Just few days ago, I had to pay about N20,000 to ecommerce giant Jumia as shipping fee for a product I ordered on the platform even though I know that you don’t have to spend pay up to N10,000 to transport anything from Jumia’s office in Lagos to my house in Ibadan. The company would make at least N5,000 in profit from the shipping cost alone not to talk of profit on the price of product that I ordered. The profiteering channels available in the ecommerce space may be one of the reasons why investors continue to pump money into the sector with the latest being the €225 million secured by Africa Internet Group owners of Jumia from MTN, Rocket Internet, AXA and Goldman Sachs.
But not all sectors provide entrepreneurs and investors opportunities like ecommerce, health is one of them.
I’ve found myself in several offline debates on the best ways to monetize health products in Africa without selling data to corporate bodies or seeking grants from donor organizations or partnering with governments and eminent personalities. I found it to be extremely difficult. presently, it is almost impossible to get many Africans to pay to use health products and the investors are aware of it which is why health startups in Africa are not as popular as Jumia and Konga. The industry watchers know that African leaders are more interested in combating child mortality with improved access to vaccines than trying a new app.
Even though many have tried and failed to monetize health, the fact that healthcare across Africa could be improved via innovations make the health space in the continent to still be attractive to local and foreign health innovators. And I’m very confident that someone somewhere will find a way to improve healthcare in Africa and get people to pay for the service sooner or later. But who could such innovator be? I believe it would be such kinds of ideas are what could help an entrepreneur to win the $100,000 Anzisha Prize which opened applications this week, and could get investors’ attention at Lagos Startup DealDay holding later this month.
I strongly believe that Africa’s health ecosystem needs people like Aniedi who helped to build taxi hailing app Afro from a product that struggled to survive to one that is highly competitive in the market and has become a major threat in Nigeria to the world’s sexiest startup Uber.
As Aniedi leaves and Tayo Onadipe takes over, the company he helped build is confident that it will survive. This cannot be said of the various health startups in Africa who find it difficult (outside South Africa) to perfectly monetize their products. But come to think of it, if Africans can pay to use products like Afro, I believe they should be able to pay for health products that will keep them alive and healthy. So why are they are not embracing them just yet? This is the unfortunate plight of Africa’s health entrepreneurs.
