How Can Nigerian Health Tech Startups Build Sustainable Businesses?

Health Meets Tech

Between the 30th of June and 2nd of July, medical doctors, software developers, graphic designers, business development guys and many others gathered at the Co-creation Hub in Yaba, Lagos for a hackathon called "Health Meets Tech" which was organized by a partnership of Digital Health Nigeria, EpiAfric and Facebook, and covered by the Nigeria Health Watch. Throughout the 3-day period 5 different teams, each comprising of medical doctors and other healthcare workers, software developers, graphic designers, business people and so on, worked on an idea that would leverage technology to improve an aspect of healthcare in Nigeria. I joined the program on the second and final day during which I went round to interact with each of the teams on what they were building. My interaction focused on the healthcare problem each team was trying to solve; whether this healthcare problem was a recurring pain point for the target market; the willingness of the target market to pay for the solution that was being built to address the healthcare problem; whether the business is for profit or a social enterprise; and the sustainability of the model on which the business will be built.

The Need for Innovation and Entrepreneurship Education in Nigeria's Tertiary Institutions

According to the late Nelson Mandela, education is the most powerful weapon with which you can change the world. This is very true at every level of education, beginning from the formative stage (basic education) where a solid foundation is laid; but the most evident manifestation of this Nelson Mandela quote is seen at the tertiary level. Tertiary education provides a platform which enables any individual to harness the foundational principles acquired during their formative education stages to learn and develop specialized knowledge, with the sole purpose of creating a new value chain whose applications make far-reaching progressive impacts on the society.

What and which places spark and drive innovation?

Hence, one of the fundamental aims of tertiary education is the creation of new value chains. This means that tertiary education, in its true calling, does not produce individuals who end up in different industries/sectors of the economy doing only routine jobs that require no form of human ingenuity and creativity. In its pure form, tertiary education institutions are the centers of innovation and creativity, with teaching methodology and curricula constantly adjusting to the socioeconomic dynamics of their environment and the world at large. This very attribute has characterized world-class tertiary institutions like MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Cambridge, Oxford, the University of California campuses, and so on because at the heart of their ever-adapting curricula and teaching models lies creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship.

How Self-Driving Tractors, Drones and Virtual Reality will Transform Agriculture in Nigeria

Technology has enabled tremendous advances in every area of human life in every part of the world; but the rate of that advancement has been different and much slower in the emerging economies—Nigeria and most other African countries especially. That the technology community has been abuzz for the past one week because of Mark Zuckerberg’s first visit to Africa—Nigeria first and then Kenya—is something that a lot of young Nigerians have come to see as the beginning of a never-before-seen technology revolution that will sweep across the country and continent. Many young talented Nigerians are using technology to solve local problems, ranging from education through transportation to healthcare, and some of these were showcased to Zuckerberg during his visit at the Co-Creation Hub in Yaba, Lagos.

While these tech solutions to local problems were commended by Zuckerberg, he also stressed, during a Question & Answer session for entrepreneurs and developers, that Nigeria and Africa have the talent to solve relevant global challenges. There are so many global problems today craving ground-breaking solutions; but one of such problems whose solutions can come from Africa is food security through agriculture not only because of how technology can be applied to scale agricultural production but also due to the fact that more than half of the earth’s arable lands, that can be exploited for agriculture without harming the green ecosystem, is in Africa. This means that applying the right technology in agriculture could turn Africa into the food hub of the world, and there’s need to start work now not just for the sake of the world but also for the food safety of our country and the entire continent: Nigeria’s population is estimated to surpass that of the US by 2050, making the country the 3rd most populous in the world, and a strong food security will certainly prevent a lot of problems.