Africa: Grooming Africa's Next Set of Unicorns - Tinubu's Big Agenda for Health Tech

Nigeria stands on the cusp of a transformative era as it positions itself to become a breeding ground for future health technology companies. With Africa's largest population, a burgeoning healthcare market, a rapidly developing digital economy, and a technology sector with growing regional influence, Nigeria has the potential to not only strengthen its healthcare system but also to commercialize its research, manufacture products for African markets, attract investment, create high-skilled employment, and retain more value within its domestic economy.

The global economy is undergoing a shift, with the convergence of health, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, data, and digital technologies giving rise to new industries, drawing investment, and reshaping how nations compete. This transformation goes beyond healthcare, influencing scientific research, pharmaceutical development, advanced manufacturing, and public services. Nations that excel in this arena are those that acknowledge scientific progress relies on robust governance as much as it does on technology.

Nigeria is at a pivotal moment, as the Nigeria Health Sector Renewal Investment Initiative (NHSRII) is bolstering the governance, productive capacity, and digital foundations of the health sector. President Bola Ahmed Tinubu's establishment of the National Health Technology and Data Analytics Office, recognizing the growing importance of health technology, artificial intelligence, and data, signifies an anticipatory statecraft approach.

This initiative provides Nigeria with an institutional platform to engage in an economic frontier that is only beginning to unfold.

Countries typically become leaders in emerging industries through foresight, establishing the necessary conditions such as infrastructure, regulation, skills, institutions, and access to capital. While governments cannot dictate which firms will succeed, they can determine whether domestic enterprise enters a new market with a position of strength or only after the standards, technologies, and value chains have been set by others.

Nigeria's experience with crude oil and telecommunications demonstrates this principle in action, where the quality of policy, governance, and investment following the initial wealth creation determined the extent of development.

Nigeria's advantages, including its vast population, substantial healthcare market, expanding digital economy, and growing technology sector, offer a strong foundation. Its youthful workforce, research institutions, and entrepreneurial culture provide the capacity for new industries to flourish. The technologies reshaping economies often originate within a specific sector before expanding beyond it.

This trajectory began with railways, progressed through electricity, and continues with telecommunications, which have all fundamentally transformed commerce, production, and finance, respectively. Health technology is following a similar path, linking healthcare with scientific research, biotechnology, advanced manufacturing, data infrastructure, and artificial intelligence.

Nigeria is poised to capitalize on this transition, converting its scale and scientific potential into valuable knowledge, companies, and intellectual property that can drive both domestic growth and international competitiveness. The reforms in primary healthcare, health insurance, human resources, regulation, digital systems, and domestic manufacturing, as well as the Presidential Initiative for Unlocking the Healthcare Value Chain, expanding domestic production, and attracting investment, all contribute to strengthening the conditions for the development, testing, financing, and widespread deployment of new technologies at scale.

Nigeria has the opportunity to not only enhance its healthcare system but also to lead the way in shaping the future of health technology on the African continent.