Investing in Innovation Africa (i3), a pan-African initiative to support African healthtech startups to commercialise and scale their offerings has confirmed its decision to make a pivotal change to its 3rd cohort selection to prioritise the immediate support for 5-7 growth-stage companies building the Future of Pharmacy care in Africa.
The announcement by i3, Techeconomy gathered, was in response to the U.S. State Department’s (USAID) “stop-work” directive for foreign aid issued on January 25th, which is anticipated to impact the distribution of essential medicine in Africa’s healthcare supply chains.
The order highlights and intensifies the need for locally-driven, market-creating approaches to health product distribution and service delivery across Africa.
Funded by the Gates Foundation, MSD, Cencora, Endless Foundation, HELP Logistics (a subsidiary of the Kühne Foundation), Sanofi’s Global Health Unit and Chemonics, the i3 program will concentrate its immediate efforts to help innovative growth-stage startups unlock major partnerships to rapidly expand access to patient care.
The selected start-ups will also receive up to $225K in grant funds. i3 aims to expand support to early-stage companies at a later date.
Applications for the 3rd cohort are open until February 28th.
Apply here.
The selected startups will be announced on April 30th. A virtual Q&A session will be hosted by i3 on February 21st to answer any questions regarding the application process.
i3 is coordinated by Salient Advisory and Solina Center for International Development and Research (SCIDaR).
