i3 Shifts Focus to Growth-Stage Healthtech Startups Amid U.S. Aid Suspension

Investing in Innovation Africa (i3), a pan-African initiative to support  African healthtech startups to commercialise and scale their offerings has decided to make a pivotal change to its 3rd cohort selection to prioritise the immediate support for 5-7 growth-stage companies building the Future of Pharmacy care in Africa. It comes in response to the U.S. State Department’s “stop-work” directive for foreign aid issued on January 25th, which is anticipated to impact the distribution of essential medicine in Africa’s healthcare supply chains. The order highlights and intensifies the need for locally-driven, market-creating approaches to health product distribution and service delivery across Africa.

Funded by the Gates Foundation, MSD, Cencora, Endless Foundation, HELP Logistics (a subsidiary of the Kühne Foundation), Sanofi’s Global Health Unit and Chemonics, the i3 program will concentrate its immediate efforts to help innovative growth-stage startups unlock major partnerships to rapidly expand access to patient care. The selected start-ups will also receive up to $225K in grant funds. i3 aims to expand support to early-stage companies at a later date.