EP.07 | Africa CDC’s Continental Vision — Health Tech for 1.4 Billion People

Africa’s youth are building solutions, startups are springing up in innovation hubs, and the post-COVID reality has laid bare the need for digital-first healthcare. So how do we move from potential to product-market fit? What will it take to create Africa’s first health tech unicorn—and more importantly, to ensure it serves the 1.4 billion lives that need it most?

Africa’s Untapped Health Tech Power

Africa doesn’t lack health tech innovation—it lacks scale. That was the core message from Nsengimana. He believes the continent’s young innovators are brimming with ideas. “If we could produce a zebra unicorn, that would be a sign we’re getting there,” he said—pointing to the dream of a sustainable, socially driven health tech company that thrives both economically and in impact.

Four Barriers Still Blocking the Runway

Nsengimana mapped out four systemic barriers keeping Africa’s health tech ecosystem from taking off:

• Infrastructure: : Over 50% of African health facilities lack basic power or internet connectivity.
• Skills: Gaps exist among healthcare workers, innovators, and even policymakers.
• Fragmented Regulation: Disjointed policies across borders prevents scale.
• Capital: Health tech lacks the short-term return that investors chase unlike FinTech.

Despite these challenges, he insists momentum is building, highlighting initiatives like Smart Africa’s push for a single digital health market.

Telemedicine: A Launchpad for Scale

One area ripe for acceleration is telemedicine. While Africa’s use of remote health services tripled during COVID-19, global growth outpaced it by a factor of 40. The potential for telemedicine to fill access gaps—especially in underserved regions—is enormous. Nsengimana pointed to the Africa Health Tech Hub in Kigali, where 40+ startups are actively building solutions worth backing.

“Africa is moving towards the universal health coverage objective by 2030. But if we look at the speed at which we’ve been moving, I don’t think we’re going to reach that if we continue to move at the same speed. To ensure that everyone across the continent—regardless of where they live or their income level—has access to basic health services, we must accelerate our efforts. So just investing seriously into telemedicine would be a starting point.”
– Jean Philbert Nsengimana, Chief Digital Advisor, Africa CDC

 

The Digital Health Lifecycle

Africa CDC, under Dr. Jean Kaseya’s leadership, is pushing a vision where every African has a digital health record, from birth to social security. Health data becomes the backbone of transformation across sectors, from education to social insurance.

This “horizontal health record” vision rests on three things: Partnering with satellite and mobile industries to connect every citizen, Tracking individuals’ health over a lifetime to drive proactive care and Integrating health into digital infrastructure to catalyze other public services.

AI, Big Data, and the Future of Preparedness

Artificial Intelligence is poised to play a key role in Africa’s disease surveillance and healthcare delivery. “AI connects information in real time that would be difficult for humans to piece together,” Nsengimana noted, citing Gates Foundation-backed pilots in primary care.

While concerns around privacy persist, federated systems now allow decentralized data analysis without needing to centralize sensitive health records. “The most important thing is not centralization—it’s access,” he added.

Accelerating Innovation: Marketplace Meets Sandbox

Africa CDC is doing more than talking. The Health Tech Marketplace now curates vetted African innovations, ready for countries and investors to explore. A sandbox model is in the works to fast-track testing—especially for AI-based solutions. “If someone says their innovation uses AI, we want to know what kind of data they’re training it on,” Nsengimana emphasized.

Cross-Border Scaling and Brainpower

Policy harmonization remains a challenge. Nsengimana stressed the need for regional blueprints to help promising solutions scale beyond their home markets. He also challenged the binary brain drain narrative, reminding listeners that remittances now outpace development aid and that talent can flow both ways. “The real challenge,” he said, “is how we value and harness the talent we already have.”

His Wishlist? Bold and Continental

If given a magic wand, Nsengimana’s three-point wish list includes:

1. Removing digital borders across Africa.
2. Increasing health tech investment tenfold.
3. Building Africa-owned data infrastructure.