After completing his engineering degree in Germany, he moved to the United States to gain experience in digital health. Returning to Africa, he focused on developing technological solutions to improve healthcare on the continent.
Yaya Mbaoua (photo), a Cameroonian electrical engineer, is the co-founder and CEO of Zencey, a medical technology startup that aims to improve healthcare accessibility and affordability in sub-Saharan Africa.
Founded in 2021, Zencey offers a mobile application that allows patients to consult with expert doctors from the comfort of their homes. The platform boasts a network of 1,400 pharmacies and over 50 partner medical laboratories, providing patients with easy access to medications and diagnostic tests.
To automate healthcare in Africa, Zencey leverages artificial intelligence. Its API enables doctors to create personalized AI-driven chatbots for patient screening, triage, symptom checking, appointment scheduling, and other tasks. Additionally, the API facilitates access to clinical information for better diagnosis and helps asymptomatic patients obtain risk profiles.
Before founding Zencey, Mbaoua established The Mbaoua Group in 2017, with the goal of improving access to quality medical care in Africa. He served as CEO until 2020.
Mbaoua holds a master's degree in electrical engineering from the Technical University of Rhineland-Palatinate Kaiserslautern-Landau, Germany, earned in 1995. In 2002, he trained in finance and technological innovation strategies at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
His career began in 1996 at Comsearch, a U.S. technology company. He entered the healthcare industry in 2011 at Rally Health, serving as Vice President of Products. In 2014, he became Vice President of Sales and Business Development at Med1 Healthcare Group. In 2016, he was appointed Managing Director of GlobalMed Telemedicine in Africa.
As an entrepreneur backed by the Techstars accelerator, Mbaoua won the Africa IoT & AI Challenge in 2023, a regional competition for entrepreneurs with innovative ideas in IoT, AI, and related fields.
Melchior Koba
