CNN Features Africa Young Innovators for Health Awardees

27 January 2022.
By the Award program team

CNN’s Inside Africa show introduces you to the innovators, entrepreneurs, tech trailblazers and artistic visionaries shaping the future of the African continent and beyond. Four Awardees from the Africa Young Innovators Programme tell their stories. About creating innovative solutions to some of Africa’s most pressing healthcare challenges and how their use of technology is changing the healthcare landscape across the continent. Their stories show their brilliance in looking at the challenges facing their communities and bravely decided to take up the challenge of leveraging tech to find new solutions.

Conrad Tankou, the first prize winner of the Award, takes us on a journey in Cameroon. Through his inspirations and aspirations in creating med-tech solutions that enable affordable healthcare access to more than 10,000 women in underserved communities in Africa. His innovation, GICMED allows the instant screening and diagnosis of breast and cervical cancer with real-time pathology at the point of care for women living in the most remote settings.

The story continues in West Africa with Imodoye Abioro, the youngest of the winners. Imodoye story highlights how he took a personal tragedy, the death of a close friend due to the lack of accurate patient data, and set out to provide the solution. Mediverse is an AI-powered electronic medical records system. It allows health workers to input and retrieve patient records with their voice, working with or without internet access on any device.

Karim Bendhaou, Chair of the IFPMA Africa Engagement Committee, is featured. And explains that the ”substantial business acumen, understanding of the gap in the market” and their passionate determination to make their innovations work define their success. With their bright minds and others like them, the future of healthcare in Africa is in great hands. 

The story then moves to East Africa, Uganda, where a personal tragedy occurs again. Nuriat Nambogo was determined to ensure easy and on-time access to doctors. Borne out of this determination was MobiCare. A mobile-based platform that bridges the gap between patients and medical professionals through appointment scheduling. The application also allows patients to access and consult doctors they need at the right time in their preferred health facilities. The story ends in Kenya with John Mwangi, who is expanding access to continuous learning for health workers across Africa through technology, already supporting over 9,000 Kenyan health care providers.

Yacine Djibo, Executive Director, Speak Up Africa, also explains the power of the Award programme in the episode. “it is a call-to-action to support youth-led, and women-led innovation, entrepreneurship, and the solutions that exist on the African continent.”

Watch the full episode here: https://edition.cnn.com/videos/tv/2022/01/26/inside-africa-african-innovators-entrepreneurs.cnn