Opinion | Coronavirus opens door to deeper collaboration in China-Africa healthtech
- Healthtech raised less than 10 per cent of the total amount of venture capital money in Africa in 2019, according to Partech
- Health care is one of the continent’s fastest growing industries, with great demand for private sector growth to fill public sector deficiencies
Covid-19 has brought out the good, the bad, and the ugly in the China-Africa relationship, including rampant racism in Guangzhou against Africans falsely accused of being infected and subsequent diplomatic and civil society escalations.
However, African healthtech has great potential to grow and deepen connections in the face of the pandemic. In comparison to a number of other more capital hungry sectors such as fintech, healthtech raised less than 10 per cent of the total amount of venture capital money in Africa in 2019, according to Partech.
To date, the status quo for Chinese African health care collaboration has been relatively transactional, either within limited government deals, focusing mostly on building infrastructure like hospitals, or Chinese companies merely acting as suppliers for African importers.
While it may be difficult to simply scale up existing supplier relationships, entrepreneurs can take the opportunity of Covid to view their Chinese counterparts as collaborators, not simply as producers.
E-prescription and pharmaceutical scale-up mPharma has set an novel example for collaboration in the healthtech space.
