NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

ICT use in healthcare provision in Africa is not actually mobile-first despite the number of e-health start-ups accelerating, a new report released last week shows.

This is contrary to popular assumptions that a majority of them do leverage on use of mobile gadgets to reach their target audience.

Start-ups tracked in the High Tech Health: Exploring the African E-health Startup Ecosystem Report 2017, revealed that only 44 per cent of the e-health ventures sampled are mobile-based despite popular belief in the power of the gadget to reach those in far-flung areas of the continent.

Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa are early hotspots for e-health entrepreneurs, but research shows a rise in start-ups with substantial communities of e-health innovators emerging in Uganda, Ghana, Egypt and Senegal.

Photo courtesy of DFID (UK Department for International Development).