The Africa Health Ventures Podcast

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 into community health systems. In this conversation, Erica shares how she found her way into the field of digital health, for reasons that had nothing to do with technology. She recounts how she was scared,...

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 "DHIMS2" as it is branded in Ghana).  Dominic was a key actor in the decision by Ghana Health Services (GHS) to adopt DHIS2. In this walk through history, Dominic retells how he first learned about the system, ho...

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 what Rahul learned and how his investment strategy evolved in the 7 years he spent with the Gates Foundation.  We discuss Rahul's ground-breaking work to tackle tuberculosis (TB) in India, the country with...

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 language, one of the most popular programming languages in the world. Marlene was also chair of the first ever pan-African PyCon (Python Conference). She co-founded ZimboPy, a non-profit that empowers young women...

Sebastian Manhart has recently concluded his role as COO of Simprints . Simprints is the world's only nonprofit biometrics company focused on the last mile. He now works as an Advisor on Digital Identity for the German Federal Chancellery, the World Bank, and ID2020. In this conversation, Sebastian reflects on the eventful six years that he spent at Simprints. It began as a bunch of scrappy young...

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 runs both the South African national COVID-19 hotline as well as the World Health Organization COVID-19 hotline, making it the most popular WhatsApp service in the globe.   This is the story of the man behin...

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, homecoming, foreign aid, entrepeneurialism, and structural inequity.   Ismaila is a member of Dimagi's global executive management team. He leads our team in West Africa, runs a major global consulting practice,...

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 largest global health firms, with thousands of staff and dozens of offices around the world, and the Center for Digital Health played a key role in enabling and facilitating technology use across its progra...

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 on the Principles, and Aid, Evolved.    In this unscripted side chat, the hosts of these three podcasts gather together to figure out, "Are we all just doing the same thing?". Claudine Lim of the Pulse on th...

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 worldwide, supporting national scale messaging programs and reaching tens of millions of people daily.   My conversation with Nic traces his adventures moving from the start-up ecosystem in Seattle, Washington...

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 Technology for Development at Mercy Corps, and before that has worked with organizations such as the International Rescue Committee (IRC), Dimagi, and the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitar...

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 is known for its work in low-cost smart sensor design, data analytics, and data advocacy. In this conversation with Nithya, we unpack the formative experiences which led Nithya to Nexleaf. She talks about...

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 the spirit of innovation in aid. It was the Terms of Reference Podcast , which Stephen Ladek ran from 2014 to 2018. Stephen recorded almost two hundred episodes with aid workers, social entrepreneurs, and ot...

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 more than half of the countries in the world. He's described himself as a "scrappy" man who enjoys building his own websites and living out of a camper van for two years. And yet the world knows him as an...

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 geek, a maker, and a founder. We marvel at all the crazy technologies we thought might work in the 90's. We hear the surprising role music had in bringing Matt back to this continent. We unpack how Matt drew from talent in Africa for Af...

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 years later, he took the findings from his research to start a non-profit named Digital Green. Today, Digital Green is a leading organization which empowers smallholder farmers to lift themselves out of po...

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. Somehow that email ballooned into a 3-page story about how Eric’s work set off a chain reaction which changed my life forever. I go deep to share a pretty formative period of my early career, which I often describe...

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. He is professor emeritus at UC Berkeley, Google Fellow, and VP of Infrastructure. Today we speak with Eric about his efforts to harness technology research to serve the world's poorest. Eric created and ran...

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, she can speak for multiple actors in this field.   In this episode, Liz recounts how technology has helped and hurt her work, as a neonatal intensive care nurse, as a clinical transformation consultant, and...

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 Africa’s Top 5 Female Innovators for her efforts to found iMedTech, a biotech startup with a focus on prosthetics.    In this episode, Nneile reveals the early support and mentorship which started her down her...

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 ThoughtWorks as the Director of Technology for the Office of Social Change Initiatives.  In this episode, Karl shares his experiences working in the donor community, from his unexpected entry into the field,...

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 Reach, Executive Director of De Novo Group, Founder of AirJaldi, Founder of the Tibetan Technology Center, and Founder of Xpert group (acquired by Zootec).    In this episode, we trace Dr. Ben-David’s life fro...

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 Pittsburgh, and most recently as the founder of the Global Health Informatics Institute (GHII) in Lilongwe, Malawi. Anyone working in digital health in Malawi has likely worked with Gerry, or with an organizat...

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 collection tools used in the aid sector, and forms the foundation for a rich global community of users active in every country on the planet. In this episode, Yaw shares the story of ODK's humble beginnings as a...

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 health services.    In this episode, we hear about the risks, perseverance and creativity with which Derek pursued and ultimately landed his dream job. We trace his journey from college graduate through th...