Nigeria’s healthcare system, many say, is hanging by a thread, stitched together by a federal health budget that limps at N1.33 trillion, just 2.7% of the N49.7 trillion national budget. 

Nonetheless, despite these shortcomings, there are outliers, those not waiting for the system to fix itself. Mrs Tonye Mayomi is one of them.

Africa Digital Awards Honours Mayomi Tonye

As the General Manager of Schubbs Dental Clinic, a leading dental care brand with a 38-year history, Tonye Mayomi manages healthcare businesses across three locations; commendably impacting how care is delivered, one facility at a time.

“I see it as giving back to my community,” she says, reflecting on her journey. “When people fall sick, they’re helpless, and setting up a practice that can help them get better—it strengthens the community.”

Her story is built on focus and uncomfortable truths about Nigeria’s broken healthcare infrastructure. For example, the country currently has one doctor for every 5,000 people, far below the World Health Organisation’s recommendation of 1:600. And yet, Tonye Mayomi has managed to build and run successful healthcare operations, even in underserved areas.

Thriving in a Male-Dominated Space

Navigating the medical space as a woman in Nigeria comes with challenges. Mayomi faced them, winning. “Medicine is a male-dominated field in Nigeria. When you’re leading teams with consultants and doctors, they tend to look at you like you’re female, and they think they know more than you,” she shared.

But she never shrank. In fact, she made her presence non-negotiable. “The aspect of patient care is not a one-man system. You have the front officers, the cleaners, the procurement officers, human resources. Eventually, the doctors understood that no one should be looked down on. And they even started giving me more respect than they gave their medical colleagues.”

For Tonye Mayomi, giving up has never been an option. “Maybe because I got into this field at the right age. I was already in my 30s, so I knew it was my calling—to help people feel better and to make healthcare practices function better. Without us as healthcare administrators, doctors can’t function properly.”

Her determination has kept some doctors from fleeing Nigeria’s overburdened system. “Many doctors who have encountered me have always felt a relief. Some of them have even decided not to leave Nigeria.”

That is no small feat in a country where over 15,000 Nigerian doctors have left in the past decade, seeking better pay and working conditions abroad.

The Cost of Care and Customer Service

Speaking about the challenges in Nigeria’s healthcare system, Mayomi said. “Customer care is a major issue. The cost of care is another. When people can’t afford to pay for care, it slows down the entire system—everyone feels it, from the doctors to the front desk officers.”

In Nigeria, less than 10% of citizens are covered under the National Health Insurance Scheme, leaving millions to either self-fund their treatments or go without care.

Mayomi stresses that addressing these two areas, cost and customer service, is highly important. “We need to improve patient management systems. It’s a continuous process, but hopefully, this will result in a healthcare system that actually works for Nigerians.”

Cleanliness, Compassion and Care

While the system’s cracks are glaring, Tonye Mayomi believes there are practical ways to work around them. Her philosophy is fixed on cleanliness, compassion and patient-centred care. 

“Sick people don’t want to come into dirty hospitals. They want to feel welcomed. The way a patient is treated is as important as the medicine you give them. If you throw a malaria medicine at somebody, it will work, but they will never forget how you made them feel,” she said, challenging the culture of transactional care with a more humane approach.

Advocating Innovation and Women Inclusion

Speaking on innovations, Mayomi has led and is pushing for full automation. “We use Electronic Medical Records (EMR). Patients can book appointments online, and when they come in, they don’t need to pass files around. Within minutes, they’ve been assigned to a doctor. We also use marketing tools that automatically send out information about our services.”

She insists that technology is not a threat but an enabler. “Doctors need to be humble enough to learn. It’s not a competition with technology; it can enhance their performance.”

And for women’s participation in healthcare, she says it needs to go beyond nursing. “Women are an underserved population in medicine, especially in administration and facility management. But now is the time. If you can hold a screwdriver, you can run a hospital’s facility management gate and you will be relevant for a very long time.”

At the 2023/2024 Medical and Dental Induction Ceremony at the College of Medicine, University of Lagos, Idi-Araba, Schubbs Dental, under her leadership, presented cash prizes to the best graduating student in Dentistry and the best student in Restorative Dentistry.

“It is only reasonable that we support students who are becoming doctors today,” she says. “We will keep supporting doctors in Nigeria and hoping that will shift the middle, so more people will stay or even come back to serve their country.”

Her long-term dream? To see every healthcare facility in Nigeria fully automated. “I advocate automation. I advocate women inclusion. I advocate continuous learning. I advocate best practices in medical care. These are the things I push every day.”

“I would love to see Nigeria become a medical hub, like Turkey. Why can’t Nigeria be where people come for their surgeries, their paediatric procedures? We have more doctors graduating here than anywhere else. This is something I’m actively pushing.”

And her parting advice? “Exercise more. We are seeing more young people who are overweight, and it causes so many other health issues. Wake up in the morning, take a walk. If you can’t run, take a walk. Just move.”

In a healthcare system where most people are struggling just to stay alive, Tonye Mayomi is building and leading to ensure inclusive and working conditions.

With this acquisition, value not yet disclosed, Chowdeck is no longer just a delivery company. It is becoming an infrastructure provider for the food, retail, and hospitality businesses it serves.

Mira’s technology, a suite of POS tools that include inventory management, payment processing, invoicing, and financing options, will now be integrated directly into Chowdeck’s platform. 

This means that the same company that handles a vendor’s deliveries could soon manage its entire back-end operations.

Ted Oladele will take up a new role as Head of Product at Chowdeck. His co-founder, Ibojo, is stepping away from tech to take a career break after nearly a decade in the industry. Several other Mira employees will join Chowdeck’s team to build out the new business segment.

The acquisition comes at a time when Chowdeck is pursuing rapid growth. Since launching in 2021 with just 300 users, the company now claims over a million active users per month. 

Its delivery fleet has also grown to more than 10,000 riders across multiple Nigerian cities and Accra, Ghana, a market it entered recently and says it’s working to be the go-to platform far quicker than it did at home.

The last-mile delivery sector in Nigeria is facing challenges. Logistics firms face razor-thin margins, poor road networks, rising fuel prices, and consumers unwilling to pay more for faster service. 

Jumia Food, Bolt Food, Sendy, and Hytch have either exited or pivoted due to the hostile conditions. With investor appetite drying up, companies still in the race are being forced to rethink what they are and who they serve.

Chowdeck is doing just that. “For a long time, we’ve focused more on the customer side than on the restaurant, supermarket, and pharmacy side,” said CEO Femi Aluko. “But as we begin to expand, we’re paying deeper attention to the vendor side.”

With Mira, Chowdeck gains real-time visibility into in-store inventory and operations, a longstanding problem in the food delivery world. Customers often order items that are out of stock, leading to cancelled orders and frustration. 

Delivery platforms try to solve this by placing human agents in restaurants to manually track inventory, but it’s clumsy and inefficient.

Osarumen Osamuyi, founder of the research publication Subtext, said, “The challenge is that it’s difficult to solve this problem without having a monopoly on the market because the restaurants need to be able to sell on multiple aggregators.” He adds, “Being integrated with the inventory management system is a much more elegant way of doing that.”

By plugging directly into vendors’ inventory systems, Chowdeck eliminates guesswork. Fewer cancellations, faster delivery, better user experience and for vendors, more predictability.

But it’s not just about user satisfaction. The data Mira provides gives Chowdeck a clearer picture of how vendors run their businesses, what’s selling, what’s not, when cash flow dips. 

With that insight, Chowdeck can offer targeted financing or operational support, opening up a new revenue stream and strengthening vendor retention.

It’s a model that’s already been tested abroad. U.S.-based DoorDash acquired Bbot to expand into in-store dining systems. Square evolved from payments to become an all-in-one solution for SMEs, integrating e-commerce and lending. 

Chowdeck is borrowing a similar playbook and adapting it to Nigeria’s food retail sector.

This also puts Chowdeck on a collision course with fintech giants like Moniepoint, which recently acquired a POS startup to deepen its own play in retail. Competition will be fierce, and the stakes are high, bthe benefits could be transformative.

From the outside, it looks like Chowdeck is building a moat by embedding itself in the operations of the businesses it serves. This makes it harder for rivals to poach its vendors and gives Chowdeck control over a larger part of the value chain. It’s no longer just moving food, it’s powering the business behind the food.

Expanding into the fintech layer brings new regulatory checks. Scaling a POS business in Nigeria demands more support infrastructure, customer service, and technical capacity, all of which cost money. 

There’s also the question of team dynamics and integration. Samuel Frank, an analyst at Sahara Impact Ventures, warns: “Acquisitions can lead to higher operational costs, especially with staffing. It’s not always clear how teams will merge or how fast the value will materialise.”

The company already has a partnership with Chicken Republic and has experimented with loyalty programmes and discount subscriptions. It’s also working with cloud kitchens and virtual brands to increase profit margins.

The food delivery market in Nigeria is expected to hit $14.41 billion by the end of 2025. Urbanisation is speeding up, and demand for convenience is rising. If Chowdeck can combine speed, affordability, operational support, and in-store accuracy, it might take over.