The HGS Accelerator for Pandemic Resilience is an initiative that aims to accelerate the growth of African healthcare companies to strengthen the continent’s pandemic resilience, in line with the African Union's Agenda 2063 aspirations. This is achieved through offering hands-on, tailored support to early and growth stage healthcare businesses. AUDA-NEPAD founded the accelerator initiative in 2020 in partnership with the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and with the support of Boston Consulting Group (BCG), a global management consulting firm, as well as Villgro Africa, an experienced Pan-African Accelerator.

In the last two years, the Home-Grown Solutions (HGS) alumni have served almost 1 million patients and employed 1,400 people across Africa. For example, in the inaugural cohort, Africa Healthcare Network (AHN) - a specialized renal care service provider – employed an additional 100 people and opened 9 more clinics enabling them to serve over 1000 patients at AHN centers and assess over 3000 patients for Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD). Furthermore, Mobile Scan Solutions (MScan), a producer of handheld ultrasound devices for low resource settings and a  HGS alumni company, demonstrated their great potential by scanning over 1000 pregnant women in Uganda which helped to reduce child mortality.

More recently, On March 31st, in a Steering Committee session of the Home-Grown Solutions (HGS) Accelerator chaired by Ms. Nardos Bekele-Thomas, CEO of the African Union Development Agency-NEPAD (AUDA-NEPAD), 10 African healthcare ventures were selected out of 150 businesses who applied to form the third cohort of the initiative.

Building on the successes of its previous two cohorts, this year’s cohort of 10 promising African ventures accounts for 6 countries and covers a wide range of pressing issues in healthcare, with end beneficiaries in over 15 countries. Support kicked-off earlier in April and will continue over the next 6 months.  See below for overview and descriptions of these HGS.

Details of the 10 companies comprising the HGS 2023 Pan-African cohort

Consomed [website] is a Tunisian medical device manufacturer that sells their production both locally but also exports parts of it to Western Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. They manufacture surgical masks, surgical clip caps, surgical show covers, and surgical tapes. They aim to expand their production plants across Western Africa. 

Zuri Health [website] is a Kenyan telemedicine company that provides health services through a web application, and USSD in 8 countries with the help of major telco players across Africa. They also offer lab, diagnostic services and doctor-at-home visits.

DrugStoc [website] is a Nigerian-based tech company offering e-commerce, financing solutions and inventory management services to pharmacies. They provide a platform where pharmacies can order pharma products and a financial solution to buy goods on credit and pay later.

AfyA Care [website] is a Nigerian investment platform that provides E2E healthcare services through building hospitals, providing diagnostics, providing insurance cover, and a health-tech platform that manages the customer health plans and claim process for insurance providers. 

SOIK [website] is a DRC-based digital maternal health provider, they provide a digital toolkit that consists of a smartphone and ultrasound device for the patient and the healthcare provider. This helps in tracking maternal health data and reporting functions to solve for any abnormality.

Zinacare [website] is a South African-based online retailer of self-test kits which people can purchase and privately use at the convenience of their home while following instructional guides through their nurses. The results to the tests are provided online within 24-48 hours.

Klarah [website] is a home care nursing provider with a telemedicine play from Cameroon. They are linking patients to the nearest nurse (like an ‘uber for nurses’). Patients or families of patients (including the diaspora) are able to book nurses via a subscription option (1-2 regular visits per month).

Oxygen Hub [website] is a pan-African oxygen producer leveraging a franchising model. They are active across Ethiopia, Kenya, and Nigeria with 12 oxygen plants and are interested in scaling their production.

Tech Care For All [website] is a Nigerian digital learning platform for healthcare workers. On their online platform, healthcare professionals can learn about relevant topics within the industry. They also use data and analytics to measure and track the impact of their platform.

Docthus [website] is a real-time digital learning platform for healthcare workers from Algeria. They enable clinicians to share their skills in virtual facilitation. They provide both live streaming of surgical procedures and virtual medical trainings.