Today, more than half of Africans lack access to vital healthcare, unable to receive services like vaccinations, prenatal care, and critical medical procedures. Despite the region accounting for roughly 24% of the global disease burden, only 3% of health workers globally are based in Africa – with even fewer specialists. As a result, Africa’s healthcare environment faces significant challenges, as doctors are overworked and overextended, while patients are oftentimes forced to travel hours, even days, and pay exorbitant costs for the care they need.
Fortunately, in recent years, digital innovators across the continent have been working to change this. William Mapham, a South African doctor and eye specialist, is one example.
Witnessing the strain on his country’s healthcare system, Mapham established Vula Mobile in 2014. This online platform connects local medical practitioners to specialists who can answer questions, provide assistance, and share their expertise. Today, the platform has served over 1.5 million South Africans, filling a gap in the healthcare sector and fostering trust and inclusion for those in rural communities who may otherwise have been unable to access critical care and services.
For solutions like Vula Mobile to thrive, they require a robust, interconnected ecosystem of innovation.
Vula Mobile is just one example of a “healthtech” innovator making a difference on the continent. Seeing this positive impact, I wonder – what will it take for Vula and other healthtech entrepreneurs to thrive and scale across the continent? Reflecting on this question, we can learn from the fintech sector, which offers some important parallels.
Just look at the fintech boom across the continent that has emerged since the early 2010s. Today, the continent is considered a global leader in digital banking, with almost half of the world’s mobile banking services – and accounts – found in Africa. Drawing on this success, the sector will only continue to grow, projected to reach an estimated value of $65 billion by 2030.
While many factors have contributed to this expansion, a few are particularly notable:
- Digital foundations: We’ve already seen that when the underlying infrastructure is in place, it can create a type of “Cambrian Moment,” where the right conditions make it possible to achieve extraordinary growth and diversification – remarkably quickly. Today, this same type of progress is possible, with many healthtech innovators on the continent leveraging growing connectivity, digital payments, messaging, and health diagnostic tools to bring health services directly to people who need them most.
- Investment landscape: Risk capital and investment vehicles have grown remarkably to support fintech in Africa, boosted by crowdfunding platforms, accelerator programs, and favorable government initiatives like grants and tax incentives. As a business, Vula has needed start-up and growth capital; this company – and others like it – could greatly benefit from similarly innovative means of funding and support.
- Regulatory environment: Just as shifting regulations have allowed for disaggregated models of financial services, fostered interoperability of payments infrastructure, and much more, regulatory advancements in the health sector can massively help healthtech entrepreneurs. Some specific needs include policy harmonization across countries, robust data protection frameworks, and capacity building initiatives for regulatory bodies and key stakeholders.
While of course, the healthtech sector has its own unique ecosystem, with distinct opportunities and challenges, with the right conditions, digital technology – when thoughtfully implemented – can foster this same type of innovation boom.
The Africa HealthTech Marketplace is just one of the ways we’re helping put these foundations in place.
At the Digital Impact Alliance, my team and I are working to help push this agenda forward. This month, in partnership with the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, we launched the Africa HealthTech Marketplace. This digital platform provides a space for innovators like Vula Mobile, MedPack, and Rology to showcase their products, gain visibility, and attract capital to scale their efforts and impact. Importantly, because the Marketplace is housed within the Africa CDC, innovations vetted and onboarded onto the platform gain a “seal of approval” by one of the most powerful health authorities on the continent.
For a continent with a burgeoning youth population, coupled with lack of access to meaningful employment opportunities and high levels of poverty, this type of agile, scalable platform can serve as part of the critical infrastructure that not only advances access to vital healthcare, but spurs innovation, economic growth, and ultimately meaningful employment opportunities for countless young people in the coming decades.
With our expertise as a global resource and ecosystem builder, my team and I are ready to advance these solutions by growing additional platforms like the HealthTech Marketplace across sectors. That said, we’d love to hear from you: how could your department, ministry, or organization use its own version of the Marketplace – and how might the impacts be felt?
As we’ve seen from the millions of people who’ve benefitted from Vula Mobile, the answer could be life-changing.
