Africa-wide
Program
Entrepreneurship
Details
Digital Square is pleased to announce its first call for digital entrepreneurs based in Africa interested in working in the health sector. This call seeks to connect local solutions to financial assistance, technical resources, and opportunities to scale for innovative entrepreneurs. With initial funding from the Bayer Foundation and USAID, the Digital Health Ecosystem project (DHE) will support the sustainability and expansion of digital tools for health by changing how they are built, deployed, and scaled. This opportunity will provide a platform to foster a global network of independent teams collectively building on a common open-source platform. By doing so, developers will have a proven, economically viable digital foundation for their applications.
The call for Expression of Interest (EOI) is open to innovative African start-ups, small and medium-sized businesses, for-profit and non-profit organizations, and individual social entrepreneurs. Applicants should be interested in applying and expanding their software, content, and/or services to the health sector.
Criteria
They invite EOIs from African organizations, businesses, and entrepreneurs with the following profiles:
- Demonstrated ability to support the implementation of software tools and products
- An interest in engaging in the digital health space of a country and willingness to work with local governments, private sector health providers and health insurance schemes
- Willingness to engage populations at scale; including populations that cannot directly purchase from vendors, but may be government beneficiaries
- Team includes members with software expertise
- Registered as a formal organization or business in the WHO SSA Region, with sufficient accounting mechanisms to track revenue and expenditures
Benefits
Successful applicants will have the opportunity to:
- Become part of a continent-wide list that will be shared with donors, investors, and implementing partners globally
- Be alerted to 3rd party funding opportunities
- Pending the availability of resources, Digital Square will offer an organizational capacity self-assessment tool that supports organizations in becoming direct recipients of international funding sources
Additionally, a subset of respondents will be invited to participate in a DHE-funded request for application. Successful applicants in the request for application round will:
- Have access to financial capital required to develop, deploy and implement scalable digital health products. This financial support will initially be through a grants program and later through a partnership with existing donor programs and government co-investment
- Gain visibility into existing developer communities that exist for co-learning and collaboration
- Know what open source health tools exist and what is available for adaptation and could save time and resources in local development
- Have support in adapting open source solutions—even and especially from digital public goods
- Gain increased visibility in the global health development sector
- Grow stronger in their business and operational capabilities and sustainability, as well as their technical ones
About USAID
USAID is the lead U.S. Government agency that works to end extreme global poverty and enable resilient, democratic societies to realize their potential. U.S. foreign assistance has always had the twofold purpose of furthering America's interests while improving lives in the developing world. USAID carries out U.S. foreign policy by promoting broad-scale human progress at the same time it expands stable, free societies, creates markets and trade partners for the United States, and fosters good will abroad.