Investing in Impact

In this episode, we welcome Dr. Beatrice Murage , a medical doctor, innovator and health equity leader, as well as a Villgro Africa board member, to discuss the investor perspective of women-led innovations. We speak about the male dominated nature of the investment field and the goal of having more gender balance – of both investors and investees. You can learn more about Villgro Africa at www.vi...

For this episode, we are joined by Sylvia Mukasa , an award-winning entrepreneur and tech consultant who has dedicated her career to increasing equity in science and technology. She and Franciscah Nzanga discuss the many challenges facing young girls who are interested in subjects within science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) and the ways we can work toward overcoming these challe...

For our third episode of Investments for Impact, Franciscah Nzanga hosts Ndeye Thiaw and Caroline Muchiri, two leaders in the African innovation space to discuss the things female founders need to succeed and how others can support them. Ndeye is a managing partner at Brightmore Capital and an expert in impact investing. Caroline is an intellectual property expert, practitioner and researcher curr...

On this episode of Investments for Impact, Franciscah Nzanga hosts Sylvia Nyaga and Judith Oketch , who are both founders of health startups. Sylvia is the founder and CEO of Syna Consultancy , which provides access to clean water, basic toilets, and good hygienic practices, especially for those with disabilities, which is shown to lead to better health and socio-economic development. Judith Oketc...

Over the past few years, Villgro Africa has made a conscious choice to prioritize creating gender balance within the team. Host and Villgro Africa COO Franciscah Nzanga welcomes Co-Founder and CEO Wilfred Njagi and CTO Wambui Nyabero Gachiengo as panelists to discuss why Villgro has pursued a more gender balanced team, why this issue is important in the innovation space more generally, the importa...

Thank you for listening to Villgro Africa. Today, we hosted Wambui Gachiengo, an innovation leader in the medical device industry with experience in both North America and East Africa and Dr. Robert Karanja, a renowned medical researcher with over 15 years of experience and the Chief Innovations Officer & Co-founder of Villgro Africa. The show was hosted by Wilfred Njagi, CEO & Co-founder...

This is the first episode of a three-part series on Medical Device Regulation: Navigating the FDA/CE mark regulatory process.  In this episode, we host Sona Shah, Founder & CEO of Neopenda. Neopenda is a medical device company focused on designing and implementing use base technologies for emerging markets. Their remote vital signs monitor reduces the burden of clinicians and helps them m...

This is the second episode of a three-part series on Fundraising: Demystifying the local vs expat founder funding gap. In the previous episode we learnt that one of the proof points investors are looking for is a strong team armed with passion and diverse skill sets. In this episode we host James Copple, Founder of Strategic Applications International (SAI) also known as Servant Forge and Chrispin...

Part I - Investment Readiness Over the past few months, there has been increased discussion around the funding gap between expat and locally founded companies. To explore this further, this is the first episode of a three-part series on fundraising with a specific focus on demystifying this gap. In this episode, we talk about what makes expat founders more investment ready and how local founders c...

Key Takeaways: Med-tech innovations are picking up the pace in East Africa in a bid to provide homegrown solutions to healthcare challenges. Being a nascent field there are fewer mentors who have gone before them within the ecosystem to help them scale their innovations. There is a need for more mentors to help guide these innovators to not only develop impactful innovations but also thrive as ent...