Podcasts by The Africa Health Ventures Podcast (formerly Aid, Evolved)

The Medicine Supply Chain in Africa, Part 2: The Next 10 Years from 2023-11-30T07:35:33

In 10 years, the medicine supply chain in Africa will look very different than it does today. In Part 2 of this podcast, we examine four key trends which are going to re-shape the medicine suppl...

The Medicine Supply Chain in Africa: from Manufacturer to Pharmacy (Part 1) from 2023-11-21T10:00:57

What does it take to move a pack of medicines from a factory in India to the shelves of a mom-and-pop pharmacy in Zambia? In this episode, we explore the world of the medicine supply chain in Af...

Introducing the Africa Health Ventures Podcast from 2023-09-28T11:58:54

Unlocking access to quality healthcare in Africa by 2030 will require radical innovations. Join veteran digital health / healthtech entrepreneur Rowena Luk in conversation with healthcare indust...

Chuck Slaughter of Living Goods: Digital First Healthcare Saving Lives at the Last Mile from 2023-09-05T10:33:40

Chuck Slaughter is the founder of Living Goods, which supports over 10,000 digitally-empowered community health workers who are reducing child deaths by over 25% at an annual cost of under $4 pe...

Dr. Agnes Binagwaho, Former Minister of Health of Rwanda from 2023-06-01T09:05:46

Dr. Agnes Binagwaho is a pediatrician, former Minister of Health of Rwanda, Senior Lecturer at Harvard University, Advisor to the Director-General of the WHO, and co-founder of the University of...

Investing in Healthcare with the World’s Largest Pure-Play Impact Investor from 2023-05-23T09:38

Dr. Biju Mohandas has led investments at not just one but three different household names in impact investing: LeapFrog Investments, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), and Acumen. Tune...

Technology, Innovation, and the Global Fund from 2023-05-09T08:53:19

John Fairhurst is the head of Private Sector Engagement at the Global Fund. As such, he is the link between this global institution and innovators ranging from Microsoft to Zenysis. Tune in toda...

Nicole Spieker of PharmAccess Foundation from 2023-04-25T08:23:18

When you dig into the problem of providing quality healthcare in Africa, sooner or later you hit the foundational question, “who is going to pay for these services?” In tackling this challenge, ...

Curt LaBelle, M.D., Managing Partner of the Global Health Investment Fund and the AXA IM Global Health Fund from 2023-04-11T10:33:30

GHIF was a "first-of-its-kind investment product", the fund was created in 2012 through the surprising alliance of the Gates Foundation and JP Morgan Chase. Its supporters include a stellar cast...

Margot Cooijmans of Philips Foundation from 2023-03-28T10:43

Margot Cooijmans is an impact investor, philanthropist, entrepreneur, corporate lawyer, and expert on essential Corporate Social Responsibility. For most of their existence, she has led Philips ...

Joseph Ssentongo of the Global Innovation Fund from 2023-02-28T08:34:51

As the Senior Vice President of Impact at the Global Innovation Fund, Joseph Ssentongo works at the challenging nexus of innovation, evidence and...

Pippa Yeats of Turn.io: Sending a Lifeline to the People of Ukraine from 2023-02-07T11:51:53

Pippa Yeats first built Turn.io to send reminders to mothers in South Africa about how to stay healthy. She never dreamt that she would be one of the first responder...

Andy Bryant of Segal Family Foundation from 2023-01-24T11:39:59

In 2022, Segal Family Foundation was the second largest US grant-maker in Sub-Saharan Africa by number of grants given (below Gates and above...

Andy Pattison of WHO: 12 Days to Launch the Largest WhatsApp Service in the World from 2022-12-15T12:26:26

On March 8, 2020, Dr. Tedros asked Andy Pattison to set up the World Health Organization (WHO)’s global COVID-19 hotline, a process that would normally take months if not years. 12 days later, A...

Hannah Subayi: From Billion Dollar Fund Manager to Pan-African Angel Investor from 2022-11-29T12:17:53

Hannah's done it all, from managing a billion-dollar fund to sowing the seeds for new ventures in Africa. She has invested directly in the companies who built the cell phone towers that are expa...

Creating New Ways to Fund Innovations in Global Health with Rebecca Distler of the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation from 2022-11-15T14:35:34

Join us in conversation with Rebecca Distler, Strategist for AI, Data, and Digital Health at the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation. She shares the trials and...

Season 3 Teaser: Donors and Investors in Digital Health / HealthTech from 2022-11-15T11:34:37

Season 3 of Aid, Evolved digs into the intimidating world of donors and investors in global digital health / healthtech. What's it like to walk a mile in their shoes? How are their ...

BongoHive: Building the Zambian Tech Sector from the Ground Up from 2022-10-04T08:17:09

Lukonga Lindunda is a startup ecosystem builder. He is Executive Director and co-founder of BongoHive, an award-winning innovation hub and tech incubator b...

Robert Karanja, Villgro Africa, and the Next Frontier of Genomics Startups in Africa from 2022-09-06T15:25:45

Dr. Robert Karanja recalls how he founded Villgro Africa, a tech incubator and impact investor focused exclusively on health innovations in Africa. Stick around for the end when Robert shares hi...

Digitizing the Largest TB Program in the World with Andrew Cross of Everwell from 2022-08-31T17:14:52

Like another airborne disease we are all familiar with, tuberculosis (TB) spreads invisibly through the air. If you catch it and you don't treat it, you're likely to die. India has the largest T...

The Future of Pharmacy with Samuel Okwuada of Remedial Health from 2022-08-09T13:56:58

In the heart of Nigeria's COVID-19 surge in 2020, Samuel Okwuada started receiving a string of phone calls from loca...

Let’s Get African HealthTech Founders a Seat at the Table from 2022-07-26T12:32

Mara Hansen Staples is on a mission to tear down the glass ceiling that stands between African innovators and global funding. She spent years talking to funders behind closed doors in Geneva, D....

Alain Nteff of HealthLane: How to Close Investment, Precision Health, and Building World-Class Laboratories in Africa from 2022-07-05T12:16:16

Alain Nteff is the CEO and Founder of Healthlane. Healthlane delivers precision personal health plans through a network of world-class laboratories in Africa.

Alain's wor...

Throwback: David vs. Goliath with Mike Quinn of Zoona from 2022-06-16T09:57:33

Mike Quinn was co-founder and CEO of one Africa's earliest major financial technology (FinTech) companies, Zoona. He raised over 35 million dollars of i...

Femi Kuti of Reliance Health: Are You Fulfilling Your Mission? from 2022-06-07T09:38:48

Femi Kuti is the CEO and co-Founder of Reliance Health - an HMO using tech to make quality healthcare delightful, affordable, and accessible in emerging markets. Earlier this year they raised $4...

Yetunde Ayo-Oyalowo of Market Doctors: Taking Healthcare out of the Ivory Tower from 2022-05-24T12:38:39

Yetunde Ayo-Oyalowo founded Market Doctors based on the idea of bringing healthcare to people where they live and work. Market Doctors is a social ent...

Chrispinus Onyancha of clinicPesa: How to Lift Yourself Up in Business from 2022-05-10T10:10:17

Chrispinus Onyancha is the Founder and CEO of clinicPesa. clinicPesa is a FinTech company that provides affordable healthcare financing to the uninsured in ...

Alloysius Attah of Farmerline: Go Big or Go Home from 2022-04-26T08:35:05

Today, April 26 2022, Farmerline announced that it has raise $6.4 million in Pre-Series A investment and an additional $6.5 million in debt. Farmerline is an AgriTech business known as "the Amaz...

Nthenya Mule of Antara Health: Making Healthcare Personal in Kenya from 2022-04-12T17:03:03

Nthenya Mule is one of the founders of Antara Health, a technology company reimagining primary care to serve Kenyans both at home and in the clinic.

Born and raised in Kenya, Nth...

Ben Bellows of Nivi: Getting the Market Incentives Right from 2022-03-29T10:14:05

Ben Bellows spent almost 20 years studying the economics of aid systems - but 2 years ago Ben quit his day job to go all-in on Nivi. Nivi is a chatbot marketpl...

Healthcare Financing for the Next Billion with Ikpeme Neto of WellaHealth (Nigeria) from 2022-03-09T11:35:13

Ikpeme Neto is the CEO and Founder of WellaHealth in Nigeria. He's carried this healthtech startup through a m...

Achieving Financial Sustainability in Open Source with Yaw Anokwa of ODK from 2022-02-24T16:05:25

In November of 2020, I sat down with Yaw Anokwa, founder and CEO of ODK, to talk about the unsustainability of open-source software in global development. Despite building a data collection plat...

Seeking Knowledge from Chaos with Tigest Tamrat of WHO from 2022-02-02T13:42

When it comes to health, there are few people who are tasked with answering the Big Questions: what's actually working? Where is the evidence? And how do we get it to scale? Today we talk with T...

Aid, Evolved: Looking Back on 2021 from 2021-12-08T10:19:54

Today I pull together some of the conversations in 2021 that really made my head spin.

I clicked ‘record’ on the first episode of Aid, Evolved just over a year ago. My goal was...

Walking Away from Half Your Revenue with Jon Jackson of Dimagi from 2021-11-24T15:45:56

Jon Jackson is the CEO and Co-Founder of Dimagi, a social enterprise that delivers digital solutions to improve lives in over 130 countries. In today's conversati...

David vs. Goliath with Mike Quinn of Zoona from 2021-11-10T11:59:05

Mike Quinn was co-founder and CEO of one Africa's earliest major financial technology (FinTech) companies, Zoona. He raised over 35 million dollars of i...

How to Create a Shared Reality with Kevin Starr of Mulago Foundation from 2021-10-27T16:19:46

What would you do if you had millions of dollars to invest in impact? Would you put it in an existing charity - or would you try to do something different, something better?

Kevin Starr ...

Reinventing Yourself on the Journey to Scale with Sathy Rajasekharan of Jacaranda Health from 2021-10-13T10:58:52

Sathy Rajasekharan is the co-Executive Director of Jacaranda Health. Frustrated with the speed of change within larger institutions, Sathy joined Jacaranda to be part of a small, agile, and expe...

In Country and Behind the Scenes with Marie Ahmed of USAID from 2021-09-29T16:31:51

Marie Ahmed has worked within USAID to strengthen health systems in Nepal, Rwanda, Côte d'Ivoire, and Thailand. She has a long career in the non-profit and public sector, including time with the...

Growing 10X in a Year with Evelyn Castle of eHealth Africa from 2021-09-21T12:55:17

Evelyn Castle is a woman who just doesn't know when to stop. She has founded multiple social ventures in the technology and health space in Africa. She is best known for her work as Executive Di...

Charting Your Own Course with Erica Layer of D-Tree from 2021-09-07T08:27:42

Erica Layer is the CEO of D-Tree International, a global digital health organization dedicated to ensuring everyone has access to quality primary healthcare through integration of digital tools ...

What Stands the Test of Time with Dominic Atweam of Ghana Health Services from 2021-08-10T08:49:32

After more than 15 years in Ghana Health Services, Dominic Atweam has seen all the major digital health systems in Ghana come and go. But one system withstands the test of time: DHIS2 (or "DHIMS...

Invest In Ecosystems, Not Apps, With Rahul Mullick And The Gates Foundation from 2021-07-27T16:46:30

After rising to the top of the global consulting industry, Rahul Mullick joined the Gates Foundation to oversee some of their most ambitious work in digital and technology. Today we look back on...

Empower Women to Code with Marlene Mhangami of the Python Software Foundation from 2021-07-20T10:44:11

Marlene Mhangami is a remarkable woman. She was the first African woman to join the board of the global Python Software Foundation (PSF). PSF develops and maintains the Python programming langua...

The Promise and Peril of Biometrics with Sebastian Manhart and Simprints from 2021-06-29T15:59:22

Sebastian Manhart has recently concluded his role as COO of Simprints. Simprints is the world...

From Serial Entrepreneur to Non-Profit Founder with Gustav Praekelt of Praekelt.org from 2021-06-15T15:59:32

Gustav Praekelt is founder, chairman, and CEO of the African-based Praekelt Group. Praekelt has directly delivered essential health information to 100 million people around the world. Praekelt r...

Foreign Aid or Local Aid? The Side Hustles of Ismaila Diene of Dimagi from 2021-06-01T15:29:19

Today we dive into the life and side hustles of Ismaila Diene, a senior executive within Dimagi. Born, raised, and now returned back to Senegal, he shares his experience with the diaspora, homec...

Learning How to Speak Up with Joy Kamunyori of JSI from 2021-05-25T15:59:17

Today we speak with Joy Kamunyori. Joy has a long career in digital health, and most recently was the Program Director at the Center for Digital Health at John Snow Inc (JSI). JSI is one of the ...

Side Chat: Behind the Scenes with Three Digital Development Podcasts from 2021-05-20T13:57:12

In late 2020, a few months after much of the world entered pandemic lockdown, three different digital development podcasts were each independently launched: the ICT4D Conference Podcast, Pulse o...

The Seven Lives of Living Software with Nic Pottier of Nyaruka from 2021-05-18T12:50:53

Nic Pottier is the CEO and co-founder of Nyaruka, a software startup founded in Rwanda. Nyaruka builds and maintains RapidPro and TextIt.com. RapidPro today runs in over a hundred countries worl...

Digital Identity, Cash, and Trust in Humanitarian Response with Rosa Akbari from 2021-04-27T12:38:13

Rosa Akbari is a humanitarian technologist. She deploys digital technologies for crisis response, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa. Most recently she was a Senior Advisor in Tech...

Defying Expectations with Nithya Ramanathan of Nexleaf Analytics from 2021-04-13T11:45:18

Nithya Ramanathan is CEO and co-founder of Nexleaf Analytics, a technology non-profit. Today, Nexleaf technology protects the vaccine supply for 1 in 10 children born on Earth. Nexleaf Analytics...

Side Chat: Podcasting in the Aid Industry with Stephen Ladek of the Terms of Reference Podcast from 2021-04-06T11:57:06

In 2019, when I started thinking about doing a podcast on innovation in aid, I looked around to see what else was out there. At the time, one podcast stood out to me for its ability to capture t...

If What You Need Doesn't Exist, Go Build it - Ken Banks of FrontlineSMS from 2021-03-30T12:33:21

Ken Banks built the first version of FrontlineSMS over 5 weeks while unemployed at the home of his in-laws. Just a few years later, it was in use by development and conservation organizations in...

The Tip of the Spear with Matt Berg of Ona from 2021-03-16T10:36:11

Today's episode is a far-ranging conversation with Matt Berg, founder and CEO of Ona. We peel apart the many layers of Matt's life as an immigrant, a celebrity, a gee...

6,000 Videos by Smallholder Farmers with Rikin Gandhi of Digital Green from 2021-03-02T11:17:14

Rikin Gandhi reverse-emigrated to India to join a bio-diesel startup - which went under the week that he landed in the country. After that, he cold-emailed Microsoft Research to get a job. Three...

Side Chat: Wandering in the Woods in West Africa from 2021-02-23T13:50:51

This short episode is the first in our experimental ‘side chat’ format. 

It started out as I (your host, Rowena) was writing a ‘thank you’ note to our guest from last week, Eric Brewer. ...

From ICTD Research to Practice with Eric Brewer of UC Berkeley from 2021-02-16T12:33:58

Dr. Eric Brewer is a remarkable man. He founded a company that made it to the NASDAQ-100 within 4 years. He shaped the backbone of the modern day web. He's gained, and lost, a billion dollars. H...

The Many Sides of Digital Health with Liz Peloso from 2021-02-02T11:25:32

Liz Peloso has experienced digital health from many sides. With roughly a decade's experience as a practicing nurse, a decade in private sector health consulting, and a decade in global health, ...

Starting Up in South Africa with Nneile Nkohlise of 3DIMO from 2021-01-26T13:31:06

Nneile Nkohlise is well known in South Africa for her work as an innovator, founder, technologist, and risk-taker. She was recognized by the World Economic Forum in Rwanda in 2016 as one of Afri...

Punching Above Your Weight with Karl Brown and the Rockefeller Foundation from 2021-01-19T09:34:01

Karl Brown spent 8 years at the Rockefeller Foundation, investing across multiple domains, including pandemic response, digital health, health systems, and youth unemployment, before he joined T...

Connecting the Roof of the World with Yahel Ben-David of AirJaldi from 2021-01-12T10:25:56

Dr. Yahel Ben-David has spent most of his career bringing low-cost internet to resource-constrained communities from the Indian Himalayas to California’s Central Valley. He is CEO of Further Rea...

Fostering a Culture of Innovation in Malawi with Gerry Douglas from 2020-12-15T12:22:28

Gerry Douglas is known for many things: for founding Baobab Health Trust in Malawi, for his work as the Director of the Center for Health Informatics for the Underserved at the University of Pit...

Starting by Luck and Succeeding by Grit with Yaw Anokwa of ODK from 2020-12-08T10:12:12

Yaw Anokwa is founder and CEO of ODK. ODK's mission is to design, build, deploy and support offline data collection software for low-resource settings. ODK is one of the most popular data collec...

Finding Your Way into Digital Health with Derek Treatman of Vital Wave from 2020-12-01T10:16:28

Derek Treatman is a Senior Director of Technology Solutions at Vital Wave, where he supports governments and nonprofits in low-resource countries to use readily-available technologies to improve...

Digital Health Systems Strengthening with Sean Blaschke of UNICEF from 2020-11-24T13:50:16

Sean Blaschke from UNICEF’s Technology for Development (T4D) team has spent the past 15 years working on technology for global development in Africa, first as part of UNICEF’s headquarters in Ne...

A Business Approach to Social Change with Soraiya Verjee of Every1Mobile from 2020-08-20T17:51:06

Soraiya Verjee has been a Director at Every1Mobile for the past 7 years, working to deliver digital solutions to drive social change in communities across sub-Saharan Africa. In this conversatio...

Coming Soon: Aid, Evolved will launch in November 2020 from 2020-07-07T15:26:58

We’ll be launching this podcast in November 2020. To get notified when we're live, sign up to our mailing list at AidEvolved.com. In this welcome message, I'll share a bit about who I am, why I'...