Solutions (533)
Egyptian healthcare startup O7 Therapy recently raised US$2.1 million in a seed round, according to a release issued Monday (April 4). With the proceeds, the startup plans to support mental health and expand in the MENA while developing new features and innovative products.
O7 Therapy is an online platform and network of hand-picked Arabic-speaking psychiatrists and psychotherapists. It is also a referral network of specialized clinics and hospitals that take care of people with mental health issues in the MENA region. The platform provides online psychotherapy in a friendly environment using reliable encryption and data storage protocols. In doing so, O7 Therapy revolutionized online health support and provides collaborative mental health services to Arabic-speaking people around the world.
It was founded in 2019 by Egyptian serial entrepreneur Ashraf Bacheet (photo) in partnership with assistant professor of psychiatry Dr. Ashraf Adel and software entrepreneur Nader Iskander. Ashraf Bacheet studied at various institutions such as the German School of Cairo, Cairo University, the University of Maryland, and the UK Chartered Institute of Marketing.
“Our Investment in mental wellbeing improves the lives of individuals in all areas of life; their student life, work, homes, family, friends, and even physical health. This in turn improves the performance of entrepreneurs, SMEs, corporate and government employees, positively affecting countries economically, ” says Nader Iskander.
According to an official release, their “Employee Wellness Programs for organizations are provided through a unique B2B2E model, prioritizing the impact of mental health challenges in the workplace, focusing on raising awareness and understanding, creating safe and supportive spaces, and implementing strategies that promote mental wellbeing.”
With several degrees and certificates in pharmaceutical sciences, tech entrepreneurship, and marketing and communication, Ashraf Bacheet runs a family business operating in the pharmaceutical industry. He also offers consultancy and mentorship services to startups.
In 2011, he started developing his passion for social entrepreneurship by joining a “global NGO as their Middle East Director.”
Ruben Tchounyabe
Waste management is currently one of the most important global issues. In 2019, the International Labour Organization revealed that 2.01 billion tons of solid waste were produced in the world annually. Just 16% of the global solid waste is recycled. To address the waste management problem, a Nigerian entrepreneur is betting on technology.
In November 2021, Nigerian entrepreneur Damilola Kadiri (photo) launched Wura, an item-sharing app whose sole purpose is to save the planet. Through Wura, users can share things they no longer need, be they used clothes, books, shoes, jewelry, or even earpieces. So far as they can be useful, they are welcome on Wura.
To post or recover items on Wura, users have to register on the app and abide by its golden rules. The said golden rules were drafted by Damilola Kadiri to avoid bad situations when exchanging items through his platform. All items are free and users are asked to report anyone selling items through Wura. Also, users are cautioned to receive items only from people with profile pictures. The rules also request users to appreciate givers, request items with compassionate words and meetup in public, and follow Covid-19 prevention rules.
With 354 registered users and 47 donations so far, Wura plans to positively impact Nigerians by showing them how everyday actions affect the environment. “For now, we are looking at increasing the number of transactions on the app and sign-ups, then over time, what we intend to do is promote sustainability businesses. So I feel that would be an avenue for us to generate profit. As I said, the idea is to change people’s behavior to be eco-friendly,” says Damilola Kadiri adding that he has no plans to commercialize the app for the time being.
The app is available on android and iOS. Thanks to “an advanced analytical algorithm,” users are made aware of the environmental contribution of the transaction they make. By including such a feature, Wura developers expect users to change their attitude towards the environment once they start noticing the amount of carbon dioxide emissions they help reduce by not throwing away bulk items.
Adoni Conrad Quenum
Botswana currently has more cattle than residents. Over 100,000 ranches are registered in the country. However, owners who still use traditional management methods are finding it hard to oversee daily activities.
Motswana Thuto Paul Gaotingwe (photo) developed an offline app to allow livestock farmers to improve the management of their cattle and ranches. Initially, his goal was to help a friend, but he quickly realized that Botswana's livestock farmers have limited control over the farming process.
"We have worked around innovative ways that still allow them to improve production and efficiency with less change from their old ways," he says.
The farm management app is dubbed Modisar, which means ‘livestock caretaker’ in Tswana, one of the oldest Bantu dialects. It allows efficient farm data collection, enabling farmers to act accordingly when things seem to be going wrong.
With Modisar, livestock caretakers and farmers keep livestock, farm, financial, and production records. The app has a built-in "smart farm assistant" feature, which reminds farmers of important tasks and best practices for profitable farming. It also has an "animal management" feature, which keeps track of almost everything concerning the livestock on farms and produces a wide range of operating reports.
By synchronizing farm data collected, the app recommends solutions to optimize profits. It also integrates a feature that tracks farm assets and inventories while reminding of important actions to take. For instance, it can send text messages to caretakers or farm owners reminding them to vaccinate their livestock or proceed to insemination.
In 2014, the app won the Orange Social Venture Prize, known by its French acronym POESAM. In 2015, Paul Gaotingwe’s startup, Modisar also, decided to make the app free for farmers, attracting 1,200 farmers at the time.
Adoni Conrad Quenum
Clinic Agro has helped analyze thousands of hectares of cultivable lands in several African countries. The ambition of its developer, Pyrrus Koudjou, is to improve food security and help lift farmers out of poverty.
Pyrrus Koudjou (photo)’s plant clinic, ClinicAgro, recently launched a fundraising campaign to expand its operations. The agricultural startup created in 2019 is the result of a discussion between its creator and a farmer. During that discussion, Pyrrus Koudjou discovered the various problems facing the agricultural sector. Realizing that the problems are almost the same everywhere, he decided to find a solution to provide farmers with vital information needed for the success of their activities.
"Africa […] and Cameroon in particular, need stable food supplies because the population is growing exponentially. In that context, we must help farmers optimize their production and space utilization, reduce their ecological footprint and preserve natural resources for future generations," explains the social entrepreneur and computer scientist.
Connected to a mobile app through Bluetooth, the ClinicAgro kit offers advanced diagnostics of soils and diseases that can affect plants. Within 60 seconds, it can provide various indicators like fertilization rate, nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium level or the nutrient index.
Based on the result of the analysis, ClinicAgro will provide recommendations to improve the soil, its yields, and ultimately the farmer’s income. Users can also submit pictures of diseased plants for an artificial intelligence algorithm to identify the disease affecting that plant and appropriate solutions.
Available in 6 languages, ClinicAgro is a decision-making tool essential for farmers. The eponymous start-up was officially launched in February 2021. To date, ClinicAgro has manufactured 12 kits, which have been deployed in several countries, including Cameroon, Burkina Faso, Togo, and France. Some 1,200 hectares of land have been analyzed using the technological solution.
"What motivates me every day is my target audience: farmers. My goal is to find solutions to help them achieve optimal yields,” says Pyrrus Koudjou, whose target is to help analyze 1.8 million hectares of cultivable lands in Cameroon.
Pyrrus Koudjou is a tech enthusiast. He has developed several solutions based on artificial intelligence. Thanks to ClinicAgro, he received numerous awards including the Coup de Cœur awards during Med’Innovant Africa 2019, the grand prize of Antic 2019, and Cultivez le Numérique Morocco as well as the main prize of Espoir Afric Startup Summit 2019 in Paris. In 2019, as the top winner of Orange Social Entrepreneur, Pyrrus Koudjou joined the acceleration program offered at Orange digital center Douala. Thanks to the mentorship program, he was able to develop the prototype and the commercial version of ClinicAgro.
Ruben Tchounyabe
Developed in 2019, Smart Bra has the potential to save the lives of millions of women across Africa. Kemisola Bolarinwa, the young Nigerian who developed the app, wants to spare other families the sad experience she had.
Nigerian tech firm Nextwear Technology is set to release a smart bra in July 2022. Developed by robotics engineer Kemisola Bolarinwa (photo), the smart bra is aimed at helping fight breast cancer by improving early diagnosis. The bra is equipped with small, battery-powered ultrasound sensors. It scans the user’s breasts, synchronizes the result with a mobile app, and sends the data to a doctor for interpretation.
Dubbed “Smart Bra,” the technological tool is the result of four years of research. It’s an idea that Bolarinwa came up with, in 2017, after her mother passed from breast cancer, at the University College Hospital in Ibadan. The young engineer believes the tragedy could have been prevented if the cancer was diagnosed earlier.
"In her ward at the hospital, I saw women of different age groups, even teenagers, groaning in the pain of breast cancer," she said.
“The smart bra must be worn on the breasts for a maximum of 30 minutes for the result to show,” she explains. For the robotics engineer, women can screen for breast cancer from the comfort of their homes. The technology can also be used by health centers–which lack the funds needed to acquire radiology and mammography equipment–or by poor communities.
“We have conducted a local trial and got about 70 percent accuracy. We are working towards 95-97 percent accuracy,” Kemisola Bolarinwa informs.
With 129,000 new cases diagnosed in 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that breast cancer is currently the most common type of cancer among women in sub-Saharan Africa. In the region, less than 50% of the affected survive five years after they are diagnosed, according to the WHO.
Ruben Tchounyabe
The mobile app bets on its community to motivate users. Unlike other apps that are sort of gym directories, Welnes can turn any place into a gym.
In 2020, Egyptian startup Welnes launched an eponymous social media app for a virtual group workout. After registering, users can access the various services offered by the platform, share their experience, meet other users online, take part in fitness challenges–routines carried out over a set period with a fixed goal–prepared by coaches. They can also discuss with nutritionists to define personalized workout programs, share appropriate cooking recipes and images of the foods they cooked.
Amr Saleh (photo, left) and Amr Diab, respectively Welnes CEO and founder, explained that the social media app was developed to push many young workers, who are too busy in the daytime and not motivated to go to the gym, to work out right from their homes.
They expect group effects to boost users’ involvement. As per their figures, the app is currently used by over 15,000 subscribers who have already shared more than 500,000 pictures of foods they cooked.
According to the CEO, most users register on Welnes because of the nutrition and workout regimens but they stay because of the community.
In January 2022, the mobile fitness app started developing its human resources. It plans to expand in the North African sub-region by 2023, thanks to the US$300,000 seed capital it raised from investors like Samurai Incubate, and UI Investments under the leadership of Flat6labs.
Ruben Tchounyabe
The founder of Genity Sarlu has great ambitions for his solution. He does not only want to improve healthcare system in his country but across the whole continent.
Care for people with sickle cell disease in the Democratic Republic of Congo remains poor. Patients in remote areas have more difficulties. To bring a solution to this problem, Arnold Wogbo, founder of the startup Genity Sarlu, created AnemiApp.
The promoter, a graduate in Electronic Engineering, reveals that he got the idea for his application after working with the NGO "Réseau Drépano SS" as a communication officer. He says he noticed, while questioning sickle cell patients, that they had many needs but not enough specialist doctors to answer them.
The app is available on Android. It provides users with several health tips to limit disease-related crises and improve their daily lives. The information on medicines, vaccines, screening, blood transfusions and major health events, available on the application, comes from doctors, the Ministry of Health and nutritionists. It is also possible to have directions to pharmacies and health centers that provide such care.
People who do not have a smartphone can use the service via a USSD code. Anemiapp is currently operational in Kinshasa but Arnold Wogbo plans a national coverage in the short term. Anemiapp generates revenue through various user subscriptions and commissions from its services.
Anemiapp won the 2020 award of the Pierre Fabre Foundation's Observatory of e-Health in Southern Countries and the Orange Prize for Social Entrepreneurship in Africa and the Middle East in 2018 (Poesam).
Adoni Conrad Quenum
WeMove, created in 2018 by Mariem Sellami (pictured), Hichem Ben Hmida, Mohamed Khelil, and Mejdi M'barek, is a fitness and wellness marketplace that offers its users a wide choice of sports classes via a network of gym partners across the country. Various sports activities such as yoga, dance, and boxing are offered every week by the partners. The user can combine several activities depending on his desires and budget.
Mariem Sellami explains that "many people do not practice sports activities because access to gyms is sometimes expensive. Not only is the membership quite expensive, but it’s also not reimbursed if not used.” WeMove, therefore, provides an alternative that enables on-demand sports sessions without having to pay membership fees first.
The platform uses the "pay as you go" model like telcos. The user recharges their credit account and uses it to buy unique access to the gym of their choice via the platform. When the user purchases the credit, they receive a QR code that gives them access to the gym. The app is free and available on Android and iOS. “With our startup, working out is like going to the movies! Our customers have access to a multi-room and multi-activity platform with a payment per session and on-demand, " says Mariem Sellami.
The company currently operates in Greater Tunis and wants to expand to other major cities in the country. The founders also plan to diversify the offers by proposing independent coaches and organizers of sports events in addition to gyms.
The solution that was originally a simple graduation project was nominated for the 4th edition of "Samsung Fast Track", a support program initiated by Samsung Tunisia. The company has also been labeled "Startup Act" in 2020, a status on which it capitalizes to seek support funds for its expansion. Its selection last February to join Orange Fab Tunisia will give it more technical means to achieve its goals.
Adoni Conrad Quenum
The use of illegal drugs (also known as street drugs) has increased in Africa. Studies have found that people's limited financial means to seek medication from professional doctors are at the root of the phenomenon. With his solution, Adama Kane wants to enable poor families to have access to safe products without paying a penny.
Seven years ago, Adama Kane launched Jokkosanté, a digital community pharmacy solution, to allow more Senegalese to access quality medicines without necessarily spending money. Today, the service benefits thousands of people. It works on a system under which anyone who has leftover medicines that are still usable can deposit them in public health centers. Professionals in the centers will then sort the medicines and make them available to the neediest. The depositor must first have an account on the JokkoSanté mobile app, which, with each deposit, awards points that are equivalent to the value of the given medicine. The depositor can spend those points to acquire other medicines or transfer them to someone else.
For those who do not have medicines to exchange, JokkoSanté has set up a cross-funding mechanism. On the platform, companies, NGOs and associations can finance the donation of medicines to population segments of their choice. Recipients are informed by SMS of the name of their donating company. Such a system can enhance the visibility and social impact of companies.
JokkoSanté seeks to put an end to the waste of medicines; eliminate the illicit sale of medicines; and help the poorest populations to have better health. "I had my first child in 2013. A month before he was born, my wife and I were tidying up our room to make some space for him. I noticed when we were in the room that we had accumulated a lot of medicine boxes during the pregnancy, most of which we did not even use. So that’s how I had the idea of sharing my unused medicines with people who need them," Adama Kane explains.
The solution received seed funding from Orange to develop the beta application and launch the experimental phase. Orange also provided the startup with its service platforms for SMS and USSD exchanges. The service has won several awards, including the International Telecommunication Union's Recognition of Excellence certificate, the African Entrepreneurship Award for the best African project in an unexplored field, and environmental protection in 2015. In 2016, it won the Pierre Fabre Foundation's e-Health Observatory Award as well as the Grand Prize in all categories of the international e-Health Trophies competition organized by Castres-Mazamet Technopole.
Ruben Tchounyabe
Demand for delivery services increased during the coronavirus pandemic. In Guinea, where the sector remains underdeveloped, Sékou Lamine Coyah Bangoura founded a startup to meet demand.
The service is offered via the mobile app mycolismart available only on Android. Users can buy various types of goods such as food, medicine, clothing, school supplies, etc., and get them delivered. They can schedule the drop-off and pick-up of clothes at the laundry. The platform also allows them to book the shipment of goods depending on the transport schedules and benefit from discounts. Moreover, the solution integrates a service that allows users to donate items to the needy in orphanages.
Mycolismart has more than 21 independent motorcycle drivers for deliveries within cities, and more than 200 partner vans for inter-city deliveries. To access the solution, users are required to open an account that allows them to track all of their purchase and shipping operations. Mycolismart has partnered with Orange to facilitate service payments.
Six years ago, Mycolismart won second place in the Orange Prize for Social Entrepreneurship in Africa and the Middle East (Poesam). The prize is worth 30,000,000 Guinean francs (nearly 3,000 euros).
Adoni Conrad Quenum
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Two Kenyan entrepreneurs, Brian Muriu (pictured, left) and Alistair Gould (pictured, right), have developed a solution to enable Kenyans living abroad to pay their bills back home directly.
The app -Tulix- allows better tracking of expenses and ensures the security of transactions. Often, the diaspora sends money for special purposes back home, but the amount ends up being misappropriated by the recipients. Tulix comes as an answer to this problem.
The app took part last March 10 in the Demo Day organized by venture capital fund Antler for early-stage companies. It provides access to over 100,000 businesses and institutions instantly and directly via the M-Pesa mobile payment service. It can also be used to pay for necessities such as hospital bills, school fees, etc. The Tulix wallet is reloadable with a bank card and users can define expenses and allocate the necessary amounts. They can also track their spending, which allows them to plan various financial allocations. When a transaction is completed, Tulix sends notifications via messaging and email to the originator of the payment about the status of the transaction.
Brian Muriu, who holds an Honors Degree in Electrical Engineering, explains that the idea for Tulix came from his own experience. "It usually started with me receiving a phone call from my relatives living and working in the United States late at night. They would call to inform me of the secret code I needed to use to retrieve the money they had sent via a service such as Western Union or Moneygram during their work break. The withdrawal process is often very tedious.”
Brian Muriu assures that the app keeps no record of payment information, including that relating to bank cards that may have been used to reload wallets. He claims that personal information is kept secure.
Adoni Conrad Quenum
People living in Africa, especially in rural areas, continue to face challenges in accessing energy and internet connectivity. This situation is a major barrier to the development of e-learning across the continent. Despite the various solutions developed to address the issue, a lot still needs to be done.
In 2020, Covid-19 affected education in several African countries. For several months, schools were closed and e-learning was the only way out. Unfortunately, the alternative distance learning solutions set up by the states were not always effective. To help governments in this strategy, Franco-Togolese Victor Agbegnenou (pictured) has developed an e-learning solution, Retice Renal Smart 80/20. The latter is a combination of digital tools, including a platform for management and synchronized exchanges with tablets and educational software, and offline infrastructure. It allows teachers to interact with each student via a connected tablet equipped with digitized textbooks and to deliver their lessons in person or remotely. Connectivity is provided by "PWCS" technology, a point-to-multipoint wireless communication system.
Lebon Ngounou, Managing Director of Retice Africa Sarl, believes that with this technology, students and teachers can stay at home and still attend class. The solution is adapted to rural areas and embeds energy storage units rechargeable with a solar lamp. Retice Renal Smart 80/20 received the 2018 ITBP Sorbonne Award and was recognized by Unesco and the International Organization of the Francophonie as a digital solution for education. It is also listed as one of the Top 40 digital technologies for education certified by the African Union in 2019.
KA Technologies, the company created by Victor Agbegnenou to deploy the solution, has been working to equip nearly 150,000 students in Togo since 2020. The solution is already deployed in Senegal in two municipalities and Nigeria in the state of Kano. The company has already obtained the formal agreement of the Ministry of Basic Education and the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications of Cameroon. Talks are ongoing for an upcoming launch in the country.
Ruben Tchounyabe
The digital is bringing fish farmers the opportunities to improve their business and profit. It also allows them to own an essential part of the value chain.
When Dave Okech (pictured, left) started fish farming in Kenya in 2016, he immediately noticed the problems plaguing the sector, including low productivity and lack of technical assistance. Interested in technology, he develops digital tools to help address these obstacles.
He then created AquaRech in 2018. The solution is a package made of a mobile app, a connected thermometer, and a web platform. The mobile app incorporates a centralized database system that connects fish farmers, fish traders, and feed suppliers. It is available on Android and allows users to calculate the amount of feed needed by the fish population based on the water temperature. This data is collected via the connected thermometer installed in the fish breeding tank. Having an idea of the amount of food needed by their fish, farmers can directly contact producers via the web platform without going through intermediaries which made the process tedious.
Using Dave Okech's solution allows fish farmers to reduce the production period from 13 to 8 months, increase yields, reduce production costs by 30% and increase profits by 25%. The promoter has received numerous awards for his many efforts in the fish farming industry in Kenya. These include the Mandela Washington Fellow 2016, the Acumen Fellow 2019, and the Global Farmer Network Fellow 2020.
Adoni Conrad Quenum
The low bancarization in Africa has long kept a large part of the population away from traditional financial services such as savings and credit. Tontines have become the way for the unbanked to access these services.
To make this informal savings method more effective, given its proven social impact over many years in Africa, Nigerian Bernie Akporiaye launched MaTontine- a financial service platform that uses digital technology to modernize traditional savings circles. MaTontine, currently available in Senegal, provides access to small loans and a range of financial services such as micro-insurance to its customers. “We solve the problem by utilizing mobile phones and our platform to digitize the benefits of traditional savings circles (ROSCAs), thereby reducing the cost of borrowing by 75% or more,” explains Bernie Akporiaye.
The platform's members contribute to an online kitty and collect the amount in turns. According to Bernie Akporiaye, members receive a credit score based on their payment morality, from which partners can offer them small loans or contracts. The use of the basic service is free of charge, the startup being financed via the commissions taken from the services of its partners Cofina and Sunu Assurance.
The particularity of MaTontine is that it uses old-generation mobile phones, unlike most competing fintech companies that use smartphones; 90% of the platform’s members are women. Bernie Akporiaye stressed that the Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted how vulnerable these women are, most of whom “live on less than $5 a day." MaTontine is therefore working on integrating other services such as financial education, to better prepare users for a possible future crisis.
The startup won the 3rd prize in Orange’s AfricaCom Awards competition in 2016 and a grant from the GSMA Ecosystem Accelerator innovation fund in February 2018. It was honored in 2019 by Inclusive Fintech 50 Fintech, an initiative by MetLife Foundation, Visa, Accion, and IFC. Since its launch, MaTontine has registered 6,000 customers and disbursed $200,000 in loans.
Ruben Tchounyabe