In much of West Africa, healthcare remains a fragmented, under-resourced system struggling to meet the needs of a growing population. Clinics are overwhelmed, medical records are largely paper-based, and insurance coverage is rare—especially among informal workers, who make up the majority of the region’s labor force. Against this backdrop, KERA Health Platforms isn’t just building a startup; it’s building a new foundation for how healthcare systems in Africa could work.
Founded in 2023 and based in Dakar, Senegal, KERA is developing a digital infrastructure that goes beyond telemedicine or diagnostic tools. It connects hospitals, pharmacies, labs, insurers, and patients into a single, AI-driven ecosystem designed to unify health data and streamline the delivery of services. It’s a model that treats healthcare not as a collection of institutions, but as a system in need of intelligent coordination.
This approach has now caught the attention of the International Finance Corporation (IFC), which recently proposed an equity investment of up to $10 million to support KERA’s continued growth. But this isn’t just another tech investment—it’s a strategic move aimed at addressing a chronic development challenge in a region where physician-to-patient ratios are among the lowest in the world.
Rather than focus on high-tech solutions for elite hospitals, KERA’s platform is designed to democratize access. Its AI models help reduce administrative inefficiencies, lower out-of-pocket costs, and facilitate faster claims processing—services that disproportionately benefit low-income patients and women, who are often underserved in traditional systems.
What sets KERA apart is its ability to aggregate fragmented health data into actionable insights. In a country like Senegal, where accessing a patient’s medical history often means flipping through handwritten files or relying on memory, the ability to centralize and analyze digital records can significantly improve diagnosis, continuity of care, and patient safety.
The startup is led by a trio of African professionals with uncommon cross-disciplinary experience: AI researcher Moustapha Cissé, telecom executive Papa Sow, and healthcare strategist Hosam Mattar. Together, they are navigating not only the technical complexity of building such a system, but the social and regulatory challenges of deploying it in a region that has historically lagged in digital infrastructure.
KERA’s partnership with the IFC reflects a shift in how global institutions are supporting African innovation. It’s not just about injecting capital but providing governance support, helping startups like KERA operate at scale while maintaining compliance and trust. For the IFC, this aligns with a broader agenda to nurture Africa’s digital economy—especially in Francophone countries, which often receive less investor attention than their Anglophone peers.
As KERA looks to expand across the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU), it isn’t selling a product—it’s offering a public good in private hands: a health system that works smarter, faster, and more inclusively. And in doing so, it’s proving that in Africa’s next wave of development, technology won’t just support healthcare—it will reimagine it entirely.
