Protecting all the things from good well being and fintech providers to meals tech, ed tech and sustainable vitality, EU and African firms are bringing their good options to be incubated, accelerated and scaled up through partnerships throughout the Mediterranean Sea. Collectively, they’re tackling world well being emergencies – such because the Covid-19 pandemic – and local weather change, points that hit Africa hardest, however transcend borders and international locations.
Meet Hadiyyah Eleojoh Lawal. She is a disrupter devoted to unlocking digital healthcare in Nigeria, now scaling up in Europe. Appreciating the large potential of digital applied sciences, she helps African hospitals throw their paper recordsdata into the dustbins of historical past, and thru good options, linking hospitals and affected person knowledge throughout the 2 continents.
Making the dream come true
‘It was at all times a dream to make key info out there to sufferers in my residence nation,’ mentioned Lawal, who studied info administration programs at college.
As chief operations officer of Primed E-health, a number one African digital healthcare firm in Nigeria’s capital metropolis Abuja, Lawal has realised her dream. Along with co-founder and firm CEO Dr Are Abdulhafiz, they developed a game-changing digital administration system to unify information and databases throughout hospitals, which now counts 44 hospitals in West Africa, dealing with knowledge of 1.5 million sufferers. With Primed E-health’s award-winning SmartClinic app, sufferers can use their smartphones to entry their docs for consultations, obtain their well being information, get prescriptions, ebook medical appointments and pay charges via the SmartWallet.
As one of many first firms in Africa to digitise hospitals, Primed E-health’s cellular and internet medical app gained unimaginable traction within the response to Covid-19. Its mobile-web answer was recognised by the Nigerian Communications Fee (NCC) as one of many nation’s prime digital options developed by startups.
Together with the NCC award got here funding to digitise many extra hospitals in Nigeria and roll out the pilot SmartClinic product. The corporate is now increasing to 200 hospitals in Ghana, Uganda, Côte d’Ivoire, and Kenya. ‘And the following step might be to hyperlink them with Europe,’ mentioned Lawal.
An opportunity to bridge the enterprise in Europe
Hadiyyah Eleojoh Lawal, Primed E-health’s cofounder and CEO.
‘We’ve huge information of the startup house, permitting us to develop a mannequin that we expect will be scaled throughout Europe,’ mentioned Lawal. ‘We are able to now obtain this with the big community of startups – particularly in different African international locations like Uganda and Kenya, increasing our attain as we develop programmes round healthcare and expertise. We are actually in a position to rent native specialists because of the collaborations we already established whereas in Europe.’
Plans to attach with Europe are in movement. The corporate is considered one of 10 African innovators to incubate within the “BEES” soft-landing programme launched in Paris by the French incubator Bond’innov – a key business participant within the innovation community ENRICH in Africa (EiA) mentoring startups and SMEs within the cross-continental innovation system.
Lawal highlights her expertise as proof that such EU-Africa initiatives are key to attracting traders and future stakeholders when launching in Europe. ‘We’ve been in a position to set up partnerships round on-line transactional providers that we will combine with our healthcare options, and different cellular healthcare suppliers, like H24. These are permitting us to [even] combine with different markets which are linked to Europe, akin to Tunisia, Algeria and others,’ she added.
Powered by the EiA programme, Bond’innov’s bootcamp has helped Lawal and her firm ‘navigate the complicated and essential path of internationalisation to Europe.’
Such European and African innovation linkups to deal with world challenges are anticipated to get a lift as EU and AU leaders acknowledged their joint Innovation Agenda for jobs and development with a give attention to youth throughout the AU-EU Summit this week.
European firms scale up in Africa
EiA programmes don’t simply assist African startups and SMEs scale up in Europe. In addition they cater for European innovators fascinated about scaling up on the alternative aspect of the Mediterranean and proper throughout Africa. These programmes supply entry to native markets and knowhow, and intention at boosting innovation investments, jobs and development. In addition they goal world challenges, as pandemics and the local weather emergency don’t respect borders between international locations or continents.
European startups are already experiencing acceleration in Africa. They will now be a part of accelerators akin to Chapter54, which – launched by world tech funding agency Partech – is the primary accelerator devoted to European scaleups. The choice to develop to Africa is impressed by the continent’s fast-growing tech ecosystem, the corporate says.
The timing is ideal. The African ‘tech hubs’ ecosystem is increasing to accommodate a subsequent era of innovators that vary from enterprise incubators – the place early-stage firms have entry to mentoring and assist to assist them get established – and accelerators, providing creating firms entry to mentorship, traders and additional assist.
One platform for European firms looking for to put money into Africa is the African European Digital Innovation Bridge Community (AEDIB|NET). Aiming to create a standard digital innovation ecosystem, this initiative is constructing bridges between EU and African ecosystems. By connecting startups, SMEs, the diaspora, and different African and European ecosystem gamers in trans-continental partnerships, it’s facilitating intercontinental collaboration.
Rym Jarou, undertaking supervisor for ICT Startups and Innovation Ecosystems Improvement on the Sensible Africa Secretariat
Its mission consists of establishing digital innovation hubs (DIHs) alongside the EU DIH mannequin, and adapting them to work on shared challenges, akin to local weather, good agriculture, good cities, and digital commerce. The ultimate objective is to offer SME and middleman assist in addition to investor networks by tapping into experience from Africa and Europe, altogether creating a robust frequent innovation ecosystem.
Of the 13 key consortium companions within the undertaking is Sensible Africa, a pan-African establishment. Its intention is formidable: to rework Africa right into a single digital market by 2030 (very like the EU) by constructing reasonably priced digital infrastructure, selling and facilitating funding in Africa, and accelerating the beginning and growth of a digital society. Backed by all heads of state and authorities of the African Union, the Sensible Africa Alliance at the moment consists of 32 African international locations, which signify near a whopping 815 million folks.
‘Sensible Africa is making certain that the continent develops in concord with Europe and the remainder of the world via cooperation initiatives such because the EU-Africa Digital Financial system Taskforce, the AU-EU D4D Hub undertaking, our partnership with European growth companions akin to Norway’s NORAD and Germany’s BMZ/GIZ,’ mentioned Rym Jarou, undertaking supervisor for ICT Begin-ups and Innovation Ecosystems Improvement on the Sensible Africa Secretariat.
Based on Jarou, the undertaking outcomes might be ‘very impactful’ for the event of African and European digital innovation hubs.
‘We have to be certain that the utmost variety of attainable hubs, startups and innovators profit from this data and these linkages and alternatives,’ she concluded.
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