Davos Dispatch: Financing tech solutions in Africa

There are a growing number of social entrepreneurs using technology to address a range of development challenges in Africa, from agriculture healthcare to education. But many of them say that financing is the greatest barrier to scale.

At the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2024, Devex’s Raj Kumar sat down with three social entrepreneurs: Temie Giwa-Tubosun, CEO of LifeBank, a healthcare technology and logistics company delivering critical medical supplies, Gerald Abila, founder of BarefootLaw, a non-profit in Uganda providing access to justice through technology, and Mayur Patel, chief commercial officer at M-Kopa, an asset financing platform in Africa.

Their conversations point to several ways social entrepreneurs are using technology to address social challenges, as well as the crucial role financing must play in scaling their impact.
"The big barriers for growth are not demand,” Patel said. “They're not the scalability of the platform, or the opportunity. The big barriers to growth are figuring out how you solve the working capital cycle.”

Listen to the episode to hear more from Giwa-Tubosun, Abila, and Patel, who joined Kumar for the Davos Dispatch podcast, recorded from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.