Jean-Philbert Nsengimana has challenged Africa’s health-tech industry to produce its first billion-dollar company within five years, saying the sector has the potential to follow the rapid growth already seen in fintech across the continent.
Nsengimana, Chairman of the Africa HealthTech Summit, made the remarks at the opening of the fifth edition of the summit in Kigali, where he urged innovators to build companies capable of reaching millions of people while creating jobs.
“Africa has the opportunity to make healthcare become the next fintech. There are 10 unicorns on the African continent, and nine of them are in fintech,” Nsengimana said.
He said the ambition should go beyond developing small health-tech projects, calling for companies that can achieve large-scale impact while becoming commercially successful.
“I want the CEO of the health-tech unicorn to be standing here and talk real business. We want you on this stage to tell us how you have impacted a billion lives and, as a result, you will become a billion-dollar company,” he said.
A unicorn is a privately held company valued at more than $1 billion.
The summit is also seeking to connect health-tech companies with investors through a newly created Deal Room.
This year, 22 scale-ups are participating in the initiative alongside 13 confirmed investors, with 31 meetings already arranged.
Participation in the Africa HealthTech Summit has continued to grow, rising from about 600 participants in 2022 to more than 4,300 registered delegates this year, according to Nsengimana.
He also highlighted the need to improve gender representation at the summit, where women account for 41 percent of participants compared with 59 percent men.
Nsengimana traced efforts to address the gap to a meeting held in Dakar in 2022, where 22 member states were represented but only one woman attended.
“I decided that this cannot continue like that. That meeting led to the creation of the African Health Women’s Network (AWHN) which now runs boot camps, mentorship and training programmes and promotes STEM education among young women,” Nsengimana said.
The summit is also working to increase participation among people living with disabilities and representatives from Francophone African countries.
World Health Organisation Regional Director for Africa, Prof Mohamed Yakub Janabi, said the continent needed to move beyond digital-health pilot projects and focus on solutions capable of reaching communities and delivering measurable results.
“Governments must create the right solutions. Innovators must solve real health problems, and investors must take proven solutions beyond the pilot stage,” Janabi said.
Nsengimana said the next phase of Africa’s health-tech development would require digital systems capable of operating at scale, including infrastructure that can connect information from community health workers to policymakers in real time.
Discussions are also taking place around the Presidential Health Innovation and Transformation Initiative, known as PHITI.
The initiative seeks to bring together ministries responsible for health, technology and finance to make health technology more attractive to investment and increase private-sector participation.
The Africa HealthTech Summit brings together innovators, investors, policymakers and health-sector leaders to discuss ways of expanding the use of technology in healthcare across the continent.
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