African startups are addressing overlooked needs and drawing attention to the burgeoning tech industry, despite challenges such as inequality and limited digitalisation.
At the GITEX Africa trade fair in the Moroccan city of Marrakech this week, innovations in remittances and healthcare to meet demand on the continent highlighted the sector's thriving sector.
One of the attendees at the expo, Jean-Charles Mendy, launched an app three years ago with a business partner to help people working abroad better manage the money they send home to their families.
“The market for African diaspora remittances is huge,” the 40-year-old Senegalese entrepreneur told AFP on the sidelines of a gathering of around 1,500 start-ups, companies and banks.
The app, currently only available to Senegalese migrants, allows people to pay bills such as electricity and telephone directly, as well as convert them into vouchers for supermarket purchases.
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According to the World Bank, remittances to sub-Saharan Africa exceeded $50 billion last year.
Those who migrate abroad “realize they sacrifice too much to have their money misused,” Mendy said.
“If you're not Senegalese, you can't imagine that this is a problem people face,” he said.
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“All the solutions we have put in place are a combination of European solutions used to meet African needs thanks to technology.”
The International Finance Corporation, the World Bank's private sector arm, says Africa's startup ecosystem, particularly mobile payments, is the fastest growing in the world.
But high inequalities plague the continent, marked by a widespread lack of digitalisation and a tough financial environment.
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The continent's tech ecosystem was valued at $3.5 billion last year, down 46% from 2022, and has lost half of its active investors, according to private equity fund Partec Africa.
Benny Mbaga, investment director at Maua Mazuri, a biotech startup that aims to boost banana yields, said foreign investors “failed to understand the need” for its innovative approach when the company was founded in 2020.
“Bananas are used for everything in East Africa,” he added. Tanzania has some of the world's largest banana plantations, but harvests are much lower than in other countries, due in part to the effects of the virus, which has been particularly rampant since 2020.
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His startup now supports 1,000 farmers with resistant seeds, generating revenues of up to $655,000 a year.
“Investors now realise there is a need,” he added.
Healthcare technology is another growth area in Africa, where more than half of the continent's 1.4 billion people currently live in poverty and lack health insurance, according to the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA).
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“Governments spend just 6 percent of their GDP on health,” said Mactar Seck, head of UNECA's innovation and technology division.
“We need to do something. Half of Africa's population has no health insurance.”
Renee Gamau is co-founder of CheckUps, a company that provides “tech-enabled” medicine and delivery services in remote areas of Kenya and South Sudan.
Through the mobile app, patients can access affordable health insurance without any age or medical history requirements, borrow small loans from partner banks, and instantly connect with the nearest nurse.
The company also provides services to relatives of primary beneficiaries.
“We understand the ecosystem we are part of,” says Ngamau, 53. “African families are structured differently, so we allow recipients to share the money with those who are important to them, such as their parents or neighbours.”
In Kinshasa, doctor and entrepreneur Ulrich Quesso launched LucaPharma, an app that maps nearby pharmacies where medicines can be obtained in the Democratic Republic of Congo's capital.
Cuesso said the app solves three problems: the time wasted searching for pharmacies in a city of 15 million people, the phenomenon of “fake pharmacies” operating without a license, and finding popular medicines, especially cancer drugs.
“People don't realize the potential that technology can bring to solving problems,” Cuesso said.
“Considering that Congo has a population of about 100 million, just imagine the lives that such an application could potentially save,” he added. “And the business potential.”
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