“We can find African solutions for African challenges by bringing together government, industry, and donors to create the scaffolding for entrepreneurs to succeed”
Investing in Innovation (i3), a state-of-the-art, pan-African initiative, hosted the second edition of the Access to Markets event to bring together government, industry, and donors to meet with the 29 African healthcare supply chains startups from the 2nd i3 cohort.
The Access to Markets 2023 event in Nairobi, Kenya, successfully gathered over 120 attendees and enabled more than 182 partnership-focused meetings between startups and partners. Participants included Kenyan, Rwandan, and Tanzanian government officials and representatives from donor agencies, global health organizations, supply chain industry leaders, pharmaceutical companies, and investors.
Over the next year, these innovators will be further supported with a focus on investment readiness and securing partnerships that will foster resilient and efficient health supply chains across Africa. The i3 program is sponsored by The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, MSD, Cencora, Chemonics & Microsoft.
With Access to Markets and the entire i3 program, we aim to catalyze a new way to identify and strengthen Africa-led innovations. Special thanks to all the attendees who actively participated in the event. The energy in the room was truly palpable, leaving us feeling inspired and more committed than ever to this important journey.
We extend our heartfelt thanks to our co-hosts, SCIDaR, and our partners, including Startupbootcamp AfriTech, Villgro Africa, IMPACT Lab, CCHub, Skye Planners, and more.
i3 underscores the crucial need for ingenuity in solving age-old problems – only by ensuring the face of innovation is African will the continent be equipped to achieve health gains and weather the next crisis.
