AUDA-NEPAD’s Home Grown Solutions Accelerator for Pandemic Resilience (Africa)

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If you represent an African health business with strong ambitions to expand your impact locally or across the continent. The African Union Development Agency-NEPAD is inviting applications for the 4th cohort of its Home Grown Solutions (HGS) Accelerator for Pandemic Resilience.

The Home Grown Solutions (HGS) Accelerator for Pandemic Resilience is an initiative that aims to accelerate the growth of African healthcare companies to strengthen the continent’s pandemic resilience, in line with the African Union’s Energize Africa Initiative and Agenda 2063 aspirations. This is achieved through offering hands-on and tailored support to early-, growth- and mature stage healthcare businesses. The African Union Development Agency (AUDA-NEPAD) founded the Accelerator initiative in partnership with the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), the official development assistance agency of the Government of Japan.

Following the pilot in 2021 supporting 5 East African HGS, the initiative was successfully expanded across Africa in 2022, where it assisted its second cohort of 14 HGS, followed by the 3rd round in 2023 supporting 9 HGS. Across the years, these consisted of DrugStoc, MdaaS Global, Revital, Rology, Sinapi and Zuri Health, among others, assisted by a supporting network that includes the likes of World Food Programme, Africa CDC, GIZ, Rwandan Development Board, CSIR, AAIC, Ecobank Foundation, Aga Khan Foundation, World Health Organization, UNIDO, Afreximbank and others.

This update marks the opening of the Pan-African call for 2024 applications for our fourth cohort. If you represent an African health business with strong ambitions to expand your impact locally or across the continent, we urge you to apply to receive our support over the course of 2024 and, together, help strengthen Africa’s health systems.

AUDA-NEPAD’s Home Grown Solutions Accelerator Benefits

They will work shoulder-to-shoulder with your team to design and deliver a customized, four-month acceleration roadmap in 2024, to support your company’s specific growth needs across three key areas:

Context specific advisory: They have a team of world class consultants to diagnose your business needs and deliver tailor-made business advisory services.
Investment readiness support: They help you be better prepared for fund raising including business model validation, pitch preparation and linking you to capital needed to scale.
Matching to strategic partners: They will leverage the network and introduce you to leading organizations to grow your business through partnership.

Eligibility Criteria

We have 3 application criteria you will have to meet to be considered for our fourth cohort:

You are a growth or mature stage company, meaning you must …
- Be registered as a for-profit entity
- Demonstrate clear market traction and sizable customer base
- Express ambition and potential to scale beyond your current size
You strengthen Africa’s health system, for example …
- You manufacture medical consumables or devices on the continent
- You provide healthcare services to patients, be it diagnostic, treatment or otherwise
- You provide technology solutions to strengthen health access or delivery
You can be described as a Home Grown Solution, meaning you must …
- Operate mainly or solely in Africa (preference for companies operating across countries)
- Employ mostly local staff in the markets in which you are active
- Have strong African representation in your leadership