F038 What is the state of digital health adoption in Africa?
The paradox in healthcare, says Moka Lantum, is that where the need is greatest, the paying power is lowest.
With degrees from universities in Cameroon, Sweden and the USA and several founded companies behind him, Moka Lantum is a good source of information on the African healthcare market.
He was nominated as 2016 Top 100 Global Thinker by Foreign Policy Magazine for his work as founder of the non-profit, 2020 MicroClinic Initiative, that recycles t-shirts into baby clothes and donates them to low-income mothers to promote safe delivery and quality post-natal care in rural Kenya.
He obtained his Doctor of Medicine training at Faculty of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, University of Yaoundé, Cameroon; a Diploma in Nutrition and International Child Health, from Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden; a Doctorate in Pharmacology, from the University of Rochester, Rochester, New York. He is a graduate of the Masters in Health Care Management at the Harvard School of Public Health, among other things.
Spending time in the USA during his studies shaped his entrepreneurial edge. As he says, by building solutions, you can play an active part in the change you want to see.
He emphasizes three stages of innovation fresh entrepreneurs need to be aware of:
1. Product
2. Innovation on a business level
3. Creating the right channel strategy
The specifics of the African market
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Kenya, where Moka is currently based, has 48 million people, a bit more than the population of Spain, 60% of the German population, or like 24 Slovenias.
The countries health sector is expected to grow at a faster rate than the overall economy. This sector is valued at USD 2.2 billion and contributes 2% to the country’s GDP (for comparison, European countries attribute between 9 and 10%, the USA around 18%).
According to Alliance experts health insurance penetration remains very low at only 4%, 47% of the poorest of Kenyans use private health facilities.
Kenya is also the land of mobile banking — mPesa — an easy way for people to transfer money among themselves through mobile phones. Mobile phones are therefor the widely spread platform for new solutions. Even in healthcare.
As Moka observes, people are willing to pay for added value digitization brings, especially as time is starting to be valued as an asset. This opens up new market opportunities.
Some questions in the podcast:
- Many see Africa as this one coherent continent on the planet, not realising how diverse countries and cultures are…? How diverse is the healthcare market?
- How much are foreign investors interested in the African health market?
- Startups see developing countries as the place to go because nothing is here yet you don’t have to go into wars with existing players to build something new. What are the challenges they face?