Background
Nigeria is emerging as a key player in Africa’s rapidly evolving health technology landscape. However, many innovations are developed without input from frontline healthcare professionals, leading to solutions that often lack clinical relevance. Despite having over 90 medical institutions, structured exposure to digital health and entrepreneurship remains largely absent from medical education in Nigeria. This disconnect highlights the urgent need for intentional educational interventions that empower future health professionals to design and deploy the technologies they will one day use.

The Intervention
 Between 2023 and 2025, we established Nigeria’s first cross-institutional, student-led health technology incubator. This initiative engaged 1,502 students from 42 medical schools across disciplines including Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy, and other allied health sciences.
Through a dynamic mix of hands-on training, design sprints, internships with active startups, founder-led workshops, venture capital mentorship, and structured post-hackathon support (including phased funding and implementation guidance), we built a robust pipeline for student-driven health innovation.

Measured Impact
 At inception, 46% of participants had initial healthtech ideas; however, only 39% progressed to the design stage. The most cited barriers were lack of funding, limited technical expertise, and insufficient mentorship.
 Following the incubator experience:
Over 70% of students reported increased knowledge and confidence in healthtech product development.
90% of interns felt equipped to apply digital health concepts in real-world contexts.
60% of 27 interns secured full-time roles in leading healthtech startups.
Alumni transitioned into mentorship roles, reinforcing a circular pipeline of innovation and leadership.


Projections (2025–2028)
 With continued support and institutional partnerships, our next phase aims to:
Double our reach to 3,000 students across 75+ institutions, including public health and allied health departments.
Launch 20 student-led startups with validated MVPs and early adopters by 2028.
Secure over $1.5M in seed and catalytic funding through VC and government-backed innovation programs.
Facilitate 300+ paid internships with Africa’s top healthtech companies.
Develop and institutionalize a national curriculum module on Health Innovation & Digital Health within existing medical education.
Establish a physical innovation lab to support gap-year students and early-stage prototypes
