A-Lite Uganda, a Villgro Africa investee and incubation company, has been highlighted by CNN in a short documentary. Watch the full video from “African Voices: Changemakers” here:
The Artificial Intelligence for Development (AI4D) program is a joint partnership between the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) of Canada and Sida, Sweden’s government agency for development cooperation. The program aims to support innovation, conduct policy research and develop the skills necessary to inspire and catalyse responsible AI development on the African continent.
At the start of 2021, AI4D partnered with Villgro Africa in developing a Call for Innovations entitled “Harnessing the Power of AI for Africa’s Development”, which generated a tremendous response from across the continent. The aim of the call is to uncover African-led AI innovations that will be instrumental in catalyzing the emerging AI ecosystem towards responsible development of the technology while strengthening the capacity of African innovators to scale their impact and improve development outcomes within the context of sustainability and/or commercial viability.
The call generated a robust response of over 180 applications from 18 countries and resulted in 11 finalists. These startups represent 11 different countries on the continent and provide solutions in a variety of sectors including agriculture, maternal health, medical diagnostics, disability assistance and financial inclusion.
A few weeks after the COVID-19 virus first arrived on African continent, Villgro Africa invited African innovators with solutions that could contribute to the fight against COVID-19 to apply for funding. About 60 applications from 7 countries (Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Zimbabwe and South Africa) were submitted in response to the call. Out of these, 12 companies from East Africa, with support from the Lemelson Foundation, were selected for funding with amounts ranging from $5,000 to $20,000.
This Villgro Africa COVID-19 portfolio has since made important contributions to COVID-19 response efforts in the region. Kijenzi supplied over 2,000 locally manufactured PPE’s to hospitals in Western Kenya in the early days of the pandemic when supply shortages were critical. Similarly, Simbona Africa quickly built and supplied UVC-based room sanitizers and cabinets to hospitals, schools, and hotels in Addis Ababa and Jimma cities. These devices enabled frontline workers to decontaminate rooms and surfaces and recycle masks to keep serving Ethiopians despite PPE shortages. Rescue/Flare provided free ambulance services to save the lives of hundreds of pregnant women in Kenya, who went into labor during strict dusk-to-dawn curfew hours when the movement of people and vehicles was not allowed. Damu Sasa enabled the resumption of blood donation services by mobilizing blood donors and providing a booking service that ensured COVID-19 social distancing rules were observed. This helped hospitals refill blood banks and address critical shortages. Neopenda’s Neowatch device provided remote monitoring of patient vitals (heart rate, temperature, respiratory rate and oxygen concentration) limiting contact between health workers and patients and reducing the risk of COVID-19 infections. Lishe Living created safe virtual spaces for people suffering from non-communicable diseases to continue receiving peer support for monitoring blood sugar, adherence to medication, and other lifestyle management practices to avoid disease progression and improve immunity against infection of COVID-19.
In line with Villgro Africa’s holistic approach to incubation, the COVID-19 portfolio companies were not only given financial support but also provided with a range of services, including diagnostic (expert) panels, mentorship from prominent and experienced leaders, peer networking with like-minded and compatible innovators, and connected with potential strategic partners.
This COVID-19 portfolio has so far generated $1,092,620 in follow-on funding and the portfolio contributed to the creation of 87 jobs. From the original companies awarded, Simbona and Lishe Living will be migrated to the non-COVID-19 portfolio for further incubation support for a period of 1-2 years, and Damu Sasa has received $50,000 in follow-on funding.
Villgro Africa, an impact investor incubating and supporting early-stage social entrepreneurs in Africa to grow and scale through technical assistance and investments, has disbursed funding to five different start-ups, amounting to a total of $170,000. The organisations include Simbona, DawaPay, Wekebere and Damu Sasa.
Simbona, based in Ethiopia, is a healthcare research and development company that designs and develops healthcare equipment and ICT systems, including a UV light that was developed in response to COVID-19, killing the virus and therefore allowing reuse of PPE along with complete sanitization of spaces and equipment. They have been given a $50,000 grant specifically in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“With the support of Villgro Africa, Simbona has worked on business model development, sales team building, UV machine design improvement, and organizational restructuring. Since receiving 50,000 USD, Simbona has been working on various critical activities related to ultraviolet technology manufacturing and sales as a company. We have been able to produce more than 75 machines for hospitals, universities, hotels and so on.” Habtamu Abafoge, Founder of Simbona Africa.
DawaPay is a Kenyan digital platform that partners with pharmaceutical manufacturers in promoting last-mile distribution of affordable essential medicines and laboratory consumables to urban and peri-urban based retail pharmacies and medical labs respectively, while facilitating efficiency on the delivery logistics, saving customers money and time. Villgro Africa has recently invested $50,000 in equity in the Dawapay pre-seed round towards positioning for the syndicate round.
Wekebere is based in Kampala, Uganda and is developing a maternal healthcare device that focuses on improving access to quality, timely, affordable antenatal care services by offering home-based and hospital-based monitoring that aims to improve the working conditions of midwives while promoting early detection and prevention of pregnancy complications, one of the leading cause of maternal mortality in Africa. Villgro Africa has recently invested $20,000 in grant funding towards product refinement and initial clinical pilot on safety and efficiency at Kawempe Referral Hospital, which delivers an average of 80 babies per day.This will help the business in further refining the device and preparing for a clinical trial with 2,000 mothers in four districts across Uganda, towards mass production and integration into the healthcare system.
“The seed funding from Villgro helped us to accelerate development and clinical validation of the Wekebere device and it will help us to build out our commercialisation efforts for the first product.” Stephen Tashobya, Founder and CEO of Wekebere
Damu-Sasa is based in Nairobi, Kenya and has received a COVID-19 focused grant of $50,000. They provide a cloud-based, end-to-end blood services information management system to support the sourcing of blood, managing inventory and transfusion processes including haemovigilance, thereby ensuring well-informed decision making based on the data they collect. The grant will enable Damu Sasa to enlarge their mobile application base to include iOS users while also expanding the number of facilities using the system.
“The Damu Sasa team are extremely focused and committed to solving the challenges within the blood services supply chain. We at Villgro Africa are keen to collaborate with them to achieve their vision while looking to unlock more capital as they grow the organization.” Rob Beyer, Cofounder and Executive Chair of Villgro Africa
Villgro Africa portfolio company clinicPesa has recently won USD 250,000 through the Swiss-Re Foundation competition for the People’s Choice Award! They will be invited to connect with potential investors at an event hosted by Sankalp Forum, one of the world’s largest platforms for impact enterprises.
ClinicPesa is a health fintech solution with the mandate of improving access to healthcare financing for the uninsured population in Uganda and Sub-Saharan Africa.
Uganda currently has no national health insurance fund (NHIF), meaning that if people can’t afford to pay for private insurance, they must carry the weight of paying healthcare costs out of pocket. This often leads to an avoidance of treatment until things are very serious and has also seen an increase in drug resistance as patients can only afford half the dose prescribed, hence accelerating the burden of poverty as a result of high healthcare expenses.
In response to this challenge, ClinicPesa leverages mobile money infrastructure to promote healthcare savings through flexible savings programs and by providing top-up loans which primarily promotes accessible high quality healthcare services.This encourages people to focus on prevention and early intervention in order to solve health challenges before they escalate.
The ClinicPesa team has been working with Villgro Africa since June of 2018. At that time, ClinicPesa did not yet have a fully functional product or solid go-to-market partnerships in place. Over the past few years, they have received funding from Villgro Africa, GIZ, MIT, D-Labs, FSDU and others totalling to over USD 500,000. Additionally, the team has grown from 2 people to 33 in total. Excitingly, they are currently in the final step before a commercial launch of the product in partnership with MTN Uganda and Equity Bank Limited and over the 1,400 facilities including hospitals, clinics and pharmacies.
In addition to their primary service, ClinicPesa has also developed a maternal healthcare product; ClinicPesa Mamas applies gamification in promoting savings towards the cost of transport to and from the hospital for antenatal care, postnatal care, delivery costs and a delivery kit, which is a care kit containing items for the mothers and babies.
The company is also in the process of raising a syndicate round of USD 2 million to facilitate business growth in Uganda.
Villgro Africa would like to congratulate clinicPesa on their impressive progress over the past several years and look forward to continued partnership as they launch their product and positively impact the African health sector.