London — Once upon a time every last NGO was creating pilot health apps in Sub-Saharan Africa. But those that have gained some deeper understanding are now getting into their stride. On a recent visit to Washington DC, Russell Southwood spoke to Ben Bellows, Chief Business Officer, Nivi about how it's vision and operations have expanded.
Bellows says the idea for Nivi "grew out of a dissatisfaction with 'business as usual and the way the development sector was and continues to do 'm-health'." He landed in Kenya to work for the Population Council in the same week that the Seacom cable was connected: "The quality of the connection began to improve and prices started to come down and iHub was created in 2010. The health sector was keen to try something digital and I was swept into it."
He won a Saving Lives at Birth challenge and set up an IVR solution to classify symptoms and triage them. He ran a simple test on IVR using 80 women and a nurse at a clinic: "It performed quite well and we found that those with mental health symptoms were more likely to say so on the phone." So he thought: "All we needed to do was let people know. It would be grant-driven. If we build it, someone will take it up."
His first attempt to connect with that someone ended in failure. He approached a big NGO about using an app to help women access contraception but "couldn't quite land the grant." But life threw up another opportunity. He met Sid Goyal, a software engineer with an investment fund: "We had lunch at Java House and we spoke about his interest in solving things for consumers with limited means. From that, we talked about using health to develop a business that would drive change."
That company - Nivi - started in 2016 with Sid Goyal as the CEO and raised philanthropic capital the next year: "The idea was to optimize engagement and expand reach for those doing things in health." Version one was a simple family planning screening tool that would ask some questions and then recommend a maternal care provider. For the more curious user with more questions, it added an SMS helpline on the side.
"We soon found lots of engagement around a wider range of health concerns and it turned into a conversation with users around a range of things including sexual topics, HIV and maternal health." But alongside these related topics the users were also asking about things like tuberculosis, pneumonia and malaria. The app was able to give answers on how to act and to deepen awareness.
"We started in Kenya and reached tens of thousands of consumers in the first 12 months. Kenya was uniquely blessed with a dataset of where health facilities were so we could point users at the ones most relevant and closest to them. However, there was no revenue stream."
The transition to scale happened when it launched in India: it went from zero to 800,000 users in a couple of months. Each one had a unique social media account and Nivi was able to reach out to them with questions. With volume, Nivi was able to sign a contract PSI/IPL India Private Ltd during Covid-19. It now has 20 such contracts and operates in Nigeria, Kenya and India.
The next step was that some of these NGO contracts involved establishing relationships with providers, including pharmacies. There was no master list of pharmacies in either Kenya or Nigeria. But one organization had mapped the proprietary medicine providers and it was able to use this list to make referrals to facilities near to users.
"Geo-referenced providers were critical. It opened up relationships with providers at scale. For example, there were 1,000 drug shops in Nigeria. It opened up a way to provide value to them for physical and online ordering for users and a hotline for bookings." These providers were clustered in different parts of Nigeria so where they did not have coverage, it could encourage facilities to be put on the list.
"Now you can have almost a listing fee with these providers. They can get repeat business and you're giving them a digital experience to deliver business direct to their shop. There is a list of options recommended and the consumer is better informed. They can ask with more confidence about products."
This gave them two potential revenue streams (from grant contracts and the pharmacies) and a third developing revenue stream: "We are now able to get insights from our own data on different therapeutic areas. For example, working with MSD we're able to generate insights around HPV (Human papillomavirus) awareness and links to cervical cancer." For the drug companies, it helps them understand the nature of the market and be used to adjust how they address it by understanding the needs and motivations of consumers."
So if it all works out, how will things look in three years time?: "I'd like to see an ecosystem with partners who know what they want. We're educating NGOs and those who fund about things like user acquisition. Are you driving efficiencies and improving impact? Have you looked at the segmentation of these costs? What are the costs and benefits of using social media accounts? Funders are NGOs are just beginning to understand that the answers to these questions are important."
"I'd like to see more commercial opportunities and more offline pharmacies bought online and in so doing deepen the supply chain. It makes our job easier and we can tie up with organisations like mPharma or a chain like Good Life. Out of all this, we've made a commitment to publish papers and contribute in the scientific space."
In Brief section is at the bottom of the events listing below.
Africa 2.0 Book launch events - Cape Town and Johannesburg (In person)
CAPE TOWN (IN PERSON): Keynote Panel: Looking Back, Going Forward: How Africa's Tech History Contains the Roots of its' Future, Africa Tech Festival
From the first mobile roll-out in Africa to the present day, Africa's communications revolution has taken 36 years and, arguably, this is just the end of the beginning. The author of Africa 2.0 - Inside a Continent's Communications Revolution, Russell Southwood will moderate a session with industry veterans who played key roles in this historic journey to tease out what it can tell us about what will happen over the next ten years. Panelists are: Andile Ngcaba, Founding Partner and Chairman, Convergence Partners, Nic Rudnick, CEO, Liquid Intelligent Technologies; Funke Opeke, CEO, Main One and Nika Naghavi, Executive Director - MNOs, MFS Africa
- Mobile data & infrastructure: how roll-out barriers were negotiated and what work remains
- Mobile money the transformer: how these services came to be born and the future of this 'magic sauce'
- Digital life: how Africans have taken to using the internet and why the best is yet to come
- Innovation & start-ups: what lit the fuse for African start-ups and how they will change how business is done in Africa?
Africa Tech Festival Headline Keynote, Tuesday, 8 November 2022 09:40 - 10:25CAT (Central Africa Time, GMT+2), Convention Centre, Cape Town Entrance to this event is free.
CAPE TOWN (IN PERSON): Africa 2.0 - Inside a Continent's Communications Revolution - The author Russell Southwood in conversation with Alison Gillwald, Executive Director, Research ICT Africa
Liberalization lit the fuse for the communications revolution that has happened over the last three decades. Privatization has proved far more problematic and has sometimes led to the very problems it was meant to solve. Russell and Alison will also discuss whether the consolidation of Africa's mobile operators is lowering the competition levels liberalization was designed to create, the tendency towards de facto monopolies in areas like mobile money and social media and the policy implications of the barriers to further liberalization and privatization across the continent.
Although the digital divide has been reduced over the last three decades, it is very clear that there is an unfinished agenda. The speakers will debate what still needs to be done and how it might be achieved.
Time: Tuesday 8 November 2022, 18.00-19.00 Drinks and snacks afterwards Place: Workshop 17, 17 Dock Road, V & A Waterfront RSVP NOW: Melanie George info@researchictafrica.net
Johannesburg (In person and online): How Mobile Phones Have Changed Africa - An Unfinished Revolution 35 Years in the Making
Luci Abrahams, Director of the Wits Centre, will have a lively, in-person conversation and debate with Russell Southwood, long-time African telecoms and internet analyst and author a just-published book Africa 2.0 - Inside a Continent's Communications Revolution.
Southwood's book is an ambitious 35-year, "first draft" history of the largest technological change the continent has ever seen. It looks at both the economic and social impacts that have occurred, and goes beyond the hype to show what happened, what has not changed, and what will help guide future efforts.
Topics covered will include:
How have mobile phones changed African economies and societies? - Where are the new opportunities we can leverage?
Who are the innovators and initiators?
What will Africa 3.0 look like and what is needed to get there?
Time: Friday 11 November 2022, 16.30-18.00 Drinks and snacks afterwards Place: Classroom 7, Wits Business School, 2 St Davids Place (at St Andrews Rd.), Parktown, Johannesburg Online: Microsoft Teams meeting: Click here to join the meeting; Meeting ID: 352 280 713 048; Passcode: 3QJnzV RSVP NOW Registration link to attend either in-person or online: https://bit.ly/11Nov22EventReg
Any questions? Please contact the LINK Centre's Nokhanyo Yolwa: thelma.yolwa@wits.ac.za, +27-71-939-8867
In brief
Nigeria: The European Investment Bank (EIB) has agreed to EUR100 million (USD100.2 million) financing with MTN Nigeria to support the telecoms company's network expansion programme. The investment will enable the acceleration of 4G coverage in Nigeria and expand broadband access in line with MTN's 'Ambition 2025' strategy.
Kenya: Kenyan ISP Mawingu has revamped its branding as it prepares to close a new investment round and expand its business to additional areas of the country. Since its establishment in Nanyuki in 2012, the firm has connected more than 7,000 homes and businesses, and over 300,000 hotspot users across 16 counties. Mawingu has now unveiled a new website and logo and says it is aiming to increase coverage to an additional 25 counties.
Ghana: Ghana has been recognized as the only country in Africa to achieve a claimed 100% access to financial inclusion on the continent. The honour was contained in this year's State of Inclusive Instant Payment in Africa Report put together by AfricaNenda and launched at the ongoing Mobile World Congress Africa 2022 in Kigali, Rwanda. This feat was achieved through the successful implementation of the Mobile Money Interoperability (MMI) system, which integrates all payments platforms across banks, fintechs and telcos, allowing every Ghanaian to make and receive instant payments.
South Africa: Since its founding in 2021, PadHer, an organization that seeks to eradicate period poverty in Africa, has impacted over 2,000 young African schoolgirls. It was recently named one of the "most impactful and scalable innovations in education" by HundrED.org, an organization that seeks and shares inspiring innovations in K12 education.
Benin: State-backed Beninese Digital Infrastructure Company (Societe Beninoise d'Infrastructures Numeriques [SBIN]) has commercially launched mobile network services under its new Celtiis brand as the country's third cellco, competing with private sector operators MTN Benin and Moov Africa Benin. Managed by Senegal's Sonatel (part of Orange Group), SBIN's Celtiis claims 80% national population coverage with its mobile network from launch, while the company has simultaneously introduced Celtiis-branded fibre broadband services - with three consumer fibre packages initially advertised on its website - plus mobile money service 'Celtiis Cash'.
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Kenya: Kenyan telecoms company Safaricom has launched its 5G home broadband service on a commercial basis, having piloted the fixed wireless access (FWA) network since March 2021. Three home 5G tariffs are advertised, offering speeds of 10Mbps and a monthly data allowance of 300GB for KES3,499 (USD28.7) per month, 40Mbps and 500GB of data for KES5,999 and 100Mbps speeds and an allowance of 1TB for KES14,900 a month. At present, the 5G network has coverage of parts of Nairobi, Kisumu, Kisii, Kakamega, Kiambu, Thika, Machakos, Kajiado and Mombasa. Safaricom selected Nokia's 5G Single RAN technology and 5G FastMile gateways to enable the FWA service, which is an alternative to the firm's fibre-optic offering, targeting customers in places where the firm is yet to roll out its fibre network.
Vertiv, a global provider of critical digital infrastructure and continuity solutions, announced today the opening of its new office and Customer Experience Center in Nairobi. With an increasing demand for high efficiency critical infrastructure in East Africa, this center supports Vertiv's efforts in offering digital infrastructure solutions to local customers.
New research from Vodafone Group, Vodacom Group (https://www.Vodacom.com/), Safaricom, and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) indicates that the successful deployment and adoption of mobile financial services is associated with a positive impact on GDP growth in developing markets as it helps businesses to reduce cost, access credit to invest, and to connect with consumers that were previously excluded from financial services. The econometric modelling research - which examined 49 countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America - found that countries with successful mobile money services had an annual GDP per capita growth rate up to 1 percentage point higher than countries where mobile money platforms had not been successful or not introduced. Anyone remember the report that said how broadband increased GDP?
Mastercard and Cellulant have partnered to allow millions of Cellulant customers across Africa to shop and pay online with global merchants wherever Mastercard is accepted. The Mastercard virtual payment solution, linked to Cellulant's payment gateway - Tingg, can unlock a host of opportunities for consumers, whether they have a bank account or not. Consumers will be able to shop from well-known global digital commerce brands, paying quickly and securely for leisure shopping, travel, accommodation, entertainment, streaming services and more, while in their home countries or travelling abroad.
