Applications open for Investing in Innovation Program 2025 (Africa)

Investing in Innovation (i3) is a pan-African commercialization support program that aims to help scale fifteen (15) African healthtech startups who are working to advance healthcare access and delivery in Africa.

Benefits

• Access to Markets: i3 connects healthtech start-ups with large healthcare organizations including governments, donors, and global health institutions to drive adoption of start-ups’ offerings and scale..
• Partnership Readiness Support: i3 provides a roadmap to help innovators meet the requirements for partnering with major healthcare organizations.
• Bespoke Deal Facilitation: i3 helps innovators refine their strategic positioning and increase the likelihood of successful partnerships and deals with large healthcare organizations.
• Communications and Advocacy: i3 provides highly professionalized communications and advocacy, to amplify the work of African healthtech innovators in the global health landscape. Additionally, i3 works towards resolving key ecosystem barriers that impact healthtech innovation in Africa.

Funding Information

• Risk-Tolerant Finance: i3 provides grant funding of $50K for early-stage innovators and up to $225K for growth-stage innovators, to overcome barriers to partnerships with large healthcare organizations e.g. WHO pre-qualification and regulatory compliance.

Who are they looking for?

• i3’s current work seeks to catalyze the development of early- and growth-stage ventures building data-driven access to healthcare.
• They seek to focus their impact on innovations that stand to benefit Africa, therefore they target program participants whose companies are owned, led or operated by African citizens and produce products for African customers.

Eligibility Criteria

• Innovators must fulfil the criteria below to qualify for review in i3’s 3rd cohort:
  • Focus on Africa:
    • Must have a strategic focus on meeting the needs of African customers in Africa.
    • Must be headquartered or have a legal presence in Africa.
  • Focus on the future of pharmacy care:
    • Must offer advanced tech-enabled solutions aimed at improving pharmacy services. Innovators that develop novel health products or devices as a part of their delivery or distribution services are eligible. Excluded are innovators who are solely focused on research, education, and product or device development. The business does not need to be solely focused on health to be eligible.
    • Non-profits, consultancies, intermediaries and consortiums are not eligible.
  • Be at the growth stage, seeking healthcare partnerships:
    • Nascent/idea stage companies are not eligible. Mature companies (incumbents) are not eligible. To be considered “Growth stage” i3 seeks innovators that have:
      • Products/services in market at/near national scale in at least one country
      • Strong, well-defined revenue model, sales and operational capabilities
      • Decreasing customer acquisition costs
      • Proven customer and revenue diversification with aggregate annual revenues over $500K USD
      • Clear plan for businesses growth and sustainability
      • Clear plan for growth of healthcare offering
      • Needs in healthcare growth plan that correspond to i3’s offerings
  • Impact patient access:
    • The business does not need to be solely focused on health.
    • Innovators must demonstrate that grant funding will generate direct improvements in one or more of the following areas: availability, accessibility, quality, affordability or visibility of critical health products and services.

For more information, visit Investing in Innovation.