AHIA, in partnership with AfricaBio, hosted our first Bio African Innovator Webinars on January 21st.

For the first session, we focused on early-stage entrepreneurs who have a novel idea to improve healthcare. Angela Udongwo (MPH), AHIA Project Coordinator, facilitated this first session. Professor and AHIA Board Member, Charles Goetz, led an interactive discussion around working through the different stages of entrepreneurism: idea stage, pre-launch, and launch stage. Charlie discussed the importance of asking the right questions in order to home in on the right solution. He was joined by two incredible scientists-entrepreneurs, Maureen Etuket (Uganda) and Yaw Bediako (Ghana) who shared their own stories of innovation in medical devices and cancer research.

Maureen is a co-founder of MedTech LTD, a company with the vision of leading the indigenous production of medical devices that solve maternal and child health challenges in Sub-Saharan Africa. She discussed her journey in the pre-launch phase, sharing with the audience advice on how to ask the right questions and be persistent in your pursuits. Yaw is the leader of Yemaachi, a biotechnology company focused on redefining how cancer is diagnosed and treated in Africa. He discussed his recent experience in the launch stage and shared his vision for African-centric cancer research. Both innovators shared with an audience a call for entrepreneurs to develop African solutions for African problems.

“Our vision is a healthy Africa with affordable state of the art healthcare supported by a self-sustaining biomedical ecosystem.”

- Yaw Bediako

This was the first session in the 2021 AHIA Innovator series which was created to provide guidance in the biomedical landscape around Africa for African biomedical innovators. For more details of the full series visit the Bio Africa Innovator Resource Hub.

Thank you Durban University of Technology for the write-up of the webinar! To read their article, click HERE.

Speakers:

Charlie Goetz is a Professor of Entrepreneurship at Goizueta Business School
Maureen Etuket is Co-Founder of MedTech LTD and Chief Engineering Officer for Kyaninga Mobility Ltd
Yaw Bediako is Chief Executive Officer of Yemaachi Biotechnology

Are you interested in collaborating on future webinars? Please reach out to ahia@emory.edu.