse on that and making changes in line with what you’re learning is really key.

There are so many examples of businesses that eventually go under because they failed to keep up with the changes. I think that’s one thing that I am learning, and we are really trying to practice.

What would you advise someone planning to start a business in Nigeria?

I think one of them is to start, but start smart. Sometimes, people say, ‘when I have all this time, or I need to have all this money and pour everything into this business.’ One of the big things I’ve learnt is, fundamentally, unless there is a clear demand even before you think about starting, you have to validate that your idea is a good one.

You may have an idea, and it may sound good to you and your friends, and family and your mother may tell you that it’s wonderful. But that doesn’t mean anything. You have to find ways to validate it. And validating should not necessarily require you to spend millions of naira. There should be small tests that you run, small ways that you can put your ideas out into the market and get feedback.

What if things don’t seem to work out? Would you advise an entrepreneur to quit?

Quitting is a tough one because I know of entrepreneurs who have quit, and I know some that kept pushing for a long time and then eventually, something worked. So, I don’t know if I will necessarily say you should quit. I think it goes back to your validation process. The question is, did you validate there was actually a problem? If there is indeed a problem, the question is, are you bringing the right solutions to that problem? Because it could be that there is indeed a problem, but you don’t have the right solution, in which case you don’t necessarily need to quit; you need to pivot.

Pivot simply means you’re changing direction. Maybe a change in how you deliver value, or you’re changing who you are targeting. And that’s very common. All startups, at some point, will eventually pivot. So, if that’s the case, that’s not quitting; it’s doing something different.

I don’t think I would ever wake up and say quit outrightly. There are a lot of things you can try; a lot of changes you can make before you get to the point of saying, ‘clearly, this is not working.’

If you discover that there is no problem to solve, then yes, there is a strong case for quitting and finding something else to do. But again, that’s where validation comes in, and you don’t want to find this out after you put your life savings, quit your job and put everything into it

How ABC Orjiako, a Nigerian Medical Doctor Transitioned to an Oil Mogul

Profile || By Kenechukwu Muoghalu

How Orjiako Transitioned to Being a Businessman

Orjiako diverted into business because it was in his family’s lineage. In his words, he said, “I come from a business family, my late father was a businessman and all around me I could see business opportunities that are being handled very poorly”.

Just to get enough ground in his new interest, Orjiako enrolled on a course in business management at the Harvard Business School. Earned his certificate in no time and got well equipped for the new business.

Orjiako went fully into the oil and gas business. Soon enough he founded a company called Shebah Exploration and Production Company. Orjiako also co-founded SEPLAT petroleum development with his Shebah exploration and production company and Platform Petroleum Limited in 2009.

The Health Industry Was Never Called Quit After All

Dr Ambrose Bryant Chukwueloka Orjiako, popularly known as A.B.C Orjiako, has once again proven to be a multitalented man. ABC Orjiako was born on the 2nd of October, 1960, in Calabar, Cross Rivers State. He was born and raised into an Igbo family by the late Daniel Obiesie Orjiako and Rebecca Orjiako who were from Umuchima in Uli. In 1978, ABC Orjiako finished his primary and secondary school at Sacred Heart Primary School, Calabar, Holy Cross Primary School, Uli and Uli High School and came out as the top student.

ABC Orjiako’s Interest in Science

Orjiako realised how he fancied science and proceeded to study Medicine at the University of Calabar. Even while he was still a student, ABC Orjiako’s intelligence was recognised. He became the director of the International Federation of medical

students and the African region. As that was not enough, Orjiako was also made the chairman of the standing committee of the African Medical students Association.

Soon, Orjiako graduated as one of the best students yet again in 1985, with an MBBCH degree in General Surgery. With the degree, Orjiako ventured into training as an orthopaedic surgeon with a speciality in trauma surgery at National Hospital, Igbobi. Orjiako also became a Senior House Officer in the General Surgery Section at the University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital in 1987.

He was science-thirsty. After years of constant practice, he became part of the West African College of Medicine and Nigerian postgraduate Medical college. At a point, Orjiako sought more investments which led him to drop his surgeon gown, goggles and gloves and venture into the business world.

Even after Orjiako’s involvement in business, he still had a foot in the health industry. One can never get enough of that sector. ABC Orjiako’s investment was not limited to the oil and gas industry, he also paid debut to real estate, banking and even pharmaceutical industries.

Orjiako’s involvement in the pharmaceutical companies gave him a chance to exercise the role of the chairman in Neimeth Pharmaceuticals Plc where he acquired tremendous units of shares worth less than a billion and made a lot of positive changes to the health sector.

So far, Orjiako has received numerous awards and recognitions for his service to humanity and his entrepreneurial achievements.

In all, his medical practices were not in vain because he would always say that “as a surgeon, you cannot make mistakes. You have to be disciplined, organised, have an eye for detail, manage your team effectively, make tough decisions and take on big responsibilities”.

By Simeon Onoja

Lifestores Healthcare is Using Technology to Democratise Primary Healthcare:

A Conversation With Andrew Garza

player to really standardise a high level of quality in the market.

We realised that with technological changes over the past decades, there was a big opportunity to use technology to support healthcare providers to enable their patients to be healthier.

proprietary software, Pharma IQ?

We caught up with Andrew Garza, the co-founder of Lifestores Healthcare. The health tech platform is helping to democratise access to primary healthcare by digitising hospitals and pharmacies. Garza shares insights on funding, scaling, and operating a health tech startup in Nigeria.

What influenced your decision to launch Lifestores Healthcare in Nigeria?

We were three co-founders that launched it together, Bryan Mezue, Pharm. Ken Ahaotu, and myself. I previously worked as a consultant in South Africa and Nigeria for several years.

After that, I worked for one of my client companies, Chi Pharmaceuticals, a Nigerian pharmaceutical manufacturer and importer. There I learned several things about the pharmaceutical space in Nigeria that ultimately inspired me to want to start Lifestores.

The first thing is that, from the patient perspective, there’s a range of challenges that people face. For example, regarding access to medications, somewhere between

20 and 50% of medicines that patients can access are fake medications, and, at best, they don’t work as effectively; it also means people sometimes die from drugs due to substandard ingredients. It’s a scourge in Nigeria that shocked me.

I also learned that even though a large portion of the population has severe budgetary constraints, medications are quite expensive in Nigeria - in many cases, up to four times international reference prices.

On the patient outcome side, I also saw that about 40% of Nigerians over 25 either have hypertension or are pre-hypertensive. So, there are all kinds of health care conditions that are affecting people in very large numbers, to a much greater degree than they should be.

At the same time, I observed a number of issues on the B2B side that influenced these patient challenges. My experience at Chi Pharma was more on the B2B side, where we served pharmaceutical wholesalers, hospitals, and pharmacies.

I observed that the space was incredibly fragmented, where there was no clear lead - a very large hospital or pharmacy chain that took a large market share. Because of that fragmentation, it was hard for any

It certainly was. We looked around the world and recognised tremendous advancements in technology. It was a matter of applying some of that existing technology and, to some extent, innovating based on what makes sense in our local environment to support healthcare providers, who I regard as the heroes of the healthcare space; these are the players at the front line of primary health care.

riefly elaborate on what our tech platform is, it is called PharmIQ and there are basically two aspects. On the one hand, we have what we call a digital pharmaceutical marketplace called OGApharmacy, which enables hospitals and pharmacies to procure genuine products at low prices; we do this by combining the procurement requirements of hundreds of healthcare providers and negotiating with manufacturers and importers on their behalf.

The second component an ERP that we have built specifically for the needs of pharmacists in Nigeria – informed heavily by our own team of pharmacists. It manages the core aspects of a pharmacy, including sales, inventory, and procurement, with several pharmacy-specific features like expiry notifications.

The initial response from healthcare providers has been positive, with 25% monthly growth. Building on this foundation, we’re excited to launch new products and features on our

So talking about technology, could that be what inspired the launch of your

roadmap that use AI to make healthcare providers’ work easier and patients healthier.

So what was it like starting the

business?

We started with the vision of democratising access to quality and affordable health care, which is still our focus. However, we started with what we thought was an effective strategy at that point, which was to build a tech-enabled pharmacy chain like Boots for Africa – this was the first couple of years of our journey as a startup.

And there were several highs and lows on that journey. Over time, we realised that if we were looking to have that impact of democratising access to healthcare, there was probably a faster way to do it.

If we took the hurdles that we observed in our own business, such as in procurement, finance, and technology, we realized that these were challenges for other healthcare providers as well. Therefore, we decided to create a platform that provides solutions for all participating pharmacies and hospitals. The aim was to eliminate fake medications from the supply chain, reduce the cost of drugs, and give pharmacists extra time back to help their patients.

What were some of the resources you leveraged when starting the business?

In the initial phase when we were launching, there were a lot of resources that we leveraged. First of all, both Bryan and I had previously launched startups, so we were able to draw on that experience for insights on how to plan a new enterprise, hire the right people, and identify which hypotheses to validate.

Bryan and I both put in money from our savings as the initial seed funding for the first pharmacy we launched. From there, we raised money primarily from friends and people with whom we’d worked.

How did you get your pre-seed funding?

We bootstrapped the first store. Then we raised funds to acquire five more stores. And then we eventually pivoted to this new model of using technology to support

healthcare providers – which we will extend over time to directly supporting patients.

One of many interesting things for us on the fundraising side is that it’s a stage-gate model for startups – meaning that you start with a small amount of money to validate an initial hypothesis and then you are able to access more and more financing as you gain evidence that the approach is having an impact.

same was true in the six pharmacies we own. It was a time of high anxiety and a lot of planning to ensure everyone would be safe – both our team and our patients.

We perceived that healthcare providers have a big responsibility in that kind of health care emergency to give good information to the population and help people stay healthy. We channeled our services to help them achieve that.

What’s your advice for entrepreneurs?

We have an investor called Kepple, which connects innovative startups on the Continent with corporates in Japan that are looking to collaborate with companies pursuing innovative technology. Kepple highlighted the opportunity to us and we decided to apply. It was a competitive process and we were excited to ultimately win the NINJA prize.

What would you say was the winning strategy at NINJA?

Well, there were a few areas that they evaluated. First, they wanted to see the overall market size that we are pursuing. Is it large? Is it fast growing? Kind of a proxy as well for the question of potential patient impact.

Secondly, they wanted to know, are we addressing something where there’s a severe pain point for our customers. Thirdly, they wanted to know if our software was innovative and proprietary.

Lastly, they wanted to know about the team. Is it the right team to pursue this particular opportunity? So those are some of the things that they looked into.

Lifestores healthcare was already in business before the COVID-19 outbreak. What impact did it have on your business?

I remember very clearly, at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a time when the world didn’t know how dangerous it would be. How quickly would it spread?

At that moment, it felt like the world was holding its breath, and I know that the

I believe that before people start something, they ideally should have gained some experience in different functional areas, such as sales, finance, operations, and marketing; it’s much easier to lead a function if you’ve already had some exposure and know about it. Previous start-up experience is also helpful, since start-up work is often much faster-paced than corporate.

Secondly, you want to try and ensure that you have six to 12 months of money in your bank account before you quit a job to start something, in case it takes longer than you anticipated to get off the ground. It often takes a bit longer than you expect, and you don’t want to be distracted when you’re starting something by worrying about where your rent money will come from.

How do you deal with stress?

We all deal with it, and it’s undoubtedly inherent in the entrepreneurial journey. The biggest thing for me is trying to compartmentalise my time. It means that there’s one day every week, Sunday, that I completely take off work. I often spend the day with my fiancée doing something fun, like exploring a new part of the city.

Another way I manage this business stage is by having more defined roles, and responsibilities for different team memberswhat I mean by that is that in the early phase of a startup’s growth, you often have to do a bit of everything as the founder, but over time experienced managers can take on the leadership of various functions.

I also like to exercise - it’s essential to have something you can do to relieve stress physically.

You got some funding from the Next Innovation with Japan (NINJA) programme, how did you get in?

The Story of Afe Babalola, a Health Enthusiast Living Legend

law from home and also got his Bachelor of Laws degree from the University of London. He was later called to the England bar in 1963, just after he became a member of Lincoln’s Inn, London.

The Beginning of Afe Babalola’s Career

Afe Babalola’s quest for international standard health care, teaching, training and research services.

Babalola’s hospital was recognised by prominent professors to be a hospital that matches the best in the world, which will end up solving medical tourism outside Nigeria. On a normal day, Nigerians’ cost of medical tourism every year is more than one billion dollars, but with a standard and upskilled hospital, the health sector will be more reliable.

Afe Babalola is a Nigerian lawyer and health fanatic that has succeeded in making impossible circumstances possible. Dating back to the 30th of October, 1929, Afe Babalola was born into an agrarian family in Ado Ekiti, Ekiti State, Nigeria. As a child, he was trained on the farm and growing up Afe Babalola thought life ended with working on the farm and hunting for animals.

In 1973, he left his comfort zone and moved to town for his education. Babalola had his primary school at Emmanuel Anglican Primary School, Okesha, Ado-Ekiti. By 1950, he attempted a private study to cover his senior school certificate. Afe Babalola then sat for Cambridge School Certificate Exams and passed.

In 1953, Babalola went further to prepare for a Bachelor of Science Degree in Economics from the University of London, from home. Soon enough, he bagged his BSc degree in Economics. By 1963, he had already studied

Afe Babalola picked an interest in law and took off his law career in Ibadan, Oyo State, Nigeria. After a few years of his legal practice, Afe Babalola established his law firm and named it Afe Babalola and Co. He kept the fire on and soon became a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), which was the highest rank for legal professionals.

Afe Babalola was also made the prochancellor of the University of Lagos in 2001 and within 5 years, he won the best pro-chancellor award twice. At that instant, babalola discovered the talents he had in the educational system and proceeded to establish his university. By 2008, he birthed Afe Babalola University, with a total of 47 accredited courses and a standard farm for agriculture students.

When Babalola succeeded in exploring every rank of the law industry and education he decided to transfer his potential to the healthcare industry. A sector that needed his magic minds.

Afe Babalola’s Debut to the Nigerian Health Sector

Afe Babalola Multi-System Hospital came to reality on the 20th of October, 2017. The hospital was created out of

Babalola’s world-class multi-system hospital has over 400-bed capacity, an orthopaedic medical theatre, abdominal medical theatre, ear, nose and throat theatre, brain theatre, and cardiac theatre among others. After the creation of the Afe Babalola multi-system hospital, it was recognised with grants and loans from different personnel including the continental bank in Nigeria. Thus, the hospital has been providing specialized medical treatments for its patients.

Afe Babalola’s hospital also made provisions for speciality departments which include accident and emergency(A&E), internal medicine, surgery, paediatrics, obstetrics and gynaecology, community medicine, physiotherapy and dentistry among others. Afe Babalola was also proud to announce that his teaching hospital has over 95 qualified practitioners in Nigeria and abroad, who randomly fill up each department.

All these and more were what Afe Babalola pulled through to help heal and promote the Nigerian health industry. His great facility has gone wide because of its ability to provide incredible quality healthcare in Nigeria and avoid constant travel.

In his words, Babalola would say, “I must make it clear that this hospital is open to everyone, the rich and the not-so-rich alike. We will run this place like we run our chambers where we handle the cases of the not-so-rich at minimal charges while those who can pay are made to pay”

Meet Oluyinka O. Olutoye, a World Renowned Surgeon that Operated on a Foetus

top student and soon bagged a Bachelor’s degree in Medicine and Surgery in 1988.

To further his medical education, Prof. Olutoye relocated to the United States where he started his postgraduate education in paediatrics at the Howard University General Hospital. He later received PhD in Anatomy from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, finalised his residency in general surgery at the Medical College of Virginia Hospital and had his fellowship in paediatric surgery at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the University Of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in Philadelphia, USA.

The Dawn of Olutoye’s Medical Escapade

The name Oluyinka O. Olutoye has dwelt in the tongue of many after the gifted surgeon successfully performed an uncommon operation on a 23-weekold c. Olutoye’s quest for the unusual began at an early age just after he was born in Lagos on the 15th of January, 1967. He grew up with his 5 siblings while having a soldier father and an academic mother as parents. Olutoye had his primary education at the Lagos University Staff School and his secondary education at King’s College Lagos, before setting off to achieve his medical fantasies.

“I had a sick family member, and a doctor made a house call to see them, I remember following him around our home, trying to see as much as I could. After he left, I would play doctor around the house.” Olutoye said. This made him enroll in Obafemi Awolowo University Medical School Ile-Ife, became a

Olutoye acquired most of his training from the Virginia Commonwealth University surgery program which also helped him to become a pediatric surgeon. After his years of training, soon he got a job as a codirector of Texas Children’s Fetal Centre at Texas Children’s Hospital and also a professor of surgery, paediatrics and obstetrics at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. This was where most of his surgical practices went down.

Prof. Olutoye went from performing surgical procedures on children to other related pediatric practices. In February 2015, he went along with two Nigerian medical doctors to perform surgery on conjoined twins. This surgery came out to be a successful one because the twins were separated. This was a kick-off point for Prof. Olutoye because he had more medical mastery there was yet to be shown.

The Greatest Surgical Hit

Situations got heated for Olutoye in 2016 when he was faced with operating on a

foetus. It started when the mother of the unborn foetus, Margaret Boemer went for a routine ultrasound and she discovered her child had a tumour wrapped around her spine, which was known as Sacrococcygeal teratoma. After some consultations with Prof. Olutoye, he agreed to proceed with a risky surgery that might make the foetus sicker.

On the 20th of October, 2016, Olutoye went in with other teams of surgeons to perform on the child. On getting to the theatre, the mother and foetus were given general anaesthesia before it was carried out of her womb. After the surgical operation, the tumour was removed and the foetus was placed back into the mother’s womb. After 36 weeks into the pregnancy, the child was delivered as a normal child would. This practice pulled worldwide recognition on Olutoye because it was the first time any doctor has ever performed such a miracle that propelled a baby to be born twice without complications.

Soon, Prof. Olutoye got a new role as Surgeonin-chief in one of the largest children’s hospital surgery departments in the world popularly known as the Nationwide Children’s Hospital. In this new phase, he is left with the leadership of 11 surgical departments and with the responsibility to advance the hospital’s mission and clinical outcomes.

In addition to his clinical expertise, Olutoye also has a research program that focuses on the role of the inflammatory response in scarless fetal wound healing, in-utero correction of severe congenital malformations, and the early detection of necrotizing enterocolitis in preterm infants.

So far, Prof. Oluyinka Olutoye had been recognised and awarded for his excellence and outstanding achievements in the area of human foetal surgery and his medical career.

By Dimeji Akinloye

How Public Health Expert Dr. Jay Osi-Samuels was Instrumental to Curtailing HIV Spread in Nigeria

Dr. Jay Osi-Samuels is a Harvardtrained public health expert with a burning passion for driving the radical change required in Africa’s healthcare system. After graduating from medical school at the University of Ibadan in 1994, he went on to work at the Lagos State General Hospital. It was at this time he felt he was living below capacity.

He wanted to make a huge impact in society and figured he needed to pivot to actualise that dream. This decision led to his journey to the Harvard School of Public Health, where he was part of the AIDS Prevention Initiative in Nigeria (APIN) team, a body funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to curtail the prevalence of HIV/AIDS in the country.

The work done by the APIN team and other non-profit organizations is the reason fewer people are living with HIV/AIDS in Nigeria today.

In this interview with Business Elites Africa, Dr. Jay, who is the current Deputy Chief Executive Officer at APIN, elaborated on his journey into public health and how APIN found the right formula to combat HIV/ AIDS prevalence in Nigeria.

What sparked your interest in Public Health?

I think my interest in public health started after my graduation from medical school, during my National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) at the General Hospital in Lagos

Nigeria. I realized that I was utilizing less than ten percent of what I spent about seven years of my life studying in medical school. I was treating patients coming down with illnesses that were preventable, like malaria and all. So, it became rapidly boring for me because I was seeing the same thing over and over again.

The situation made me pick interest in the prevention of these common illnesses. So I began to look deeper into public health. I did some research and came to the conclusion that this would be a lot better for me to pursue. That was how I started my journey in public health.

Where did you start from?

I would say I got a lucky break. I applied for a fellowship at Harvard and incidentally, it was a project that had just been awarded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to fund HIV/AIDS intervention in Nigeria. Part of the package of that grant was the training of personnel within Nigeria as public health experts to be the ones to carry out the implementation of that project. That

project was the Aids Prevention Initiative in Nigeria (APIN) Grant by the Harvard School of Public Health. They were looking for two Postdoctoral fellows and five Master of public health candidates from Nigeria, I applied for the Postdoctoral fellowship and I was one of the lucky ones. That was where my journey in public health began.

My postdoctoral fellowship was on the molecular epidemiology of HIV/AIDS in Nigeria. This involved going to the Harvard school of Public Health, Boston, and getting tutelage in their Kanki laboratory owned by Professor Phyllis Kanki, who was the principal investigator of that project in Nigeria. Since then I never looked back.

What is really the object of a public health drive?

Public health is more or less preventing people from suffering from common illnesses. For instance, if you have malaria, you go to the hospital for treatment but the essence of public health is to implement policies, interventions, and practices that would prevent you from coming down with malaria in the first place.

We look at the causative factors, the epidemiology of malaria, areas of the community that are prone to malaria, and the wholesome assessment of the malaria epidemic. As a public health specialist, you devise strategies to target those areas. So that at the end of the day, if it’s mosquitoes that are causing it, you want to eliminate them. Then in the areas where malaria is prevalent, you want to provide insecticidetreated nets. Then, you need to assess the impact - let’s say 100 people were coming down with malaria in a day in that area, you want to bring that to 0 or significantly reduce the number so that doctors that are employed in the hospitals can focus more on complicated illnesses.

What has been the impact of APIN in Nigeria over the years?

Let me give you another example of the impact of public health intervention in preventing diseases. At the time Bill & Melinda Gates

Foundation targeted Nigeria for the AIDS intervention program, the prevalence of HIV was approaching 5% and with the study and history of how epidemics evolve, the concern was that if nothing is done, the disease would spread exponentially and that would be devastating considering Nigeria’s population. We have seen a gradual decrease over the years due to the work financed by this grant and so many other people that have come into the field. The last review that was done shows that the prevalence has really gone down and it’s very visible to all that this intervention over the years has really worked.

Some of the important work we also did was identifying different strains of HIV. A lot was not known about the molecular epidemiology of HIV/AIDS back then. We only knew there is HIV 1 & 2 but there are different strains of HIV that were not known.

All the drugs that were used at that time were built on the candidate prevalent variant in the western world. That was not what was obtained in Africa. Even in Africa, we had different strains. The strain in West Africa was different from the strain in East Africa and South Africa. But with the molecular epidemiology study that we did, we were able to see that there are different characteristics of these strains. We found that the strains in South Africa were more virulent and the same thing in East Africa, but the strains in West Africa were less virulent. So due to this, people were dying like chickens in South and East Africa.

So, we threw more light on the strains and showed that we cannot use a one-size fits all approach for the HIV/AIDS fight. We had to localize the viruses and also target interventions and the pharmaceutical companies also modulated their responses based on this study as it relates to treatment. This is why we have seen significant improvement over the years.

What role does the government play in your work?

You cannot underplay the role of government. Number one, before you can even start to

disburse the funding coming from these foreign bodies, you must have the buy-in of the government. And the issue we always have in Africa is inadequate funding of the healthcare sector. But with the right engagement, we are seeing improvement.

We are lucky we have a disease like HIV that is well funded, even though the funding is dwindling now, at least in the initial stage the funding was sufficient. We were able to do a lot of advocacy in terms of showing evidence for results, and with that, we were able to get the buy-in of different stakeholders but largely I’d say we can do more with investment in the right places in health. One thing I say to people is that HIV medicine changed healthcare delivery in Africa, especially in Nigeria, in the sense that before you can determine someone has HIV, you need to carry out a test and once you diagnose that person to have HIV, you have to determine if the person is eligible for treatment. Although it is an immediate treatment now, that wasn’t the case back then.

HIV is heavily dependent on lab medicine, and our lab infrastructure was very poor at the time. But with the advent of the HIV disease and the interventions that followed, we’ve been able to develop our laboratories in Nigeria because once the patient starts taking drugs, you have to monitor them to make sure the drugs are not toxic, so we have come a long way.

The Bill and Melinda Gates funding also covers the antiretroviral drugs?

Yes. The funding is 100% holistic. Once you’re diagnosed with HIV/AIDS, the drugs are provided for free. It’s only in the last few years that some patients have to pay for their labs but not all of the labs - some of the labs like dermatology and chemistry. But the CD4, the viral load are all free. These are expensive tests. The drugs have also evolved over the years, from multiple doses to just one tablet a day.

By

How Gregory Rockson is improving the quality of healthcare delivery across Africa through mPharma

Alife lived for others is a life well lived. That appears to sum up the story of Gregory Rockson and his health tech startup, mPharma. He has dedicated his life to improving the quality of healthcare delivery across Africa.

Gregory Rockson is the co-founder and CEO of mPharma, a health tech startup with operations in a total of nine African

countries to date, namely: Ghana, Nigeria, Zambia, Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Gabon, Rwanda, and Malawi.

How mPharma came to be

Gregory and his co-founders, Daniel Shoukimas and James Finucane, founded mPharma in 2013 to serve as an e-prescription platform for medical and pharmaceutical supplies in his home country of Ghana.

The trio are pushing forward with the mission to build a healthy Africa, and this they are doing by developing tools powered by technology with which medical practitioners and customers can successfully manage and resolve various roadblocks they face in the provision and consumption of good healthcare service delivery.

Funding and expansion

mPharma has gone on to receive funding in the millions, with backing from Chamath Palihapitiya of Social Capital and Silicon Valley investor, Jim Breyer.

To show how successful it has turned out to be, within just a year of operation, the startup signed up two leading pharmaceutical giants, Novartis and Pfizer.

It apparently serves over 100,000 patients monthly, distributing more than a million drugs to individuals across Africa from a total of 300 partner pharmacies pooled from across the continent.

In explaining how mPharma essentially operates, Gregory, in an interview, used the analogy of mobile telecommunication networks. He said, “When mobile communication networks were set up across Africa, telecom companies had to invest in towers before selling sim cards to consumers.

Continuing, he explains that the mPharma application suite is the sim card that they give to doctors and hospitals while they build the towers that allow these operators to use the application wherever they find themselves.

This shows that mPharma is providing not just data to drug companies and health ministries, but also updates to its cloud-based software. With the application, medical practitioners can get updates in real time on exact locations and the availability of any drug they need. Patients are also connected with information on where they can get access to drugs and medications.

Gregory’s antecedents

Gregory Rockson holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science from Westminster College. He was a Public Policy and International Affairs Fellow at Princeton University and was a Rotary Scholar at the University of Copenhagen.

Speaking on what he sees as opportunities across the African continent that are often overlooked, Gregory points to the area of building tech solutions that target

the elderly. This, he says, is due to the fact that the issues on the African continent are often x-rayed through the lens of its youth.

“The enormous potential in building direct-to-consumer tech solutions targeting the elderly (60+) in Africa because the continent is always seen through the lens of its youth. Most of the technology solutions being built today focus on addressing problems faced by younger consumers,” he says.

mPharma launches Facility Insight

The healthcare technology company earlier this month (July 2022) launched Facility Insight, a customer-centric product on Bloom, its proprietary healthcare management and pharmacy tool. Facility Insights is aimed at providing pharmacy owners with bespoke data-driven insights in a bid to help them make more informed management decisions.

Speaking on the tool, mPharma’s chief product officer, Dan Shoukimas who led the engineering of the feature, said, “Pharmacies today suffer from two problems at opposite ends of a spectrum. Either they lack the data and analytics tools they need, are hungry to get it, but don’t have the tools or training necessary to get it, or they have a glut of data but cannot leverage it to make better decisions.

“Facility insights is a key step forward in solving these and many other gaps in the pharmacist’s data toolbelt. With key reporting in place, there will be plenty of opportunities for us to uncover actionable insights that help our pharmacists provide the best care possible.”

Challenges

Since no venture is immune from challenges, mPharam has had its own fair share of these. When asked what challenge they have faced in running mPharma, Gregory says it’s the issue of payment. Hear him:

“People don’t want to pay for health care. For a long time, health care has only been looked at as social intervention and not a commercial opportunity. This has largely been driven by the foreign aid agenda that has distorted health care markets in Africa.”

Regardless of the challenges, however, Gregory and the team are pushing forward with the goal of delivering and ensuring a healthier Africa.

By Wale Ameen

Abasi Ene-Obong: Leading Health Research through 54gene

Although the health tech sector is one that is not so glamorous or popular when compared with other subsets of the tech ecosystem, such as fintech. It is nevertheless an important sector that requires more innovative solutions to handle the myriad of problems faced in Africa, especially by the low income earners category of society.

Innovations that seek to advance and improve the quality of healthcare service delivery, especially across the African continent, need all of the support that they can get.

One individual that is doing something in this regard is Dr. Abasi Ene-Obong, founder and Chief Executive Officer of 54gene, a health technology company currently advancing the state of healthcare through research into advanced molecular diagnostics.

Abasi, who holds a PhD in Cancer Biology from the University of London, a Masters in Human Molecular Genetics from Imperial College London, as well as a Master’s in Business Management from Claremont Colleges, California, is spearheading innovative scientific research across multiple geographic regions in Africa through 54gene, a company which he founded in 2019.

Work experience

His work experience spans several health institutions across the US, UK, and Nigerian healthcare industries. This includes several Fortune 100 pharmaceutical companies, and academic and research organisations.

These include his time as life science and healthcare management consultant for IMS Health (now IQVIA) and PwC in the US, where he worked on projects for some

of the top 20 BioPharma companies. He has worked as a cancer researcher and has published a seminal paper on pancreatic cancer immunology in the Gastroenterology Journal.

Expanding the frontiers of healthcare research with 54gene

Through his company, Abasi is helping to use insights from studies conducted among study groups across the African continent and the global community to provide solutions that will help ensure that Africa is adequately represented in the areas of drug discovery and clinical research.

Speaking on the prospects and peculiar challenges that are present within the African region, in terms of healthcare discovery, he notes that each environment has its own unique set of challenges and opportunities, nationally, regionally, and even globally. He reveals that across all borders, one of the major obstacles and an opportunity at the same time is the disparities found in healthcare.

According to him, “Disparities in healthcare are propagated where there is a lack of funding innovation into healthcare. Wealthy regions of the world have developed their healthcare environments significantly more than poorer regions; and even within some regions—wealthy or not—funding for healthcare infrastructure, let alone innovation, is disproportionally distributed and/or mismanaged. This has become the status quo for how our healthcare environments have developed, but this is now unsustainable in today’s globalised world, where an event in one part of the world can shut down all systems across the globe.

As such, the only sustainable model for healthcare innovation is one that looks equally

at the rich and poor regions, regardless of ethnic or cultural lines.

“This also means healthcare must become more collaborative,” he says. Adding that, “My only fear is history repeating itself, where the strong “prey” on the weak. Today’s generation of leaders must seek to do things differently, particularly in the healthcare space, to ensure there is a win-win mindset as an acceleration of technology and funding creates more value.”

Describing what inspired his work in this sector, Dr Ene-Obong says, “I remember learning about how our understanding of genetics could lead to finding cures to rare diseases, Hungtington’s in particular, and I immediately wanted to pursue a career in the life sciences so that I could be one of those that would find new cures for these diseases. This was in 2001/ 2002.

Continuing, he says, “About a little more than a decade after that first event, when I was completing my PhD, it occurred to me that the best platform for me to do this would be to set up a company instead of continuing in academia.”

“This led to my moving from London, England, to California to get a business degree and work as a management consultant. For me, management consulting in the life science space was the way to get decades’ worth of experience within a few years,” he concluded.

Recognition for his work

Abasi was recently listed as one of the top 30 entrepreneurs shaping the modern tech ecosystem by Jeune Afrique - a leading French-Language Pan-African magazine.

His company made the Fast Company list of the world’s “Most Innovative Companies”

in 2020. It was awarded the best health technology solution by AppsAfrica, and Abasi was named one of the 30 most innovative entrepreneurs on the African continent in 2019 by Quartz Africa.

That’s not all. Abasi was recorded as a hero in the fight against COVID-19 by ThisDay Newspapers in September 2020 for the role he played in the fight against the spread of the virus at the time. He also made it into Fortune Magazine’s 40 under 40 most influential people in healthcare for that same year.

At entity level, 54gene also made the Time Magazine 2020 list of 12 innovations projected to change the healthcare industry in the 2020s. It was also listed by Punch Nigeria as one of the five innovations to improve healthcare for Africans.

The healthcare system in Nigeria is presently in a mess. The most populous black nation on Earth has about 24,000 hospitals as of 2018 and a doctor-patient ratio of about 1-5000, which is one of the lowest in the world.

The World Health Organisation’s recommendation is 1-1000. Perhaps the bigger problem is the budgetary allocation to the health sector, which has been on the decline for years, making it extremely difficult for Nigerian hospitals and other healthcare facilities to raise the standard of their offerings.

Amidst this chaos, Adegoke Olubusi, an American-trained engineer, alongside three of his friends, set up Helium Health to help bring sanity to the system.

The company works with a wide network of hospitals in Nigeria and other African countries to digitalise medical procedures to enhance the healthcare delivery process.

How Helium Health Was Started

Adegoke, co-founder and CEO of Helium Health, first got the idea to start the company when he visited a health facility in Nigeria and discovered how they worked manually. He was alarmed at how disorganised the system was and how the lack of efficiency in data management undermined service delivery to patients.

Adegoke said he found “chaos” in their recordkeeping, complicating everything from patient data and billing to inventory. “It’s all on paper—it’s messy, inefficient, and there’s no way to analyze the data,” he says.

Moved by the situation, the John Hopkins graduate launched a startup to address the problem. The company was first called OneMedical, but in 2017, it was rebranded to Helium Health to keep pace with its growth objectives.

In launching the company, Adegoke and his team knew they couldn’t just transplant the system in America down to Nigeria because of the peculiarities of both environments.

“We thought, ‘How can we make something simple and easy to adopt for hospitals to operate more efficiently? Eventually, that turned into an actual idea for a business, and a concept that a lot of people loved,” he stated.

What is Helium Heath

Helium Health is a holistic hospital management software platform that helps healthcare institutions in Africa digitise their operations and patient records. Because of the services offered by Helium, hundreds of hospitals have embraced digitalisation in their record-keeping procedure, which has made them more efficient in service delivery.

Over the years, the company has expanded its offerings to include tech solutions and developer resources for administration, medical records and financial management. Helium Health also has digital payment and credit products for hospitals and insurance providers.

The company prides itself as the top healthcare technology provider in West Africa, facilitating hundreds of thousands of encounters each month across the region.

Expansion into African markets

In 2020, the company announced that it had received $10 million in Series A funding. That was a major turning point for Helium Health. The additional finance allowed the company to pursue an aggressive growth plan in other African markets.

In one of his interviews, Adegoke explained that his company tries to solve the three core ways in which the healthcare system in Africa is dysfunctional: inefficiency due to manual processes, fragmentation, and lack of data. In that case, the company’s opportunity for growth is massive and limitless.

Acquisition of Qatar’s Mendy

In 2021, following a string of successes, Helium Health made a giant leap in its growth trajectory after it acquired ‘Meddy,’ a Qatar-headquartered and UAE-based doctor booking platform, for an undisclosed amount. This enabled the company to expand its operational footprint to the Middle East radically. This has allowed Helium to serve more than 500 health facilities across Africa and the Middle East.

Adegoke as a tech disrupter

Adegoke has been described as someone with a knack for solving complex problems. Before creating Helium, he founded one of Africa’s largest social platforms and productivity suites with over 30 million users.

Aside from his job at Helium, he is also the Managing Partner at Magic Fund, a US-based venture capital firm that has supported more than 50 startups. Some of the beneficiaries include Akido Labs, Apero Health, Medumo and others.

In 2019, Adegoke was listed as a Forbes 30 Under 30 Honoree. He is also a Future Africa Awards Honoree and a recipient of several notable global awards from Chevron, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, the State of Maryland, the Nigerian President and more.

Temie Giwa-Tubosun: Saving Lives One Blood Delivery at a Time

The 35 year-old political science and international health systems management graduate is the founder of LifeBank, a healthcare logistics company with headquarters in Lagos Nigeria, that leverages the power of technology to collect blood from registered blood banks and deliver it to patients needing and at risk in hospitals all across Nigeria and other participating countries in Africa.

Founded in 2016, LifeBank has gone on to play a critical role in the delivery of the one core ingredient and most essential commodity in healthcare delivery, blood. So important that sometimes it could be the sole deciding factor that determines whether a patient lives or dies.

LifeBank has, in the past few years, distributed more than 26,000 pints of blood to more than 10,000 patients in about 700 hospitals in Nigeria alone. It presently operates with locations in 8 Nigerian states, Kenya and Ethiopia.

Of this innovation, Meta (formerly Facebook) founder, Mark Zuckerberg in 2016 said when it just launched, “This is a thing [LifeBank] that needs to exist. If she can actually pull it off, she’ll show a model that will impact not just Lagos, not just Nigeria, but countries all around the world.”

That is exactly what Temie Giwa has gone on to do as the innovation has quickly spread across Nigeria, with a solid presence in Kenya.

If there is one lady that is revolutionising Nigeria’s, nay, Africa’s healthcare delivery system, it is Temie Giwa-Tubosun, founder of LifeBank.

The startup, which is unlike many others that presently flood the technology space, was one that quickly caught on, simply because it was an idea that has sought to provide an essential service that hitherto was unattended to.

“Because there was already a huge gap, we were able to grow quickly in our first year. It was like we were solving a problem people didn’t even know they had,” she said of LifeBank in 2017.

The importance of Temie Giwa’s solution is best seen when one considers the data on maternal mortality in Nigeria.

Data on maternal mortality

According to BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth, maternal mortality is still a major risk for women of childbearing age in Nigeria. In 2008 alone, Nigeria recorded 14% of the global burden of maternal mortality.

Also, postpartum haemorrhage, which is the loss of 500 ml or more of blood within 24 hours after delivery, is a major cause of death of women in Nigeria and around the world, especially in developing countries.

In Nigeria, blood shortages contribute to the deaths of 152,000 anaemic children and 37,000 pregnant women each year and are responsible for innumerable complications for women shortly after childbirth.

It is also on record that Nigeria has the highest maternal mortality rate in Africa and second in the world after India.

Inspired to save lives

According to Temi Giwa, the inspiration to set up LifBank came about during her own experience while giving birth in the US. According to her, in 2014, she had a premature delivery of her son in a hospital in Minnesota, United States. She describes that delivery event as “complicated and harrowing.”

Lying on the hospital bed, she wondered what such an experience would have turned out to be for her if she was not able to afford medical attention had it not been in an advanced country as the U.S. She wondered about the fate of other women who are not so opportuned to have such an excellent healthcare system when giving birth usually is.

The birth of her son inspired her to try to figure out how maternal mortality could be resolved “once and for all.”

During her recovery bed rests in the weeks following, Temi explained how she spent time reflecting and searching for answers. Her most crucial discovery was that the leading global cause of

maternal mortality is postpartum haemorrhage. Eight out of 10 women who die from childbirth could be saved if blood was made available for their most urgent care. Thus, the LifeBank mission was birthed.

“I started LifeBank because I wanted a world where women no longer died from preventable causes like postpartum haemorrhage,” she says.

Quick access to blood that matches the patients’ blood type that will help sustain their body long enough until it naturally learns to clot, was vital. And so, the key is to get the blood to the hospitals quickly enough, and this is where LifBank comes in.

“To get blood to the hospital, the customer journey starts with inventory. Everything starts with inventory. So, from blood to oxygen, anything that we do starts with that inventory. And then the next thing is matching that supply that we’ve got into the demand that these hospitals have,” she says.

How LifeBank solves this challenge

LifeBank employs the services of motorbike dispatch riders who are easily recognisable and who quickly dash out with these supplies across the streets of Nigeria, Kenya and Ethiopia.

The company has now gone beyond just providing blood, as it now delivers medical oxygen and health consumables to about 1,200 hospitals across the countries in which it operates. It has also been involved in COVID-19 testing.

To place orders, hospitals with access to the Internet place orders via the web, while rural hospitals use USSD code service provisioning to place orders. They can also call in, as the company operate a 24-hour call centre that uniquely serves all these countries.

The future for LifeBank

On what the future plans are for LifeBank, Temie Giwa, while speaking with the iconic TV presenter, Katie Couric during the 2020 Global Citizen Prize special, had this to say:

“I have great, big, giant, audacious dreams for LifeBank. The problem we are solving is not only a Nigerian problem or an African problem. It’s a problem that exists in developing countries — countries that have not figured out their infrastructure.

“For me the work is to build a scalable, fast-growing business that can expand to all these locations around the globe where these problems still exist, saving lives and saving lives at scale.” She continued, “That is the dream and we are willing to do the work to get there.”

By Joseph Ekeng

The Future of Africa’s Healthcare System

In recent years, Africa has significantly improved its healthcare system, but the trend can only be sustained through an effective partnership between the private and public sector operators.

he healthcare industry is in turmoil all over Africa, largely due to service delivery and resource challenges. This is even more so in Sub-Saharan Africa, where only a few countries can spend the $34 to $40 a year per person that the World Health Organization considers the minimum for basic health care.

Piqued by this crisis, in 2007, the WHO developed a framework that described the healthcare system in six core components. They include service delivery, healthcare workforce, healthcare information system, medicine and technologies, financing, and leadership/governance.

In all of these parameters, Africa is behind as most African countries cannot meet the basic requirements for a sound healthcare system.

As a result of the gap in the provision of quality and affordable healthcare services, the demand for overseas medical treatment has risen exponentially over the last couple of decades resulting in huge capital flight. A recent report shows that the continent loses over a billion dollars on medical tourism to other countries with more advanced medical systems.

Another major challenge undermining growth in the region’s health system is financial barriers to healthcare services. This results from high out-of-pocket expenditure rates, owing to ineffective national health insurance systems and poor service integration. Today, only a handful of African countries can boast of universal healthcare coverage for most of their residents. This has severely restricted access to quality healthcare in the region.

Recent growth in the healthcare industry

Interestingly, the above narratives do not tell the complete story about health care in Africa. Underneath the chaos is

Ta system gradually taking shape and finding more relevance in the broader economy. Recent studies have shown that the industry has a much better future than its present, owing to an influx of capital inflow/investments and a rapid drive towards innovation. Both foreign and domestic investors are building world-class infrastructures in a race to cater for the medical needs of Africans, and the trend is expected to continue well into the future. It is estimated that at its present growth rate, the healthcare system in the region will hit $259 billion in 2030. This represents more than 150% growth from the 2016 level of $19billion.

Additionally, the health-tech segment, with an annual growth rate of 23%, is projected to reach $11 billion by 2025.

However, for this growth pattern to be sustainable, leaders and policymakers in the region must work to expand healthcare and provide coverage for the over 615 million Africans without access to health services.

Private Sector’s Role

The private sector has been instrumental to the healthcare sector’s growth, delivering about 50% of the region’s health products and services.

Though in some cases, private medical facilities are priced out of the reach of ordinary people. In other instances, they are the only option for healthcare in mainly rural areas and poor urban slums. A poor pregnant woman is likely to access healthcare in a private hospital or clinic just as in a public facility.

The private provider also fills an important medical need by offering unavailable products and services, such as advanced medical equipment and procedures and higher-quality services.

Aside from that, private sector investors like Lifestore, MedPlus, HealthPlus, Africa Emergency Services etc., are also at the forefront of investment in healthtech, which

has improved healthcare delivery efficiency across Africa.

Helium Health, for instance, is a private company committed to the digitalisation of healthcare operations and patients record. Their work has allowed hospitals and clinics to become more efficient and render higher quality services.

Impact of Covid-19 pandemic on healthcare

Following the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, the hollowness and weakness of the African healthcare industry were exposed. But while on the one hand, the virus wreaked havoc on the region, on the other hand, it provided an opportunity for the continent to transform its health infrastructure and have more control of the supply chain system. It induced a paradigm shift from large-scale reliance on donor and externally manufactured products to continental production systems, leveraging opportunities created by the African Continental Free Trade Agreement.

Experts believe that relying on African institutions to fight the pandemic has served the continent well as the region now has a more robust infrastructure and financial capability to combat its health challenges.

“The development of these innovative mechanisms means Africa can now go to the market to procure its health commodities, empowering Africa to move from importing over 90 per cent of its health needs to producing equipment and pharmaceuticals on the continent,” a recent Brooking report enthused.

Covid-19 was also a major catalyst for capital inflow. Aside from the temporary freezing of debt servicing obligations by developed nations as a gesture to boost liquidity, there has been a notable spike in private sector investment since 2020.

According to Abiola Ojo Osagie, senior partner at AfricInvest, while some sectors were traumatised during covid, others benefitted. “We had to rethink how we deploy

the capital because it was no longer ‘business as usual. Some sectors were badly affected, but others were benefiting. Consumer-driven industries were resilient and defensive. Even though consumer spending fell, some of those with big markets were still doing well.”

This may explain why several large-scale healthcare investments went ahead in 2020 while deals in other sectors were delayed or called off altogether.

Some of the sealed major health care deals included SPE Capital Partners’ stake in Saham’s Group Pharmaceutical in Morocco and Endeavour’s investment in health-tech platform Guidepost in South Africa.

Factors driving growth in healthcare

While Covid has indeed accelerated growth in Africa’s healthcare industry, several other factors have been responsible for the vibrancy of the segment even before Covid.

Migration: A major factor driving the growth is rural-urban migration. This is one of the biggest reasons why investment in healthcare has risen significantly across the continent.

Since 2000, a vast majority of Africans have moved to the cities. On average, the African urbanisation rate stood at 47% as of 2020. That means close to 500 million Africans now live in the cities.

As more and more people migrate to the big cities in search of good jobs and a better standard of living, it creates demands for more quality healthcare, and this demand inspires new investment in top-quality hospitals and medical facilities.

Reports indicate that many foreign investors are seeking opportunities to partner with African pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing companies on investment possibilities.

Favourable business climate: In a bid to attract investment, many African countries have been working toward creating a favourable environment for businesses to thrive. This has encouraged investment in domestic pharmaceutical and medicines manufacturing companies.

The new environment has also inspired a spike in investment in retail pharmaceutical stores, which spawns several African countries. The likes of Lifestore, MedPlus, HealthPlus and other major retail brands have injected innovations and exciting supply chain dynamics that have transformed the segment.

Health consciousness: Over the years, as more Africans get educated and international exposure, there has been gravitation toward health consciousness as a lifestyle. This has increased demands for improved health services and encouraged investment into the sector. The post-Covid 19 era has also accelerated the emergence of a health and wellness-conscious consumer in Africa. And as Africans increasingly become conscious of their health, this has impacted how much they exercise and check their health with doctors.

Investment opportunities

For Africa to catch up with the rest of the world, it must accelerate Universal Health Coverage by growing its health insurance segment and investing in urgently needed medical infrastructure. This is important because there is a direct correlation between healthy living and economic growth.

Over 600 million Africans without access to proper medical assistance represent a massive investment opportunity for private and public sector operators.

According to the International Finance Corporation, the next decade will be critical for the region to bridge the market gap. And for that to happen, there must be considerable investment in the industry. The urgent needs include over half a million additional hospital beds, better production facilities and distribution/ retail systems for pharmaceuticals and medical supplies. And about 90,000 physicians, 500,000 nurses, and 300,000 community health workers.

The report also recommends that for these needs to be met, the enabling environment has to be created for effective collaboration between the private and public sector operators. The framework for partnership must include improvement in the regulatory oversight of private health care and outline ways that the private sector could be better engaged to improve its sustainability.

Nigeria’s healthcare sector is one of the most underfunded sectors in the country . It is a sector which, like its education counterpart, regularly goes through sessions of industrial action as workers press home their demands from the government of the day.

Adequate medical outfits, absence of modern equipment and poor remuneration of medical doctors are some of the issues bedevilling the sector.

According to the Minister of Education, Mallam Adamu Adamu, the doctor to patient ratio in Nigeria is at 1:6000, a far cry from the World Health Organisation recommended 1:600.

This is the scenario that prompted Olwasoga Oni to come up with his health tech startup company, MDaaS, in 2016. In an attempt to provide access to affordable healthcare, his startup uses an annual subscription based model along with a network of diagnostics centres present across five Nigerian cities at the moment to provide some much needed medical diagnostics.

Teaming up with three other colleagues at MIT, Genevieve Barnard Oni, and Joe McCord, they founded MDaaS Global in a bid to provide solutions and solve part of the myriad of challenges being faced by Nigerians, majority of whom are within the low- and middle-income bracket.

From MIT

to MDaaS:

How Oluwasoga Oni Birthed The Tech Start Up Providing Diagnostics Services For The Underserved

Profile || By Wale Ameen

During the class, they were challenged to build a company that could serve a billion people.

Today, MDaaS Global builds and operates modern, convenient, and affordable diagnostic centres in underserved communities and offers services such as imaging, cardiac and lab services to identify health issues earlier and more accurately for effective treatment.

Starting off as an equipment leasing company, MDaas has transitioned into operating its own diagnostics centres. Through its capacity building programmes, MDaaS is also raising a bunch of skilled medical technicians to plug the hole of a lack of skilled technicians in the health sector.

The company has gone on to receive funding to expand its offerings. It has so far raised a total of $3.7 million from investors including Newtown Partners, CRI Foundation, FINCA Ventures, Techstars and Future Africa.

How he came up with the idea of MDaaS

Speaking on how he came by the idea of MDaaS, which by the way stands for Medical Delivery As A Service, the business idea, he says, had been percolating for a while. He reveals that he was surrounded by health care while growing up. His dad is a medical doctor in a small town, and he had witnessed the issues he faced accessing medical equipment.

The idea of starting up a company to provide a solution for that challenge was further solidified during one of his classes while pursuing a Master’s Degree in System Design and Management at MIT.

It was during that class that he was introduced to Joe (McCord), one of his co-founders and there he thought about bringing him on board since he had spent a good portion of time working in Nigeria and, as such, understood the context of the business idea.

He recalls that he then met Genevieve (whom he is now married to and shares the task of running the startup with along with the two other guys on the team), also in the same class, while he drafted a long time buddy of his way back from college, Ope Ologun to make the fourth co-founder.

Work experience

Before launching MDaas, Oluwasoga had previously worked with a number of organisations, including Skye Bank, where he worked as a computer engineering intern, Zebra Technologies, where he worked as a firmware engineer; and EMC as a software engineer.

Challenges

When asked what challenges he and the team have faced in the course of establishing the startup, he says it’s the issue of hiring the right personnel for clinical roles such as doctors, radiographers, and lab scientists.

He said, “As an early-stage healthcare company in Nigeria, one challenge has been hiring for clinical roles, such as doctors, radiographers, and lab scientists, given the significant brain drain Nigeria experiences in those fields. In order to build a strong talent pipeline for our growing company, we have invested more heavily in our recruiting processes and developed our own training programs for young clinicians.”

By

Dr Ola Brown: Innovatively Impacting Healthcare Delivery Across Africa

Dr. Olamide Brown (nee Orekunrin) is one woman who shines through and through and is currently flying the flag high as a woman within Nigeria’s healthcare sector.

The British-Nigerian doctor is an healthcare entrepreneur and famously known as the founder of the Flying Doctors Healthcare Investment Group and a director of Greentree Investment Company.

The FDHIC focuses on technology enabled healthcare focused public private partnerships in Africa while the Greentree Investment Company invests in African

technology startups with funding given to startups such as Paystack, Precurio, and Big Cabal Media with a portfolio of $80m.

The Flying Doctors Healthcare Group

In 2007, inspired by the loss of her sister and seeing a commercial opportunity in the delivery of healthcare to high networth individuals and a bid to improve medical services in Nigeria, she established the Flying Doctors.

The company is involved in the areas of air ambulance services, consulting/healthcare technology, hospital/ clinic construction, diagnostics and equipment, health facility management, and pharmaceutical retail.

Flying Doctors has gone on to record massive success in the area of air ambulance, through which individuals are quickly ferried from remote locations or places where a victim experiences a medical emergency to appropriate locations in order to receive adequate medical care. It has received accolades from far and wide, being virtually the only company focusing on this specific healthcare niche.

The company, nevertheless, has had its own share of controversy, one of which involved being sued by the family of a patient. The case was, however, later withdrawn by the family of the deceased.

More about Greentree Investment Company

Along with two other co-directors, Dr Ola is actively involved in funding startups in Africa through the Greentree Investment Company, which is one of the leading venture capital firms in Africa. It continues to invest in startups in various stages of growth in different sectors such as fintech, media, Saas, Agritech, manufacturing, ecommerce, healthtech, and edutech.

Education

Dr Ola ia a graduate of medicine and surgery from the Hull York Medical School She proceeded to further her studies in Tokyo, Japan after she secured the Japanese MEXT scholarship for a fellowship focused on labbased research with induced pluripotent stem cells.

She holds a Masters degree in Finance and Economic Policy from the University of London. Her postgraduate studies focused on the areas of finance, Pre-hospital Emergency care, healthcare leadership, healthcare delivery, and Economics/Economic Policy.

She also has a certificate in Public-Private Partnership from Harvard University, a Project Finance and the Public Private Partnership Professional Certificate from the New York Institute of Finance; a certificate in Business execution and strategy from Wharton; an economic policy making from IE Business School, Spain; a certificate in Accounting for decision making from the University of Michigan in the United States; and a certificate in Finance & Investing in Infrastructure (Project Finance) from Universita Bocconi in Milan.

She has largely put this wealth of knowledge to good use as she teaches economics and finance at the school of politics, policy and governance in Nigeria. She has also created some online courses, which include:

Project finance/PPP and infrastructure foundation (Introduction, Case studies, legal agreements and risks, PPP, financial modeling for project finance, conclusion)

• Macroeconomics and finance

• Microeconomics and banking

• Banking and capital markets

• Understanding the IMF

• Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, Central Bank Digital Currencies and the future of money

• The Angel Investing and Venture Capital Academy for founders and investors.

• Bank regulation and banking crises

• Corporate governance and sitting on boards

Not just one who talks about healthcare and finance, Dr Ola has four books published to her credit. These are:‘EMQ’s in Paediatrics’, ‘Pre-Hospital Care for Africa’ , ‘Fixing Healthcare in Nigeria; a guide to public healthcare policy and Banking, and Finance & Economics in Emerging Markets: an essay collection.

The report, “Impact Investing for Healthcare Financing Report,” was co-authored by her alongside Stears Business while she authored the “Project financing and Healthcare Infrastructure” report.

She has articles written for the British Medical Journal, the Journal of Emergency Medical Services, the Niger Delta Medical Journal, the New York Times, and the Huffington Post.

Profile

By Kenechukwu Muoghalu

How Ifeoluwa Dare-Johnson Built a Digital Home Health Checker for Nigerian Health Industry

providing at-home tests and digital results and named it Healthtracka.

At first, it felt impossible for Ifeoluwa DareJohnson because it was a new investment and there was no boss to put her through, nor a stipulated income. She had just herself. But that did not stop Dare-Johnson, instead, she put in more work when the COVID-19 pandemic came calling.

Launching of The New Inventory

From grieving over the loss of her dad, Ifeoluwa DareJohnson created a unique digital health care platform. Just after getting her bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry from the University of Ilorin in 2009 and getting an internship at University College Hospital, Ibadan, Nigeria, Ifeoluwa Dare-Johnson paused for a while in the medical field and went all in for the Marketing sector.

Ifeoluwa Dare-Johnson did not entirely neglect the health industry even after her debut as a product marketer. She ensured that her new line of work was in connection with the health industry. With her marketing professional, she has helped several startups with product launches and go-to-market strategies. Dare-Johnson earned enough product marketing experience by working for logistics, fast-moving consumer goods FMCG, medical diagnostic companies and some healthcare industries.

Soon enough, she got more advanced in marketing after she acquired a diploma in marketing at The Chartered Institute of Marketing and later taught as a marketing lecturer at that same CIM, United Kingdom. More certifications were also bagged in Master of Business Administration at the University of South Wales.

Ifeoluwa Dare-Johnson didn’t stop there, she furtherly got recognised by some firms and ended up working for them. She worked at ATW Group and held a lot of posts, she also worked at SynlabNG and BETACAR HQ as head of marketing in 2018. This is some evidence that proves that Ifeoluwa Dare-Johnson is not the type to quit. She engaged in product marketing for 10 years before the bad news hit her in 2018. It was the death of Ifeoluwa Dare-Johnson’s father.

The Beginning of a New Chapter

“I got a strange call that my dad slumped some years back. It was strange because my dad was the most interesting person ever. Master storyteller, healthy, ambitious, and optimistic. How did someone like that suddenly slump?”. Months later, Ifeoluwa was without a father.

It was later discovered that the cause of her father’s death was long-gone undiagnosed diabetes and hypertension. Ifeoluwa DareJohnson believed that if there was an available simple routine health test, the death could have been avoided.

The sudden event changed Ifeoluwa DareJohnson’s whole perspective and forced her to kickstart her startup in 2020. She nursed the idea for a health tech startup decentralising laboratory testing in Africa by

Ifeoluwa Dare-Johnson was lucky enough to have had a career in product marketing which paved way for her to work with medical diagnostics companies. At that time, she had all the skills she needed to scale through, she only needed a technical presentation.

For that reason, Dare-Johnson contacted her one-time friend, Victor Amusan, who was a UX designer with a degree in Computer Science from the Federal University of Technology (FUTA), Akure, Nigeria. Together, they created magic on Healthtracka and finally launched it in May 2021.

Healthtracka has taken up the responsibility of making health tests available to all Africans. So far, Ifeoluwa Dare-Johnson has reached a total of seven cities in Nigeria which includes Lagos, Port-Harcourt, Abuja, Ibadan, Benin, Ilorin and Kaduna. Healthtracka makes lab testing easy and convenient with at-home sample collection and digital results in 1-3 days.

Ifeoluwa Dare-Johnson also narrated that it was not easy at first because people found it hard to believe that lab tests can be done at home. Dare-Johnson was lucky enough to get adopters who were eager to test in the comfort of their home and from that instance, Healthtracka became a reality.

“Healthtracka wants to bring the lab to your doorstep wherever you are.”

AKANDE ADEOLA

Homeessentia empire

Homeessentia_empire is a brand that deals in the supply of quality household items for the kitchen, bathroom, home and office decor, based in Lagos Nigeria. Most of our products are shipped from China. We sell on all social media platforms like Instagram, Twitter, WhatsApp and Facebook.

My goal is to own a walk-in store where my customers can come in and shop and to also become a supplier for household items and decor in Nigeria.

ODUNAYO ADESANYA

Dermaluxxe Solutions

Dermaluxxe Solutions(Est 2017) is a brand dedicated to grooming & self-care. We are majorly known for our range of hair removal wax products which has gained popularity amongst ladies. We manufacture and sell a total of 23 different products which treats a variety of personal care issues.

KENNEDY NJOKU CHIDI

Kenmark Footwears

AWA K. NDUKWE.

Awa k. Ndukwe

Awa

Awa

BISOLA ADEBANKE AFOLABI-IGE

THEMÍDEÀDEBRAND

TMB is a fast and make-to-measure fashion brand, that caters for women’s wear using African prints intending to create functional and versatile outfits for our women while maintaining elegance.

EMIOLA ARAMIDE

Skinbyaara_

Skinbyaara is an online skincare brand which sees to the skin needs and concerns of women and men with various ranges of skincare products in order to achieve healthier skin using safe products from trusted brands.

We offer the best and most in-demand products available in the skincare/beauty industry at affordable prices in addition to providing products recommendation and skincare consultations.

OLUWAFUNMILAYO EDUA ABUMERE

Funmisignatures

Funmisignatures was established in January 2021 and was founded by Glory Oluwafunmilayo Edua Abumere.

Funmisignatures is a Nigerian urban fashion brand inspired by the lifestyle of Nigerians and the fact that we love to be announced by our outfits. Apart from the general urban street wears we make, we also have a bag collection and other items which will be introduced in due time.

OMOBOLAJI AJIBARE

TheSocialMediaOga

Bolaji Ajibare popularly called TheSocialMediaOga is a SocialMediaCoach and Content Strategist who helps social media managers find their footings and equips them with all the necessary things they need to start out as freelance social media managers.

She also helps Small Business owners figure out how to use Social media the right way.

By Simeon Onoja

Meet Uganda’s Brian Turyabagye Who Invented a Smart Jacket to Fight Pneumonia

The jacket is Bluetooth-connected to a mobile phone app, which sends, records, and analyses medical data so that a healthcare expert may make an educated diagnosis.

Turyabagye says that the jacket eliminates nearly all human error and can detect pneumonia three to four times faster than a doctor.

Turyabagye and his team bootstrapped the startup from the onset to cover the costs of the prototypes. Eventually, they participated in the Big Ideas competition, at the University of California, Berkeley. They received prize money after emerging the first runner-wh in the global health category. This was followed by more grants and investments from support organisations.

A remarkable medical breakthrough

According to the World Health Organisation, pneumonia accounts for 15% of all fatalities in children under the age of five. Early detection of pneumonia is critical for successful therapy. A fact, Ugandan investor Brian Turyabagye is very familiar with.

Turyabagye’s business partner and close friend, Olivia Koburongo, lost her grandmother to it after visiting many doctors that misdiagnosed her with malaria. “At her deathbed, the prognosis reports indicated she actually died of pneumonia,” said Turyabagye in a session with CNN.

Turyabagye and Koburongo began brainstorming solutions to the persistent problem. They sought the advice of medical specialists in order to comprehend the disease’s precise symptoms.

Turyabagye and his team eventually invented Mama-Ope, a biomedical smart jacket that significantly boosts the accuracy and speed of detecting pneumonia, with the support of his tutor Mwikirize Cosmas at Uganda’s University of Makerere.

How does Smart Jacket work?

Mama-Ope, which is shorthand for “Hope for the Mother,” is a jacket that analyses body temperature, heart rate, and lung status. It is named after the 27,000 Ugandan children under the age of five who die each year from pneumonia.

The technology is comparable to that of a stethoscope. It covers the entire chest and sides of a patient’s body. It examines particular areas of the lungs for signs of pneumonia, which is characterised by a swelling of the lungs caused by infection.

Given that pneumonia kills more children under the age of five than HIV/AIDS, malaria, and diarrhoea combined, it receives comparatively little financing. According to UNICEF, barely two cents of every dollar spent on global health is focused on combating pneumonia.

The biomedical jacket can detect pneumonia faster than a doctor, giving youngsters hope against a disease that kills more children than any other disease.

While the smart jacket is still in the prototype phase Turyabagye says, “We are still working on the production concept”. If achieved, the technology could be extremely valuable to millions of individuals who are suffering from the condition due to insufficient and unavailable health care.

His innovation has gotten a lot of attention. For his innovative biomedical smart jacket, Turyabagye was named the winner of Pitch@ Palace Africa 2017, an event designed to support African entrepreneurs,

From Banking to Healthcare: How Fidelis Ayebae is Improving Lives with Fidson Healthcare

While it appears a good number of innovators and change makers who have thrown up innovative ideas for solving Africa’s healthcare challenges are millennials, there are still a good number of Gen Xs who are also playing important roles, majorly leadership within the health tech sector, deploying creative and innovative solutions to arrest the myriad of challenges within the continent’s healthcare sector.

One such man is Fidelis Ayebae. Dr. Fidelis Akhagboso Ayebae is the founder and Chief

When the history of the pharmaceutical industry in Nigeria is written, one name that will most certainly feature prominently is that of Dr. Fidelis Akhagboso Ayebae.

The Fidson Brand

The Fidson brand, as noted, is one of the leading pharmaceutical brands in Nigeria. It was launched in March 1995 as a pharmaceutical product distribution company. It subsequently delved into manufacturing after setting up a local manufacturing plant in July 2002.

Executive Officer of Fidson Healthcare Nigeria Limited, a leading brand in the pharmaceutical industry.

The company achieved a major milestone in March 2005 as it became the first pharmaceutical company in all of sub-Saharan Africa to produce anti-retroviral drugs (ARV), a much needed drug for HIV/AIDS patients.

Along with its anti-retroviral drugs the company manufactures and distributes a long list of over the counter and ethical products which requires prescription. These include:

Fertility drugs such as Addyzoa and Vigomax Forte, antimalarial drugs arthemed and e-mal.

A cardiovascular drug known as asomex, multivitamins, minerals, and supplements—Astyfer, Astymin, Ferobin, Cestra Once A Day Multi-Nutrient Tablets, and Cestra Pregna Multi Tablets.

Others are Fidvite (multivitamins), Cestra 50 Plus Once A Day Multi-Nutrient Tablets, M2-Tone (herbal supplements for menarche), Extrammune (herbal supplement for immunity), analgesics – Zetgel, Avipol (Paracetamol), antibiotics – Zotrim, Tetracycline, Ciprotab, Chloramphenicol, Metrone, Cefuroxime, and Ranicef.

In 2008, the company went public as it was listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange. Under his watch and direction, Fidsom continues to churn out impressive performances year on year.

The company reported a turnover of N18.28 billion for the year ended December 31st, 2020, representing an increase of 30 per cent when compared to the N14.06 billion revenue declared in 2019.

It also declared an operating profit of 38 per cent between 2019 and 2020, while its profit after tax increased from N407.19 million in 2019 to N1.21 billion in 2020, representing an increase of 196 per cent.

Speaking during the announcement, the founder and managing director said the performance came about on the back of the vtolume growth on key product lines as well as the improved efficiency in the company’s supply chain.

“As an organisation, we are committed to intensifying focus on these performance drivers going forward”, he added.

His sojourn into the medical field

Interestingly, Dr. Fidelis Akhagboso Ayebae’s background is in banking, but he has been able to transition from a banking career to an impactful entrepreneurial career in healthcare and pharmaceuticals.

His work experience includes several positions in notable Nigerian corporations. He worked as a project manager at Metalum Limited, worked as a managing director at Ayebe Investment Limited, and was an assistant director at Citibank.

He, however, quit his banking career to go into the entrepreneurial world to start up his own business.

He sits on the boards of several companies, which include NEM Insurance Plc, where he is the chairman.

Education

He is a graduate of Civil Engineering from the Mainland Institute of Technology, where he graduated with a Higher National Diploma in 1976. He also obtained an Advanced Diploma in Business Management from the University of Lagos. He is a member of the Nigerian Institute of Management (NIM) and also an Associate Member of the Chartered Institute of Administration (CIA) and also a Fellow of the Institute of Corporate Affairs Management (FICAM).

Awards and recognitions

Dr. Fidelis Akhagboso Ayebae has earned a number of awards and recognitions for his outstanding work as an industrialist and entrepreneur whose company continues to impact the life of Nigerians with the provision of quality drugs.

He was recognised as the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year for 2011 and 2012. He received the Nigerian Stock Market Pearl Award for Sectoral Leadership in the Healthcare and Pharmaceuticals Sector in 2015. He was inducted into the hall of honorary membership of the Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria (PSN).

Along with the above, he is a member of the Pharmaceuticals Manufacturers Group of the Manufacturers of Nigeria (PMG-MAN). He is also a member of the Nigerian-British Chamber of Commerce as well as the Nigerian-American Chamber of Commerce.

“As an organisation, we are committed to intensifying focus on these performance drivers going forward”,

By Simeon Onoja

Meet Dr Maxwel Okoth, Who Transformed a One-Bed Apartment into Eight Hospitals across Kenya

Okoth’s mother loaned him wit $3,000 as seed funding for his business. When he was in a car accident in 2012, his insurance paid out around $6,000. This covered the requisite X-ray and ultrasound equipment, as well as anaesthetic instruments in the operating room. It allowed him to do basic procedures and give services like X-rays.

Okoth eventually realised that, as much as individuals needed medical treatment, many were not coming to the office because of the limited space. He began to search for something more extensive.

Scaling the hospital

Hospital Healthcare (RFH) was inspired by the location of the first hospital.

The Ruai facility received a high volume of referrals from the town of Tala, some 56 kilometres east of Nairobi, prompting the establishment of RFH Healthcare’s second family hospital. Okoth and his crew decided to build a 10-bed hospital in Tala after learning where they were getting referrals.

Dr. Maxwel Okoth, a Kenyan doctor and entrepreneur, founded the RFH Group in a one-room flat in 2011. In ten years, he’s been able to expand the business into eight hospitals.

Okoth graduated from the University of Nairobi’s medical school. He began his internship in a public hospital in central Kenya in 2010. While it would have been easier for Okoth to join a major hospital, he chose to start his own. During his internship, he discovered a flaw in the current value proposition. The existing private medical institutes in Kenya mostly service the top end of the market. There was a significant need for a hospital that was affordable while still providing service of acceptable quality.

RFH Healthcare began in a one-bedroom flat in Ruai, a neighbourhood in Nairobi’s eastern outskirts. A plywood board promoted Okoth’s services, stating that the facility was available 24 hours a day. The reception and waiting rooms were spotless, and word quickly spread. Patients began to request consultations. “They soon got attached to me, rather than the institution. When I was not there, they would come back when I was available,” he explains.

Okoth contacted the owner of an unfinished building in Ruai, who was so pleased about the thought of establishing a hospital there that he finished the construction, installed windows, tiles, and painted the building.

Okoth requested a loan from the Youth Enterprise Development Fund to help finance the equipment for the new Ruai Family Hospital. While it was authorised, the payment was delayed, and he was forced to sell his wife’s automobile to meet his immediate financial demands. With these funds, he completed the new facility, including 10 beds, a theatre, an X-ray room, and ultrasound equipment. People began to flock in larger numbers.

The hospital in Ruai expanded to 40 beds over time, and an ambulance was added. General consultation, in-patient and maternity treatments, radiology, dialysis, general surgery, specialists, laboratory services, and a pharmacy were also all available. Okoth’s business expansion was funded by a bank loan.

Ruai Family Hospital caters to low- and middle-income individuals, with prices that fit to the National Health Insurance Fund’s criteria. The name, Ruai Family

He became aware of space in a gated neighbourhood in the Nairobi district of Embakasi, which has around 5,600 houses, in 2016. Okoth established the RFH Medical Centre in Embakasi, targeting middle-income earners and offering a comprehensive spectrum of medical services.

His Secret

Whilst speaking on his strategy for driving the growth of RFH Healthcare, Okoth emphasises the significance of his team and attracting patients through a brand that instils trust in its services. “Focus, consistency and having a team that believes in our dream. People who stuck around even when there was no money. People who were not motivated by money but by the dream. At times, they did not get a salary as there was no money, but they would still work.”

What to expect

Okoth believes Kenya is establishing itself as a hub for medical tourism in East and Central Africa; RFH Healthcare already receives many patients from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Sudan, and Zambia.

Kenya’s medical care infrastructure is well respected, and medical organisations from countries such as India are establishing facilities there. Okoth believes that mergers and acquisitions will become more common in business as smaller firms struggle to thrive.

By Simeon Onoja

How Davis Musinguzi Launch a Multi-Million

Dollar Telemedicine

Startup in Uganda

from consumers and potential employees unfamiliar with the new service.

“On the consumer side there is a clear advantage, they don’t have to travel to a clinic or go to a pharmacist, but how do you get doctors on board? What is the real attraction for them to work at Rocket Health rather than in a hospital or a clinic?” Musinguzi told How we made it.

He explained that one of the key advantages for doctors is that they can work in a less stressful atmosphere than in public or private hospitals. Talking over the phone in a more relaxed setting also helps doctors have more extensive patient interactions.

On the cutting-edge of telemedicine

Having worked in Uganda’s health industry, Dr Davis Musinguzi observed that patients usually contacted healthcare professionals far too late, affecting the result of their treatment.

Musinguzi believed that if patients could have received the proper information earlier in the course of their illness, they’d have a better outlook on recovery.

In 2012, he launched a telemedicine startup, Rocket Health, with five other healthcare professionals.

The path to a comprehensive health startup

The first idea was a call centre that offered patients mobile phone consultations. It was open round the clock, and Musinguzi and his team had a decent sense of who would call in and what they would call in about.

“Within the first six months, around 7,000 people had used the service,” said Musinguzi.

After almost five years of using this strategy, Rocket Health decided to add other services to its phone consultations. Customers wanted extra services such as medications, lab tests, and expert visits.

Rocket Health currently provides an endto-end healthcare service that begins with a phone consultation and includes many other auxiliary services, such as drug distribution and medical test collection through a fleet of motorcycles. The firm charges a fee for each consultation and service delivery. Rocket Health presently has around 40,000 clients. It employs around 30 doctors, each of whom handles over 200 calls every day.

How he got doctors onboard

One of the first problems the startup encountered was overcoming scepticism

Rocket Health is currently developing AIpowered software that will allow doctors to quickly run patients through a series of questions to identify diseases more quickly. Through a phone conversation and remote lab testing, the service can currently detect up to 90% of illnesses. Rocket Health features an in-house consultation clinic where doctors may visit patients in person.

Although some patients were sceptical that a remote consultation would be helpful, Musinguzi claims that the service has expanded rapidly by word of mouth, without the need for significant marketing investment. “When someone tries it, they tell their friends about it, tell them how they actually got better and it grows from there.”

Rocket Health is no doubt making its mark in Africa’s health care ecosystem. The startup has received a total of $5 million in Series A funding. An investment that will see Rocket Health expand its comprehensive digital health solution to other parts of Uganda and East Africa over the next two years.

By Ebube Julius

Alain Nteff: The Healthtech Pioneer

Whose Platform is a Gift to Mothers and Babies

Africa has faced several health challenges over the years due to its underdeveloped healthcare system.

To help address a portion of this issue, Cameroonian Alain Nteff launched Giftedmom in 2012, and the overwhelming situation forced him to expand his service scope and rebrand to Healthlane in 2019.

Through a network of top-notch laboratories in Africa, Healthlane provides precise, individualised health programmes. Nteff’s efforts have been noticed

His first project was with GiftedMom, a platform that sends pregnant women safe pregnancy messages. Over 500,000 women were reached by GiftedMom in countries all over Africa.

After the initial excitement died down, Alain continued to witness terrible cases of women who travelled great distances to medical facilities for safe deliveries only to receive poor care when they arrived.

and lauded by Bill Gates, Rebecca Enonchong, the President of Rwanda, and the Queen of England.

This was the beginning of Healthlane. Today, Healthlane offers top-notch health quality evaluations. People are given access to an excellent collection of thorough diagnostics that offer an in-depth understanding of the most significant machines.

Healthlane is available in major African cities, including Lagos, Abidjan, Douala, and Nairobi.

The launch of GiftedMom

Co-founder of Gifted Mom Alain Nteff attended Yaoundé’s Ecole Polytechnique to study computer science.

In 2012, Nteff who was a 20-year-old engineering student at the time, visited a rural Cameroon hospital, where his friend Conrad Tankou had his medical practice. The idea for GiftedMom began to awaken him.

There, he saw several moms and infants pass away from illnesses that could have been detected and treated with the right prenatal care.

Nteff was profoundly moved by what he witnessed, and he and Tankou began formulating ideas to utilise their expertise to address the problem of maternal and newborn mortality.

“The problem of maternal and infant death is not a woman issue; it’s a humanitarian issue. Everybody should take it seriously. We all have mothers, we all have sisters, and it’s not just a problem for women or girls,” said Nteff.

His solution was to develop an SMS service that expectant and new mums could sign up for to get health advice, emphasising the significance of routine checkups.

In essence, a low-cost solutionfor educating women was being created. Only eight women initially signed up, but Gifted Mom’s reputation rose as the news spread.

“I’m passionate about using technology to solve problems in my community, and I just saw it as an opportunity to apply my engineering to solve one of the world’s biggest and oldest problems,” says Nteff.

Media organisations, including Forbes Afrique, CNN, and The Huffington Post, soon became interested in Nteff’s platform.

According to Crunchbase, the firm received $220,000 from grants and equity investments from Unicef, Plan International and Nestle Nutrition.

He has influenced over 500,000 mothers in Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire, Mauritania, and Nigeria through various digital channels.

In addition, Alan Nteff has received recognition from the World Economic Forum as a Global Shaper, the Queen of England as a recipient of the Queen’s Young Leaders Award, and Google as a Student Ambassador.

Pivoting to Healthlane

Alain Nteff and his team pivoted from GiftedMom to Healthlane in March 2019 to continue on his path to bringing a successful healthcare system to Africa.

The business currently provides Africans with a wide range of medical services and assists mothers with birthing complications.

For Nteff, 2020 was a significant year. The most vibrant startup accelerator in the world, Y Combinator, admitted Alain. There, his platform received $150,000 in exchange for 7% equity. Nteff needed this as his last motivation to take preventative health head-on.

The business announced in September 2020 that it was raising $2.4 million to increase its product offerings and that it has some intriguing plans in the pipeline. In November 2021, Healthlane officially launched in in Lagos.

“I’m passionate about using technology to solve problems in my community, and I just saw it as an opportunity to apply my engineering to solve one of the world’s biggest and oldest problems,”

How to Corner Africa’s Billion-Dollar Medical Tourism Market

Africa’s healthcare sector is a huge revenue earner and could hit a revenue growth of 23.08% and a market value of over $11 billion by 2025. This, however, has not translated into revenue for the continent as the continent loses about $1 billion every year as a result of medical tourism.

Rising from the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a renewed focus on healthcare and concepts such as telemedicine, virtual primary care delivery, and last mile healthcare delivery, which all boost access to quality healthcare, have been made hugely popular. All these further expand the scope of what is possible within the health sector.

No doubt, Africa’s healthcare presents a large range of opportunities in areas such

as medical devices, consumables, services, and digital technologies.

The figures…

According to Export Virgina, it is estimated that the African market will be worth $259 billion by 2030 and that Africa will present 14% of total health and wellbeing business opportunities, second only to North America, which is expected to hold 21%.

This is due to the continent’s population growth, the changing nature of the burden of disease, and the need to decrease the gap between demand for and access to quality healthcare.

The continent, according to the report, accounts for approximately 17% of the world’s population and accounts for 25%

of the world’s burden of disease. This is expected to be further fueled by the continent’s population, which is expected to possibly double to about 2.5 billion between 2021 and 2050.

Also, the number of aged people who are 60 years and above is projected to reach 67 million by 2025 and 163 million by 2050. With this, the need for medical attention is expected to increase.

Buttressing the points above, the World Economic Forum also projects that Africa’s health care sector would be worth an estimated $259 billion by 2030.

This shows the sector holds so many lucrative opportunities in different areas as highlighted above, but then it is a surprise that the continent continues to record a

massive export of resources, with much going on medical tourism outside the continent.

While the private sector is doing well in terms of setting up hospitals and diagnostic centres, a lot more still needs to be done, especially in the light of the numbers currently being witnessed in the area of medical tourism.

Why do Africans continue to embark on medical tourism?

Many high-net-worth individuals prefer to go abroad for medical treatments and routine medical checkups. This shows a lack of faith in the healthcare systems outfitted across the continent. By implication, the continent continues to lose billions in revenue.

At the moment, countries such as India, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Dubai are some of the countries many Africans move to for their medical check-ups and treatments.

Issues that have been adduced for this include: affordable medical treatment for life-threatening diseases like cancer, tumours, organ transplants, and many more; skilled and experienced doctors and medical staff; advanced healthcare facilities; and affordable accommodation.

Why the situation persists

Political leaders are a major source of the drawback

A major reason why this situation persists in Africa is the unfortunate scenario many African countries have found themselves in where the political leaders have done nothing over the years but plunder the nation’s resources for personal gains while critical infrastructures like healthcare continue to decay.

Brain Drain

The above in turn continues to result in the migration of the best brains of these countries, thereby plunging the system into chaos as only greenhorns and less experienced professionals are left to manage the system.

As such, many prefer not to entrust their lives in the hands of less experienced hands, and as such, would rather shell out millions in order to receive medical care from professionals in other countries where the system works.

The irony in this entire scenario is that a good number of Africans are the ones also maning the posts in these foreign establishments.

According to the African Union, about 70,000 skilled professionals emigrate from Africa every year. This is a very unhealthy situation for the continent.

According to the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, it costs each African country between $21,000 and $59,000 to train a medical doctor. Unfortunately, nine countries—Ethiopia, Kenya, Mawawi, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe have lost more than $2.0 billion since 2010 from training doctors who then migrated. It also estimates that Africa loses around $2.0 billion through brain drain in the health sector alone.

This is huge and has a lasting impact when one considers how long it takes to train a medical doctor combined with the number of years it takes to gain requisite experience in any specific field.

Speaking on the opportunities, Justin Lorenzon, CTO, Field Intelligence, noted in an interview that there are a lot of opportunities as current solutions are only targeting a rather small percentage of the population.

“There’s still a lot of room for growth as a lot of the current solutions are only targeting a very small percentage of the population. So there is a lot of room to grow into and a lot of people to serve. The next couple of years will be super interesting for the space,” he said.

How can Africans maximise the growing medical tourism market?

Speaking on the issue of the migration of medical doctors and attendant capital flight, sociologist Christelle Fafaten Hounsou, a specialist in migration and the medical

professions at the University of Paris-VII and the Convergences Migrations Institute, says this is often encouraged by the policies of Western countries,

“Above all, the reason many African doctors have stayed in France is because they are needed there: the French hospital system is understaffed and there are real medical deserts in rural areas,” she says.

So what if we have enabling policies in African countries that will further encourage investment into Africa’s healthcare sector and discourage capital flight?

This is a good starting point. Africa’s billion-dollar medical tourism market can also be cornered by African investors through strategic partnerships with foreign counterparts.

African entrepreneurs and businessmen can strike strategic partnerships with leading medical establishments in countries like India, Canada, and the United Kingdom to invest in modern world class facilities that will boast the best of equipment and personnel who will also be invited from these countries to work and live in African countries.

By doing this, Africans will have no need to travel to these countries since they now have the right hands that will attend to them right in their own countries. By doing so, huge resources will be saved by these countries and thus remain in their economies.

Another area that needs to be tapped is the provision of practical education and experience for young medical graduates. By providing practical educational facilities, these young professionals can be brought up to speed with the latest practices and developments in their field.

This will both provide a platform for revenue generation as well as provide more experienced hands to plug the hole being created by the movement of experienced hands. It can also provide a platform for these experienced hands to be enticed back to their home countries to share their wealth of experience.

Dr. Wale Adeosun’s Wellvis Brings Medical Healthcare to You in Realtime

Dr Wale Adeosun , a Nigerian doctor, received calls and text messages from acquaintances, old classmates, and relatives seeking advice on health issues such as which over-the-counter meds to take, which specialists to visit, and where to find them. Sometimes they need clarity on medicine combinations or just a second perspective. Most of the time, they just want a health myth debunked.

Not everyone has easy access to doctors or other health professionals. Adeosun pictured the millions of individuals who had to cope with incorrect, ineffective, and occasionally downright damaging health advice.

Lack of access to reliable health information, along with ignorance and poverty, is at the foundation of most ailments, particularly in this region of the globe, which is why he and his co-founder founded Wellvis.

What problem is Wellvis solving?

The team came together in 2018, tested a version of the platform, and released the

product to the public in 2019. Wellvis is a complete telehealth solutions platform with the goal of being Africa’s most useful and helpful health information and service platform.

There are a number of features on Wellvis, both online and offline. The question and answer platform intends to increase access to quality health information and promote patient active involvement through a crowdsourced forum style. Questions can be asked publicly or anonymously on the site for free. And healthcare personnel supply the answers.

It also offers a premium option of a direct one-on-one online consultation with verified health workers, appointment bookings and reminders for physical consultations with specialists and lab investigations. There’s also a portal to access curated health services and products at a discount.

How did the health startup get funding?

Bootstrapping a startup puts a lot of control in the hands of the founders.

Since Adeosun launched Wellvis with his co-founders who were equally doing great in health or tech, it makes sense that they relied on their funds.

“We are completely bootstrapped. Thankfully, all the co-founders are professionals in health or tech, so we were able to fund the project off the ground and continue to fund it till date. As of July 2020, we are still bootstrapping, however, we have had the privilege of winning some small grants.”

Innovating in the face of a global threat?

During the COVID-19 epidemic, Wellvis developed the COVID-triage tool. The tool was created using the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control’s (NCDC) official case definition. It uses clinical and epidemiological questions to classify low, medium, or high-risk users. Following that, each risk category is educated on the appropriate measures, as outlined by the NCDC.

According to Adeosun , the tool helped in reducing the amount of inquisitive calls to disease control hotlines, allowing people who have been exposed to the virus to approach authorities more quickly, as well as offering users with quick risk assessments, education, and decision-making on COVID-19.

While speaking on the challenges Wellvis faced when launching, Adeosun said in a session with How we made it in Africa, “It isn’t exactly a mistake per se, but when we started, we underestimated how important user education is, especially when it comes to healthcare. What we have learnt is that user education is a rather strong component of marketing and subsequent adoption.”

Launching into a highly competitive market like Nigeria’s requires a great marketing strategy, and according to Adeosun , the winning factors are “Strategic partnerships. The ability to use the existing distribution channels of mainstream partners with deeper pockets than you. It also helps to have a good product and an even better customer service.”

Andrew Saad Birth a Revolutionary Idea After a Near-Death Encounter

Growth and expansion

The company, since its inception, has recorded outstanding growth. It expanded from one city to five cities in Egypt in a year.

This was aided by the incubation and early funding program by the Falak Startup’s investment which helped the health tech startup to gain attention and get more angel funds.

As of late 2021, the company recorded more than 17,000 HealthTag users and over 3,500 healthcare providers using the product, especially in clinics, pharmacies, labs, and radiology centres.

“We are currently present in all Egyptian governorates with our main focus to be accessible to all through big cities. We are also expanding our networks to include hospitals and more institutions across Egypt, especially in rural areas,” Saad said.

Andrew Saad is the founder of Bypa-ss, a startup in Egypt disrupting the healthcare sector. He identified the problem affecting the Egyptian healthcare system in mid-2015 while interning at a hospital in northern Egypt.

This happened when an older woman was rushed into the emergency room. She, however, lacked medical records like many Egyptians.

He said, “We all get tested in more than one lab, buy medications from different places and get treated in different hospitals. But when in an emergency, won’t we need all of our medical histories in one place?”

Though the woman survived the episode, Saad, on the other hand, never forgot the experience. He believes that one of the problems with well-organised medical records is social class and education.

“I’m just trying to make sure that patients, no matter their social class or education background, can have the same level of care wherever they go,” he said. This experience, thus, led to the launch of Bypa-ss, a cloudbased system that stores medical records.

Starting Bypa-ss

While conducting the research that led to Bypa-ss, Andrew Saad discovered that this problem resonates with both the health sector and patients.

With this, he founded Bypa-ss in 2017 and launched its flagship product Healthtag, a platform for Health Information Exchange (HIE).

By leveraging the cloud, Healthtag safely stores medical information from various healthcare and makes it available to users.

For ease of use, cards are given to users with about 70% discounts on treatment.

For healthcare providers, Bypas-ss offers a free-of-charge cloud-based patient management solution.

Funding and financing

Bypas-ss generates money through its various yearly subscriptions and commissions from the hospitals based on its providers’ discounted services to cardholders.

Also, funds come in through different fundraising platforms. In late 2021, Bypasss closed a $1 million pre-seed funding to digitise health management.

This was from Magic Fund, Acuity Ventures, Launch Africa, Plug and Play, and other regional and international Venture Capitalists.

According to him, “with this investment coming in, we will be able to provide more features to our customers while maintaining our service level and growth momentum.

“Additionally, the company intends to use the funds to fuel expansion, perfect a high-end tech mobile app for patients to engulf and facilitate the information exchange between the stakeholders from different levels and sizes and capitalise on the company’s rapid growth”.

Profile || By Oyetoun Olabisi

By Joseph Ekeng

How Koniku’s MicroChip is Revolutionising Disease Detection

All over the world, Nigerian professionals are making their mark at the top cadre of their different careers by expanding the frontiers of knowledge and stretching the limits of innovativeness.

Be it in academics, science, sports, finance or even medicine; their exploits have brought glory and honour to the fatherland and highlighted the immense human resources potential in the country while also challenging the government at home to do more to encourage capacity development.

One of such Nigerians is Oshiorenoya Agabi, who until a few years ago used to be based in Lagos, but now resides in California, USA.

Agabi is the founder of a startup called Koniku, the world’s first neurocomputer company. The Nigerian entrepreneur said he was inspired by the enormous potential of the human brain, and then he thought of replicating its function through technology.

Along with others in his company, Agabi is working to integrate biological neurons and silicon computer chips. The intent is to develop a computer that can mimic the human brain.

How Agabi founded Koniku

Koniku was founded in 2017. The company is based in California, where Agabi leads a small team of Engineers and scientists. And they are committed to building new and future tech pioneers.

The young techpreneur combines his groundbreaking work at Koniku with a PHD research programme at the Imperial College London.

Koniku Seed Funding

In September 2015, Agabi applied for and received approval for $250,000 in seed funding in a bid to get the project off the ground. The finance gave a lot of impetus to the project and shortly after, the company was boosted with another $1.4 million in venture funding.

Koniku has since raised over $6 million in venture financing, receiving the backing of VCs in Silicon Valley. Over $17.5 million have been received in revenue from contracts, with a projection to accrue $200 million in four years, Agabi says.

A breathing device that can smell

Without a doubt, this funding has been put to good use by Agabi and his team at Koniku in the development of devices that have improved the treatment of diseases.

Perhaps the highest point of the company’s success is a device called Konikore which can detect diseases using smell. That means just by sending the smell from a person, the device can tell if the person is afflicted with a disease and what type. Konikore is built with a chip that merges living genetically modified brain cells and traditional silicon.

The technology works because silicon alone is insufficient for processing and interpreting data from the human smell.

This possibility, Agabi says, is founded on published literature. By detecting about four Volatile Organic

Compounds (VOCs), you could make an educated 80%-correct guess on the presence of influenza in a human’s body after taking their breath.

The principal understanding that makes Konikore sensible is that while there are branches of artificial intelligence that interpret images (computer vision) and sound (natural language processing) for predictive analytics, the process for interpreting smell is not straightforward.

Koniku’s vision with Konikore is to augment silicon with cells from mice to produce the capacity needed for machines to ‘breathe’ and ‘smell’. The input data for this process is Volatile Organic Compounds that the body gives off when we have certain diseases.

When the device detects a given set of these compounds in a human, it can – aided by a complex interplay of algorithms – tell what disease a person has. With this innovative device, present diseases will be detected, including lung cancer and Covid-19.

But one more exciting thing about Konikore is that it can discover diseases yet to be discovered. How is that possible?

Well, it relies on the knowledge that every disease has a key organic substance that serves as its biomarker. This will also be done using data collected through the internet of things.

Koniku will be relevant in other sectors

According to Agabi, aside from Konikore, the flagship product of Koniku, his company is also developing another groundbreaking device that will be relevant in other fields, including Agriculture, healthcare, military and airport security.

He says the Koniku Kore can detect explosive material like TATP in 2 parts per billion just by exposing the device to air.

Koniku’s Global Clients

Koniku already has the military as one of its clients and is also patronised by major global brands like Exxon Mobil, Procter & Gamble, and BASF – a global chemicals manufacturer.

Meet Yael Joffe, Personalising Healthcare Services through Genetics

The path to 3X4 Genetics

Yael Joffe grounded herself in the health space and became a renowned scientist with a doctorate in Nutrigenomics and Functional Nutrition from the University of Cape Town. She believes that with the knowledge gained, she can develop and provide DNA-driven individualised medical advice to people.

To Joffe, “Genes make up the baseline “code” by which your body functions. Everything we do in our lives links to what we have inherited; your genetic makeup influences every single choice you make throughout your life”. Therefore, understanding the hidden knowledge in our genes will give us immeasurable access to making the right choices for our bodies.

3X4 Genetics

Yael Joffe lost her grandmother to cancer. This inspired the South African health entrepreneur to launch 3X4 Genetics in 2018.

The event opened her eyes to the reality and ineffectiveness of the traditional healthcare system in the world. With this loss, she channelled her energy into studying medicine and dietetics.

During her research, she found that drugs merely stall and conceal illnesses rather than prolong people’s health. In her quest for a better solution, Joffe stumbled on genetics. Through 3X4 Genetics, she provides a complete solution using cutting-edge testing techniques via a network of highly skilled practitioners.

In 2018, she founded 3X4 Genetics which uses a DNA test kit that breaks down and analyses more than 134 genes. The genes include those that may affect metabolism, inflammation, detoxification, fitness, body weight, hormones, cognition, and response to diet and supplements.

With its effectiveness, different healthcare practitioners patronise and use 3X4 Genetics tests to analyse and understand various medical conditions.

Yael Joffe said, “We are building a digital, interactive version of our Blueprint to improve the healthcare service. This product will give practitioners and patients an interactive user experience as they navigate their gene results, pathways, and health categories.

It will enable easy customisation of recommendations for practitioners, helping them give up-to-date, personalised recommendations for their patients. We are designing it to save the practitioner preparation time”.

Scaling the business beyond the shores of Africa

In 2019, 3X4 Genetics received $2.5 million in Series A funding from Alethea Capital, a US-based venture capital.

In 2020, the funding was used to expand the startup into the United States healthcare sector. With the opening of its new office in Seattle in 2021, Michael Hubbard was named the new chief executive officer of 3X4Genetics. He said, “I am excited about the tremendous opportunity to bring actionable genetics information to more people worldwide.

We have seen that technology provides an amazing amount of data to individuals to manage their health and performance. 3X4 is bringing genetics into this digital health realm, and I see us as ideally situated for rapid adoption”.

More on Yael Joffe

Apart from being a renowned scientist, Yael Joffe is a mother to two children: Hannah and Jack and a lover of animals. This is evident in her having two dogs and three cats.

Although her work is one of her happy places, one way she cools off from a hectic day is outdoor swimming. She says, “ I love swimming, anywhere and anytime. Especially in oceans, lakes, and rivers, not in chlorinated overheated gym swimming pools”.

The world-acclaimed nutrigenomic also loves teaching. She said, “The best part of my work is seeing clinicians become experts in the nutrigenomic space, very clever and enlightened practitioners that make me super proud”.

She has published some in peer-reviewed journals and co-published three books: It’s Not Just Your Genes, The SNP Journal, and Genes to Plate.

Olabisi

Tosin Runsewe the CEO Creating Opportunities to Make Healthcare Affordable in Africa

of Nigeria. This included serving as its General Secretary for two terms.

He began working with Guaranty Trust Bank plc in March 2004 and held positions in the Commercial, Investment, and Institutional Banking Groups for nine years.

As the treasurer of Guaranty Trust Bank, he participated in the teams that helped Nigeria’s money and foreign currency markets pioneer a number of initiatives. For a few years, he also served as the bank’s Head of the Energy Group.

Vice President Yemi Osinbajo and Mr. Babajide Sanwo-Olu, the Governor of Lagos State, unveiled the multispecialty hospital in Lekki in 2021.

The Evercare Group, a leading impact-driven healthcare organisation in emerging markets with hospitals, clinics, and diagnostic facilities operating throughout Africa and South Asia, owns and operates the 165-bed multispecialty, tertiary care hospital that was specifically built to be state-of-the-art.

Tosin Runsewe has worked in Nigeria’s financial and medical institutions for more than 27 years. He graduated from the University of Ibadan with a bachelor’s degree. Tosin got an MBA from the University of Lagos and also a Master’s Field of Study in Financial Economics from SOAS University of London.

Even after obtaining these degrees, He furthered his education by graduating from the Advanced Management Program (AMP) at the Harvard Business School in 2009. He also has a Cornell University Executive Healthcare Leadership Certificate.

Career

The year 1992 marked the beginning of Tosin’s career in finance with the thenCommercial Bank Credit Lyonnais Nigeria Limited, where he managed Trade Financerelated projects.

Tosin held a number of positions with the Financial Market Dealers Association, formerly the Money Market Association

Soon, Tosin was on another path to launch one of Nigeria’s largest nonbank financial services organisations, which is previously known as Guaranty Trust Assurance.

The platform offers asset management, life insurance, P&C insurance, and health insurance. He effectively oversaw the company’s transfer between three separate sets of owners, including AXA Mansard Investments Ltd.

Tosin was on the board of AXA Mansard Investments Ltd. He was the executive director and chief client officer of AXA Mansard.

Additionally, the company received a corporate governance award from the Nigeria Stock Exchange at this time.

Joining Evercare

Tosin Runsewe became the Chairman of Evercare Hospital Lekki in May 2020, where he is in charge of and controls major operational choices.

Evercare Hospital Lekki is the country’s first significant and private tertiary healthcare facility launched in Nigeria in decades.

The opening of Evercare Hospital Lekki is a calculated investment meant to strengthen the Nigerian healthcare system by delivering high-quality, easily-accessible medical care that would lessen some of the strain associated with medical travel.

Professor Yemi Osinbajo, the Vice President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, remarked during the commissioning:

“The opening of Evercare Hospital in Nigeria marks an exciting moment for healthcare in Nigeria.

This is not just because of the several groundbreaking innovations that come with the package, but perhaps even more of what this holds for the future of medical care in Nigeria and Sub-Saharan Africa as the business landscape for medical care becomes wider.”

AfyA Care

Tosin Runsewe is presently the CEO of AfyA Care, an integrated healthcare organisation working to improve access to high-quality healthcare in Sub-Saharan Africa.

He is a Trustee of the JAR Foundation, which he helped establish in order to advance the growth of educational and medical services in Africa. He also serves on Terra Kulture’s advisory board.

Emilian Popa, the Serial Entrepreneur taking Healthcare to the Hinterlands of Africa

Healthcare is capital intensive, and most of the core medical facilities and available infrastructure are hugely underfunded. Existing healthcare service providers have little or no access to the needed capital.

With the identification of the problem, Emilia Popa thought of a feasible way of providing private clinics and pharmacies in low- to middle-income communities with inexpensive revenue generating diagnostic equipment.

Through Ilara, a Nairobi-based health tech startup, these have been made possible. In his words, “Ilara Health makes common diagnostics accessible and affordable to over 500 million people in Africa who today struggle to access even basic blood tests.

Emilian Popa is a serial investor and entrepreneur with over ten years of experience in founding, launching, and funding over 20 startups in different sectors in Africa, Asia, Russia and the Middle East.

This has been further strengthened by his proficiency in seven languages, such as English, French, Romanian, and Dutch.

How he got his start

Investing in new and existing businesses has always been the forte for Emilian Popa. His wealth of knowledge and industry-focused skills became galvanised by the core business schools he attended. Between 2008 and 2010, he attended Columbia Business School and London Business School, earning a Master’s in Business Administration (MBA).

Popa’s vast knowledge in the business space has led to his investment and establishment of some of the notable startups in Africa.

These include Zando, an online clothing retailer in South Africa; Jumia, an eCommerce and logistic company in Nigeria; Groupon in South Africa; and DiGAME in the United

Arab Emirates. In 2019, he founded Ilara Health, a Kenya-based diagnostic solutions company, where he serves as the Chief Executive Officer.

Venturing into the health sector in Africa

While investing in DiGAME, an investment company, Emilian Popa noticed that the healthcare sector in Africa has very few startups despite the continent’s lack of quality healthcare service.

Through his research work, Emilian Popa was able to establish that out of more than 500 companies in Africa, only a few were health-tech based. According to him, this is because “Healthcare is difficult. But if one identifies a sustainable and economical model in healthcare, it can be super impactful and also super-profitable.”

With this shortage in the sector, Popa saw an opportunity that led to the birth of Ilara in 2019.

Ilara Healthcare

One of the problems confronting quality healthcare service in Africa is finance.

We do this by partnering with companies using robotics and AI to lower the cost of diagnostics, integrate their devices into our tech platform, and sell this bundle to doctors with financing”.

The financing option gives private healthcare access and supportive medical equipment for clinics and hospitals to provide quality healthcare service to people. These financing repayments are spread in convenient monthly installments, with all covered equipment wired to a device that allows Ilara to turn off or deactivate equipment if there is payment default.

Journey so far

Ilara has come a long way under the leadership of Emilia Popa. The platform launched and partnered with five clinics in 2019 and, within three years, increased to over 800. This has made healthcare facilities accessible to over 100,000 patients per month.

With an initial limited market size, covering South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Egypt and Morocco, it has expanded to more than 43 countries. This is with the intent to try out new markets across East and Southern Africa.

How Melissa Bime is Saving Lives with Her Online Blood Bank

With that tragedy still fresh in her mind, Melissa quit her nursing job. She took it upon herself to solve the inaccessibility of local blood supplies problem that hospitals and doctors in Yaoundé experienced.

In 2015, at 18 years old, Melissa founded ‘Infiuss’, a digital supplychain platform that gives hospitals access to ready-to-use blood.

How Infiuss is solving the blood transfusion problem

At a very young age, Melissa Bime was already making a mark in her chosen nursing career. But while working at a Cameroonian hospital, an event happened that left a lasting impression on her mind and changed the trajectory of her career forever.

A 5-year-old patient admitted to the hospital where Melissa worked had died from severe anaemia caused by malaria. The girl’s demise happened because the hospital could not find compatible blood that could have saved her life.

A few days after her death, the hospital discovered that the compatible blood could have been obtained from a medical facility nearby but the painful discovery came too late.

The girl’s needless death haunted Melissa for a long time until, one day, she decided to find a solution to the blood transfusion problem in Cameroon.

“Seeing a little girl dying because the hospital could not source blood from a nearby facility angered me. I could not keep working as a nurse - I did not want to be part of a system where I had to simply watch these cases,” said Melissa.

Infiuss is a revolutionary health service that connects health facilities to a vast network of blood banks in other health institutions. It can also be described as an online blood bank, and emergency platform that caters to the blood supply needs across hospitals in Cameroon.

Though the death of a five-year-old inspired the company, Melissa soon discovered that the problem of blood transfusion in Cameroon and Africa was a major crisis.

In sub-Saharan Africa, more than half a million deaths occur due to a lack of access to compatible blood. And in Cameroon, 89% of blood needs in hospitals are not met, while 40% of pregnant women and children below five years cannot get blood when they need them.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) states that the number of deaths is so high because most of Africa rely on their blood banks or relatives of patients for donation.

How Infiuss works

As soon as individuals of health facilities place a demand for blood by SMS or phone call, “we source for a match in blood group and type in our database which has information on blood availability in hospitals with blood banks, then we deliver on bikes, in the right conditions,” Melissa explained.

By doing this, lives are saved and mortality prevented. This line of business is a massive niche in the health sector because there is always a need for blood for pregnant women, haemophiliacs, sickle cell patients, major surgeries, etc. Demand is constantly growing such that Melissa is considering expanding to other African markets.

In a recent interview, she insisted that “our vision is to make blood available to those in extreme need and fight against deaths related to blood shortages.”

How internet restriction almost killed the business

Melissa recalls that her journey in entrepreneurship has been far from smooth. At the onset of the company, she got very little support as funding was not coming as expected. There was also the challenge of government bureaucracy, which is a major problem faced by entrepreneurs in Cameroon and most parts of sub-Saharan Africa.

She has also had to navigate cultural stereotypes because most Africans are still sceptical about donating their blood; they fear it could be used for some form of magic that could harm them.

Melissa noted that her company has spent quite a ton of money to enlighten Cameroonians on the benefits of blood donation. But the biggest challenge that Infiuss faces to date is an occasional government crackdown on the internet. This takes place whenever there are protests or other forms of public disturbances. This has had adverse implications on internet-based businesses like Infiuss.

“If the suspension of internet services hasn’t killed my business nothing can stop me,” comments Melissa. Despite all the challenges that Melissa has faced, she remains defiant and looks to the future with great hope despite her young age.

Profile || By Joseph Ekeng

By Kenechukwu Muoghalu

It is for a fact that the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places, including the African healthcare industry. Healthcare in African countries is one of the fastest developing industries and yet it has not been paid much attention over the years, not until the COVID-19 pandemic. During the pandemic, healthcare industries in Africa were faced with inadequate capabilities and capacity to manufacture and supply essential drugs and equipment needed by the people. This served as an eye opener and thus encouraged some changes in the African health sector.

Presently the number of local health startups increased drastically and coupled with that, African healthcare is left with diverse business opportunities that private or public investors or entrepreneurs can infuse on and yield fast results. UNECA estimates that health business opportunities in Africa will be worth as much as $259 billion by 2030. Investing in these business opportunities will also reduce the need to rely on international supplies. Let’s examine a few of these business opportunities in Africa’s healthcare.

Manufacturing

When it comes to manufacturing in the African health sector, it is known as a vast industry that accommodates other health care units. There are viable opportunities in the manufacturing industry that investors can tap into. These subsections of the health care manufacturing industry range from pharmaceuticals, Biotech and medical equipment.

“Medical equipment and instruments manufacturing companies are the backbone of the healthcare industry. They support it with all the required equipment to serve the patients and the needy ones” -R.B Farraday

The pharmaceutical segment is responsible for developing and producing drugs and licensing them for use. This firm also conducts research and development to

Business Opportunities in Africa’s Health Care

create new drugs that can undergo clinical processes before being approved for use. In the pharmaceutical industry, you can also find generic drug manufacturers who produce look-alike drugs that are cheaper than those of pharmaceuticals. These pharmaceutical drugs mainly cover over-the-counter drugs, prescription drugs, generic drugs, vitamins and supplements among others.

Biotechnology also researches and manufactures drugs but they are mostly focused on a few important products or treatments. It can be the production of COVID-19 vaccines or drugs for cancer. There are not always

prone to steady income because they are more akin to volatile growth, and an investor can wait for years for a payoff.

A local investor can also choose to invest in medical equipment which requires the production of surgical equipment, scrapple appliances, ophthalmic goods, nebulizer, hospital beds and furniture, dental equipment, medical supplies such as intravenous fluids, syringes, bandages and a host of others. The medical equipment subsector can offer longterm growth as the growth in healthcare consumption continues to increase.

Sales and Distribution

This sector is a good business opportunity that consists of pharmacies, retailers and wholesalers. The sales and distribution industry are mainly intermediaries between the manufacturer and the pharmacies. As far as the manufacturing industry of the African health sector is still in check, then there will be rapid growth in the distribution networks.

Investors can earn from this because the industry receives a service fee from the pharmaceutical companies they work for.

Human Resources

Africa’s health system has always been confronted by a grossly understaffed workforce which weakens the health system. Human resource has proven to be the most crucial resource in the healthcare delivery sector and a lack of it can affect the healthcare system.

“Sub-Saharan Africa has 24 per cent of the global disease burden, yet only three per cent of the world’s health care workers.” -Mitchell Besser

Investing in human resources can serve a great deal in enhancing the workforce inadequacies in Africa’s healthcare. This is a form of business opportunity because as a public or private initiative, you can choose to invest in the training, education and capacity building of health workers. One can also strengthen and equip healthcare facilities and provide more incentives for health workers. All other expansions in the health sector will be meaningless if there are little to no health workers to support them.

Medical Insurance

The medical insurance industry comprises medical insurance-providing companies. This industry specializes in providing health

insurance policies that enable patients to spend less when they visit the hospital. An investor in this industry can open companies such as Health Maintenance Organisations (HMOs), healthcare consultants, medical aid, Medicare and the rest of others.

Health Technology

Investing in the African health sector can also be possible through technology. The health tech sector has been in existence for many years but has increased its prominence since the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The role of health tech startups in narrowing the healthcare gap was apparent, confirming value propositions, and decreased investment risk.” -Dr Rasha Rady

Incorporating technology into health care can be in the form of creating digital platforms, in the form of creating a health app also known as telehealth, for quick and efficient supply chain management which can enhance doctor-patient interactions. While investing in this industry, an investor will require knowledge and analysis of the new technology.

Healthcare Facilities

This industry consists of hospitals, clinics, laboratories, psychiatric facilities, and nursing homes, intending to render treatment services to patients. One can also invest in this segment as a medical practitioner, homoeopath, nutritionist, dietitian and dermatologist among others. The healthcare industry also covers the whole sphere of the healthcare industry in Africa.

Africa’s health care offers varieties of choices in its business opportunities. Investing in the diverse business opportunities in the African healthcare sector comes with multiple barriers and this is why investors cannot invest based on the impact of an organisation. An investor should be aware of the potential advantages and challenges of each industry, for better management. Regardless of the barriers, one can still make a fortune from investing in the African health care industry.

By Ebube Julius

Dr Chibuzo Opara who is the cofounder and co-CEO of DrugStoc is using his platform to solve prevalent challenge of drug distribution in Nigeria. African pharmaceutical logistics has been subjected to a fragmented system . This has caused a lack of access, substandard and counterfeit medication and non-transparent pricing and financing of the supply chain.

DrugStoc is a cloud-based pharmatech distribution company that creates viable connections between Sub- Saharan hospitals, pharmacies, and healthcare centres to manufacturers of high-quality pharmaceutical products in a financially feasible way.

How Chibuzo Opara is Using a Cloud-Based Platform to Improve Pharmaceutical Drugs Distribution

The Launch of DrugStoc

Opara’s plan to promote a healthier population originates from a desire to support healthcare professionals enabling the sector’s true transformation.

He graduated from Usmanu Danfodiyo University in Sokoto, Nigeria, with a Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS). In addition, he holds an MPH in Economics, Policy, and Management and a PhD in Medicine and Surgery from the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands.

With a passion for using technology to break down obstacles and transform access to high-quality healthcare, he urged Nigeria to embrace it and help drive the change.

How Opara became an entrepreneur

Chibuzo Opara met his co-founder Yehia while doing his master’s in Economics, Policy and Management from the University of Maastricht, The Netherlands.

Coincidentally, Yehia was also doing his Masters in the same school, but at a separate time. While Yehia was looking for an advisor for his Masters in Health Innovation Management, Opara met him.

“We had realised that we sort of faced the same challenges. He comes from a healthcare background with a family that has been in healthcare for about 40 years. So we were discussing the same challenges over and over again and decided, ‘Let’s do something about it,” Opara said.

After returning to Nigeria, the two co-founded Integra Health in 2010, a health consultancy and IT lab with offices in Lagos that focuses on utilising technology to integrate effective management practices and processes into healthcare.

“We were lucky enough to manage about 20 facilities, but we ran into the same challenges again when it came to sourcing medication, and we decided to do something about it.

We discovered that — and this is common with sub-Saharan countries with open drug markets — facilities would send folks to the open drug markets to source drugs, and when these drugs came, you couldn’t vouch for their safety, quality, or storage.”

Chibuzo Opara and his co-founder Yehia founded DrugStoc due to the fragmentation of the pharmaceutical industry. Excel sheets were used at the time, however that only provided a solution for the 20 facilities.

It evolved into what it is now, a quality medicine marketplace and cloud-based warehouse, to scale and benefit more people.

But there were several stages. The company, which was founded in 2015, conducted a pilot for 12 to 18 months before sticking to its present strategy and erecting its first experience centre in 2017.

The drug company currently collaborates with more than 800 pharmacies and the Association of General and Private Medical Practitioners of Nigeria, which has more than 2,000 registered members.

The business received funds as part of its participation in the Co-creation Hub (CcHUB) Growth Capital Fund. The inaugural $1 million Africa Netpreneur Prize Initiative of the Jack Ma Foundation awarded DrugStoc a $65,000 prize in 2019. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation later awarded them another grant.

More recently, the business announced a $4.4 million Series A led by Africa HealthCare Master Fund (AAIC) in November 2021.

Along with finance, the business receives revenue via commissions it charges clients for its services. According to Opara, it is impossible to rely on donor finance, and in order for a company to endure the test of time, sustainability must be built-in.

The ultimate objective is to ensure that nothing interferes with the company’s supply chain and, consequently, its capacity to offer clients high-quality services.

DrugStoc phenomenal heights have been noticed and it has earned it The Nigerian Healthcare Excellence Award for Technology-Driven Pharma Distributor of the Year 2022.

Profile || By Ebube Julius

How Patrick Beattie Got Inspired to Tackle the Under-developed Diagnostic Sector in Africa

with biology and conducted some research on nanoparticles for drug delivery. After graduating from college, he made the decision to enlist in the US Peace Corps. He spent two years as a volunteer teacher of math and chemistry in The Gambia, West Africa, and another year in Guinea, also in the region. He had never been to Africa before.

“I enjoyed my time in the Peace Corps. It was great to feel really good about the work I was doing, but I did miss the more scientific, and technical aspects and all the training I had done in chemical engineering” Beattie said.

just anything that you want an answer to — what would you test for?’ Beattie said, “I thought that this would tell us the next test we should develop. But nine times out of ten, the answer I got was a test that already existed.”

Although they were already working on these tests, Patrick Beattie realised that there was a market gap or opportunity where the current technology just wasn’t making the needed transition for widespread use. There were some tests that pharmacies were supposed to use, but didn’t. That is what initially put him on the path to starting Redbird.

CEO and co-founder of Redbird, Patrick Beattie, is committed to improving healthcare in Ghana and throughout subSaharan Africa. Redbird is based on the idea that healthcare has to be far more accessible—not as an extravagance, but as a necessity.

Beattie, a Skoll Scholar for 2014–2015, has devoted his professional life to utilising cutting-edge technology to meet unmet needs in global development and health.

Prior to earning his MBA, Patrick co-founded Diagnostics For All, a non-profit medical company that uses paper-microfluidic technology to create cutting-edge point-ofcare diagnostics that are especially suited for areas with limited resources.

Prior to co-founding Diagnostics For All, Patrick served in the US Peace Corps for three years, teaching math and chemistry in The Gambia and Guinea. He graduated from Princeton University with a degree in chemical engineering. Patrick now resides in Accra, Ghana, but he’s originally from Anchorage, Alaska.

The road to entrepreneurship

During his undergraduate studies in chemical engineering at Princeton, Patrick Beattie concentrated on the intersection

Because he was interested in biotech and the startup scene, he returned to the US and further moved to Boston after three years. He eventually became the founding scientist at Diagnostics For All, a nonprofit practitioner of medical diagnostics (DFA). The company used paper microfluidics, a technology developed in George Whiteside’s lab at Harvard.

With a focus on low-resource environments, he and his team at DFA were refining this technology into diagnostic tests. SubSaharan Africa, Southeast Asia, and some of Latin America were hence the main areas of concentration. His experience at DFA made him exposed to the early stages of a company’s growth because he was the lone employee for a considerable amount of time. But soon, the startup employed over twenty people. Additionally, the firm received some money in a grant. Patrick Beattie found it to be a good experience because it helped him start Redbird.

Launching Redbird

When Beattie was in Africa for the testing of his diagnostic procedures, one of the things he would do was to visit pharmacies and ask,

‘Hey, if you could test for anything in the world—  don’t think about what’s possible,

He completed an MBA at Oxford as a transitional year, using it to examine various markets. While doing so, he became enthusiastic about Ghana as a possible market. Soon after, he moved to Ghana and got his first opportunity to help start up a Tanzanian medical supply firm branch that sought to enter the Ghanaian market.

When he did that for them, he met his co-founder Andrew at that time, and after they had worked on the business in their own spare time for about a year, they quit their day jobs to devote all of their time to it. After that, they hired Edward as their third co-founder.

Redbird

In order to better tackle the rising burden of non-communicable and chronic diseases, Redbird Health Tech is altering how patients interact with the Ghanaian healthcare system.

Redbird gives pharmacists the ability to conduct on-site quick testing for the diagnosis and monitoring of medical issues, bringing care closer to the patient, enhancing patient involvement and spotting negative health effects while remedial action is still feasible.

By Damilola Akinlude

ABOVE AND BEYOND

OSAMUDIAMEN IMASUEN

Mudia is a product designer and a design educator based in Kaduna, Nigeria. He uses his design thinking skills to simplify complex brand-user interactions, solve design challenges for users and businesses, and build consistent brand design experiences that foster trust and elevate meaningful conversations.

He has worked with some of the most ambitious industry leaders across Fintech, Print, Global Mentality, Travel, Employee Productivity, Talent upskilling, governments and so on.

BUKAYO EWUOSO

Bukayo helps brands and/or small businesses achieve digital growth & performance in the most effective way to match their business goal ranging from increase in sales, lead generation, brand perception, and more.

This involves the use of one or a combination of digital channels from social media, search engines, email marketing, and other digital channels.

MITCHELLE CHIBUNDU

Mitchelle enjoys solving challenging problems and building products that people love. I worked at Flutterwave as the product design lead for mobile products and later worked on the Barter team where she designed some of its core offerings.

She is the creator of Designer Babe, a platform with which she educates people on design fundamentals.

She recently hosted a design networking event in Nigeria “Wine and Design Live” which had in attendance top designers in Nigeria.

BLESSING ABENG

Blessing Abeng is a branding and communications expert dedicated to helping brands identify and communicate their unique identity and tell better stories. She builds brand and communication strategies around tech products, services, growth, and sales to help brands communicate with their team, target audience, partners, and investors.

She has worked with brands across industries in unique capacities, nationally and globally, including Seedstars, Facebook, Taeillo, Diageo, Heritage Bank, African Alliance and so many others.

She is also the Co-founder and Director of Communications at Ingressive for Good where she drives the mission of the non profit to create and increase the earning power of one million African youth through tech training and resources for the growth of the African startup ecosystems.

By Ebube Julius

Amir Barsoum the Entrepreneur that Launched the Health Booking Platform in the MENA Region

Egyptian entrepreneur, Amir Barsoum, has devoted his life to democratising and access to healthcare across Africa. Just like most vibrant entrepreneur success stories, Amir face several roadblocks, before launching Vezeeta, a leading health booking platform in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

Having studied pharmacy, Amir started a distribution business in Egypt to aid the distribution of drugs to people, but this was soon short-lived with with his mind set on working for global companies.

A window of opportunity soon opened for Amire. With an irresistible resume at the age of 24, he got an offer at McKinsey, a global management consulting firm.

Soon he got other opportunities at major multinational pharmaceutical companies, of which one was AstraZeneca. This gave him a broad and global perspective on the healthcare industry.

Vezeeta is now a globally recognised name with operations on four continents with over $73 million raised in capital.

Top-tier investors, including VNV Global, Crescent Enterprises Venture Capital, Beco Capital, and Gulf Capital, have funded the health tech start-up.

Amir Barsoum’s path to entreneurship

Amir Barsoum always envisioned himself as an entrepreneur, but never in tech. His family’s line of pharmaceutical business has always been on the traditional level. So he always saw himself taking over the business chain rather than launching a health tech startup.

Once Barsoum got his Bachelor of Pharmacy from Ain Shams University, and his MBA from the American University of Cairo, he was stuck between the option of working in a pharmaceutical retail shop or working for a company.

With his distaste for the two options, Barsoum started a pharmaceutical distribution company which focused primarily on Egypt.

However, Amir sold and exited the distribution business of about 120 employees when he was 21 years old.

“ I didn’t make real money out of this, but I think the learning was amazing and immense, especially for somebody that was 21 years old and out of college,” Amir said.

After the acquisition of his company by an Iraq investor, Amir’s next dream was to work for a multinational company and learn how they operate.

“I built my resume to be an amazing one, I thought it was an amazing one, with the achievement I got with the previous company. I decided to go and apply to a different multinational company and every single one of them told me no because I have never worked at a multi-level before.”

After 6 months, Amir got two offers from McKinsey and L’Oreal. He chose McKinsey.

The launch of Vezeeta

Amir worked for many fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) and healthcare organisations in the public and private sectors in Europe and the MENA. Then he oversaw AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals’ MENA market strategy.

It was there Amir noticed the large pitfalls of the health sector globally. He observe how patients had to wait for hours to see the doctors in major AstraZeneca branches which were located in Germany, London and Saudi Arabia.

This pushed him to launch Vezeeta in 2012, to combat this problem. To him, Egypt was the perfect starting point because of the availability of tech talents and how knowledgeable he was of the market.

Amir Barsoum furthered his plans by getting a certificate in executive education from Harvard Business School which was focused on building startups.

It wasn’t easy scaling the business, so he had to pivot the business after almost getting bankrupt. While pivoting from a company that was doctor-focused to a patient-focused platform, Vezeeta had to downsize from 53 employees to 6.

Soon the new business model of giving authentic reviews of doctors, physicians and pharmacists to patients became a success. Now the company has raised over $73 million in capital.

Recognitions

Amir was chosen as an Endeavor Entrepreneur in 2014. In 2016, he joined the board of directors of Endeavor Egypt.

Amir is a member of the Entrepreneur Organisation (EO) as well. He made the Fortune 40 under 40 list in 2020.

More on Vezeeta

Vezeeta, is a leading online healthcare booking platform and practice management system in the MENA area. From a simple concept, Amir Barsoum grew this company into one with over 40,000 medical doctors that use the platform on a daily basis, and 7 million patients across different verticals.

The platform is currently operational in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Lebanon, Kenya, and Nigeria. They continue to introduce products that improve people’s lives as they work to dominate every facet of the healthcare sector.

“ I didn’t make real money out of this, but I think the learning was amazing and immense, especially for somebody that was 21 years old and out of college,” Amir said.

By Wale Ameen

African Countries with the Most Improved Health Care

The African healthcare sector and its frontline players can be likened to an endangered species. And the reasons for this are all around us for us to see.

Every year, hundreds of skilled and experienced medical personnel leave in their droves as they seek greener pastures and the promise of better pay and a better work environment in developed nations like the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia.

Many African nations have been led by corrupt governments that

misappropriate their countries’ resources, starving critical sectors such as health and education of the required budgetary allocations needed to improve the quality of operations.

It is sad to note that of the 20 countries with the highest maternal rates worldwide, 19 are in Africa, and the continent also has the highest neonatal death rate in the world.

Every year, the continent experiences a continuous migration of some of its best minds within the sector. And the implications could be dire for the continent in the years to come. The African Union estimates that

not less than 70,000 skilled professionals emigrate from Africa every year.

According to the research by Duvivier, R.J., Burch, V.C. & Boulet, J.R. titled ‘A comparison of physician emigration from Africa to the United States of America between 2005 and 2015, the outflow of Africa-educated physicians to the US has increased over the past 10 years from 10,684 to 13, 584 in 2015, a 27.1% increase.

Another research conducted by Amy Hagopian, Matthew J Thompson, Meredith Fordyce, Karin E Johnson and L Gary Hart titled, ‘The migration of physicians from

sub-Saharan Africa to the United States of America: measures of the African brain drain’ noted that more than 23% of America’s 771,491 physicians received their medical training outside the USA, with the majority (64%) coming from low-income or lower middle-income countries. It also noted that a total of 5334 physicians from sub-Saharan Africa are in this group, and this represents more than 6% of the physicians practising in sub-Saharan Africa now.

Furthermore, it noted that nearly 86% of these Africans practising in the USA originate from only three countries: Nigeria, South Africa, and Ghana. Out of these, 79% were trained at only 10 medical schools.

The 2016 IMF World Economic Outlook estimates that by 2015, the total number of African migrants in OECD countries (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development - a group of 37 developed member countries that develop economic and social policy) would be 34 million, with France, the United Kingdom (UK), and the United States hosting about 50.0% of the total sub-Saharan African diaspora.

What this essentially means is that Africa is continuously losing the best of its brains to countries like the United States, which promise higher wages and a generally better work and life environment.

Apparently, no one can blame these individuals for seeking greener pastures, as everyone wants the best things in life, especially when you have the mental capacity to earn them for yourself.

In order to arrest this situation, key areas that have been noted to need improvement include private-sector training of health workers; timely payment of health workers; and provision of incentives to retain health workers in remote areas. Improvement of working and living conditions as well as provision of modern and adequate equipment

According to the World Health Organisation’s Regional Office for Africa Chair, Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, “Countries should strengthen the leadership and governance of health sectors to gain the confidence of all stakeholders.”

She also says governments need to do more to come up with innovative revenue sources to drive the health sector.

“Governments should be more innovative in raising revenues from domestic sources and ensuring that all of their populations have access to essential health services. They should also improve the quality of health services and the safety of patients and health workers, and build partnerships with civil society and other partners in order to expand access. Investing in district and community health systems should be a priority that can contribute towards universal health coverage and the achievement of the SDGs.”

A Look At Top African Countries With Improved Health Care

According to Numbeo’s healthcare index, which is an estimation of the overall quality of the healthcare systems of major countries around the world based on healthcare professionals, equipment, staff, doctors, cost, etc.

This listing, which gives a single measure of the state of each country’s health system, has it that as of the first quarter of 2022, South Africa comes out on top with a score of 63.97 on the continent.

Below is a rundown of Numbeo’s 2022 Health Care Index listing by countries:

• South Africa: Comes top with a health care index score of 63.97.

• Kenya: Is second with a health care index score of 63.40.

• Tunisia: Is third with a health care index score of 56.54.

• Algeria: Is fourth with a health care index score of 52.88.

• Nigeria: Comes fifth on the table with a health care index score of 48.49.

• Egypt: Is sixth with a health care index score of 47.01.

• Morocco: Is seventh with a health care index score of 46.69.

• Rwanda

• Tanzania

• Zambia

Let’s take a look at some of these countries that make up the top ten African countries leading in healthcare, their peculiarities, and what informs their position on the list.

South Africa

South Africa boasts of having about the best healthcare system per Numbeo’s healthcare system index, and this is attributable to a number of factors.

The country’s healthcare system derives its strength from the private healthcare sector, with some hospitals providing top notch services that match even those offered by providers in far flung Europe and America. The country is said to boast over 200 private hospitals across the country. This, however, is an exclusive preserve of those who have the cash to spend.

According to Numbeo’s Health Care Index of 2020, South Africa scores very high on skill and competence of medical personnel; speed in the completion of examinations and reports, availability of equipment that aids proper diagnosis and treatment; and accuracy in filling out reports.

The government is still responsible for funding public healthcare, and this is derived from taxes and revenues from point-of-care payments.

Kenya

Kenya has consistently made progress in terms of its healthcare infrastructure. It has been able to expand access to primary healthcare services, introduce free maternity services, and eliminate fees payable by the general public when assessing its primary healthcare facilities. It has also been able to introduce insurance subsidies for the elderly and disabled.

It thus is not surprising that it has retained a top position over the years and even moved up on the table. It was number three on this list in 2020 and 2021 but has subsequently

displaced Tunisia to move up one place to second.

Tunisia

The third country on the list for the first half of 2022 is Tunisia, and this is a country with a good healthcare system that caters to its teeming population. The country has a good number of primary health care centres, district and regional hospitals, as well as university hospitals where its citizens receive adequate medical care.

Algeria

Algeria’s public health care system is largely accessible to a good number of its citizens. It provides a good number of services free of charge, and this is financed largely by the government.

The country’s medical insurance scheme provides cover for about 90% of its population, and this largely rivals many other countries on the continent.

Nigeria

Nigeria’s position on the list is not surprising when one takes into cognisance the state of the nation’s health care system. While it is not the worst on the continent, it is also not the very best, especially with the challenges the system faces, such as a lack of adequate funding and the migration of qualified medical personnel in their droves yearly.

The country’s private sector is, however, providing much needed support for the public health system.

Egypt

Egypt’s healthcare system consists of both the public and private sector. The public is powered by the government, while the private sector is run by individuals. The country’s Ministry of Health is saddled with the task of ensuring adequate medical attention is provided in its public hospitals while it continues to overhaul its public healthcare system in a bid to improve service delivery.

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