Investing in Innovation (i3) 2025 for African Healthtech Startups (Up to $225,000 Grant)

Reach us on

Applications are open for Investing in Innovation (i3) 2025. Investing in Innovation (i3) is a pan-African commercialization support program that aims to help scale fifteen (15) African healthtech startups who are working to advance healthcare access and delivery in Africa.

Sponsored by the Gates Foundation, MSD, Cencora, Chemonics, Endless Foundation, HELP Logistics, and Sanofi, i3 provides startups with up to $225K in risk-tolerant funding and connects them to leading healthcare organizations (donors, industry, global health institutions and governments) to scale their impact and produce measurable advances in access.

Investing in Innovation (i3) Benefits

Access to Markets: i3 connects healthtech start-ups with large healthcare organizations including governments, donors, and global health institutions to drive adoption of start-ups’ offerings and scale.
Risk-Tolerant Finance: i3 provides grant funding of $50K for early-stage innovators and up to $225K for growth-stage innovators, to overcome barriers to partnerships with large healthcare organizations e.g. WHO pre-qualification and regulatory compliance.
Partnership Readiness Support: i3 provides a roadmap to help innovators meet the requirements for partnering with major healthcare organizations.
Bespoke Deal Facilitation: i3 helps innovators refine their strategic positioning and increase the likelihood of successful partnerships and deals with large healthcare organizations.
Communications and Advocacy: i3 provides highly professionalized communications and advocacy, to amplify the work of African healthtech innovators in the global health landscape. Additionally, i3 works towards resolving key ecosystem barriers that impact healthtech innovation in Africa.

Eligibility Criteria

Who are They Looking For?

i3’s current work seeks to catalyze the development of early- and growth-stage ventures building data-driven access to healthcare.

They seek to focus our impact on innovations that stand to benefit Africa, therefore we target program participants whose companies are owned, led or operated by African citizens and produce products for African customers.

Below is an overview of the starting criteria. Please refer to our detailed outline for full information on this cohort.

African
- Companies must be focused on serving African markets. We preference African-led and African-owned businesses.
Tech-Enabled & Data-Driven
- Innovators must leverage technology and data to improve healthcare delivery or product distribution.
Growth-stage
- Companies with demonstrated traction and scaling potential.
Impacting Patient Access
- Quality
- Availability
- Affordability
- Accessibility
- Visibility