Investments for Impact is a Villgro Africa podcast. Season 3 is brought to you by Villgro Africa and Jaza Rift Ventures.

For our third episode, we welcome Elizabeth Laitete from Africa Grant Advisors, the perfect guest since we are discussing the grant funding stage of fundraising. We discuss the advantages of grants, some misconceptions, as well as pitfalls to avoid when applying for grant funding.

Investments for Impact is a Villgro Africa podcast. Season 3 is brought to you by Villgro Africa and Jaza Rift Ventures.

For our second episode of the season, we had the chance to host Joram Mwinamo of SNDBX and tapped into his vast experience in the African startup and innovation ecosystem. We discussed whether or not African startups utilise family and friends fundraising and why we hear less about it in the African context than in the US and Europe. We also talk through practical strategies for seeking out this type of funding and managing the unique risks that it entails.

We are excited to invite you back for our third season, in which we will focus on the topic of fundraising, including the overall fundraising landscape in Africa, as well as a deep dive into each stage that a young company raising capital goes through (from family and friends all the way to venture capital). 

In this first episode, we are setting the scene for you. Our host, Moses Waweru, was joined by Villgro Africa CEO, Wilfred Njagi, and Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Jaza Rift Ventures, Sewu-Steve Tawia. They discuss what things look like right now for startups and emerging businesses attempting to raise the capital they need for growth and eventually and scaling. We ask what the role of incubators like Villgro Africa and investors like Jaza Rift Ventures are and explore how these two types of organisations can collaborate. We also learn more about some of the challenges faced by African entrepreneurs and how these can be addressed.

We hope you’ll enjoy our discussion! Karibu! 

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.villgroafrica.org.

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 challenges. For more information on some of the organizations and initiatives referenced in this episode, see below:

For more information about Villgro Africa, please visit our website at www.villgroafrica.org.

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 currently working at the Centre for Law, Technology and Society at the University of Ottawa. As women who have succeeded in male-dominated environments, our guests had many helpful perspectives on what women should expect as well as ideas on how things can be improved in the future.

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 Oketch is the founder and CEO of Ambulex Solutions, which is increasing the accessibility and effectiveness of emergency health services.

In this episode, the panelists and host discuss the ups and downs of being a female entrepreneur. If you or anyone you know has experienced  exploitation similiar to what is described in this conversation, we encourage you to reach out to people you trust for support and encouragement. We all need to work together to eliminate such practices!

Subscribe, rate and review our podcast to make sure as many people are reached as possible. 

www.villgroafrica.org

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 importance of mentorship, and the necessity of self-reflection when it comes to our own biases.

Learn more about Villgro Africa at www.villgroafrica.org. Thank you again to our hosts, Pete’s Coffee, for allowing us to use the space and enjoy what you have to offer. For information on their locations and menu, visit their website at http://www.petescoffee.co.ke.

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 Villgro Africa and Dr. Arun Venkatesan, CEO & Co-founder Villgro USA. This podcast is produced by Villgro Africa.

What are some of the steps you need to go through from prototyping a medical device innovation to commercialization?

Wambui: 

- Always start with the user and keep the end user front and central in the entire process. 

- Observe and have lots of conversations with people who would be using the device. Once you understand that space then you need to do a lot of homework on the clinical and technology space as well as understanding competitive devices. 

- Once you do the development you have to go through the regulatory process and you have to do a lot of testing. That includes user feedback so that you iterate until you get to a device that the market wants and that can be approved from a regulatory stand point and that can also be commercially successful.

Can these steps can be packaged in a replicable & transferrable manner compared to what you have seen in the West and what you have seen in East Africa? 

Wambui: Absolutely. I know there are people who say things like invention and innovation are things that cannot be taught but I believe that if you have these tools and you understand them well you can implement them in any environment. If you have teams of people who really understand their subject matter expertise you can use these tools and teach them and guide people to keep the end users in mind and continue the innovation process. It may be the case that we may have to tweak some of the process and structures a bit to fit the environment we may need to work on building enabling environment like having access to rapid prototyping and the end ISO Certified manufacturing facilities but I believe we are already moving and will be able to adjust as we move forward.

What are the areas where Villgro Africa adds most value?

Robert

- The value we add is funding it is usually very small funding but it helps innovators to get a stamps of approval, some recognition and validation to potential funders or investors that typically would want to sit on the fence until they see that the venture is more of a sure thing.

- Being able to provide a learning by doing type of mechanism that allows an innovator or young startup to actually go through those five steps unlike learning in theory, working with the benefit of the experience within the Villgro Africa team. This helps de-risk the commercialization process in a very significant way.

- We are also an honest broker. Regulators may not want to have a direct line of communication to the people they are regulating but it is possible for them to have discussions with enablers like us. That way we are able to have the feedback loop between the regulators and those who are being regulated. This is important especially for us in the ecosystem because our regulators are also learning how to regulate home grown innovations.

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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 monitor more patients efficiently while reducing the risks of infection.

Sona Shah gives us insights into how they navigated the regulatory process for their medical devices in the USA and East Africa, the challenges they faced, and how MedTech devices can go about getting regulatory approvals for their products. 

"By no means should you compromise safety qualities because you are developing products for a different market...investing the time and money into developing a robust process early on is something that is required for all medical device companies." ~ Sona Shah

Should companies prioritize Regulatory Approvals and at what stage?

- Quality is essential - setting up a robust quality management system early on will give you an understanding of how to approach document controls and revision history. Investing in it early on and understanding the standards you will have to adhere to from a regulatory perspective is also important.

- Getting feedback from your users during your iterations and understanding how to document that is key during the early stage. You may want to go through the regulatory approvals once you have a more defined product.

How can companies minimize expenses while maximizing regulatory outcomes?

- Consultants - Regulatory consultants are essential because they understand the nuances of the documentation of the regulatory process. It is important to establish the QMS with them and once you have that set up you follow the laid down process. As you are starting to finalize your product I would recommend bringing on a consultant as it will save you the time and money you may have o spend redoing your product.

-Even if you are applying for local regulation I would recommend you understand the FDA/CE Mark process well because it can be a lot of work to go from local registration to stringent authorities like FDA/CE Mark. Design for submission to FDA/CE Mark during your process as this is typically sufficient for local registration.