The HealthTech Hub Africa, founded by the Novartis Foundation at the Norrsken House Kigali, has announced the second Africa HealthTech Challenge, and is seeking high-impact innovators with business-to-government focused solutions and business models with potential to drive transformational population health impact at scale.
The HealthTech Hub Africa is a health-tech accelerator with a physical co-working and community space in Kigali, Rwanda, operating across the entire African continent. The hub is part of a new investment push that aims to revolutionise the development of health technologies designed by Africans for use in Africa and to help fast-track innovations in public health systems in direct collaboration with government leaders.
The first year of the programme served as phase one in establishing a blueprint for a public-private mechanism to fast-track e-health Innovations for public health in Africa, and the hub is now launching the second edition of its Africa HealthTech Challenge to put that blueprint into action.
It is, in fact, made up of four distinct challenges, tackling cardiovascular health, breast cancer, virtual health and care, and optimisation of data-driven decision-making. Selected companies will participate in a 10-month accelerator programme, with varying degrees of mentorship, coaching, expert masterclasses, pitch practice sessions, networking opportunities, access to services and media training available to startups depending on their stage. There will also be funding opportunities.
“For the 2023 cohort, we are looking for up to 30 growth startups and 10 scale-ups from the whole African continent with innovative business models allowing for collaboration with local and national governments, and aiming to support health systems in their digital transformation journeys,” the organisers said.
“For each of the two tracks the key criterias of evaluation for the applicants are based on their ability to demonstrate the innovation potential to successfully address challenges in one or more of the four thematic areas of focus for the hub, their product excellence, team, fit-to-market, sustainability and scalability model in relation to working with the public system.”
Applications are open here until October 23.
