i3 Announces 3rd Cohort To Support 7 Startups

Investing in Innovation Africa i3 has announced its 3rd cohort of 7 growth-stage companies working to transform pharmacy services on the continent. i3 is a pan-African initiative to support African healthtech startups.

The three-year program will empower innovators to improve patient access to healthcare across Africa and scale their impact.

For this cohort, i3 has prioritised growth-stage startups with pharmacy-focused innovations, recognising their vital role in expanding sustainable healthcare access and bridging critical delivery gaps while creating jobs to spur economic growth and prosperity.

The selected startups offer powerful, tech-enabled solutions that strengthen pharmacy services across Africa, ranging from inventory management, product protection, last-mile delivery, AI-powered prescription refills, embedded financing, and cloud-based pharmacy systems. These companies are reimagining how medicines and health services reach patients, making essential care more accessible, affordable, and safer.

The selected startups are: Chefaa, Dawa Mkononi, Meditect, Pharma, myDawa, RxAll and Sproxil.

Together, they demonstrate how data-driven innovation reinforces the resilience of Africa’s health systems while driving economic growth. Operating in 19 countries across the continent, they show the power of locally grounded, scalable solutions to improve patient outcomes, create jobs, and enable more efficient, data-driven healthcare delivery at scale.

Each innovator will receive up to $225K in risk-tolerant funding, tailored customer introductions, bespoke deal facilitation, and professional communications and advocacy support. i3 aims to facilitate ~150 strategic partnerships and influence deals valued at ~$30M between innovators and major healthcare purchasers. In addition, the cohort will participate in i3’s flagship Access to Markets event in December 2025, designed to spark high-impact partnerships between innovators and large healthcare companies, governments, donors, and multilateral agencies.

In many African countries, pharmacies serve on the frontline of healthcare delivery, providing as much as 70 per cent of initial healthcare visits.

In the past two years, i3 has provided $3M in direct grant funding to 60 startups across 16 African countries. The program has also established a diverse cohort of innovators, with 43 per cent being women-led and 20 per cent Francophone-led.

Finally, successes have recorded 450 facilitated strategic connections, including 122 contracts and pilots, resulting in >$11M in contracted partnerships, expanded reach, and nearly 1,000 jobs created—half of which were held by women.

i3 is coordinated by Salient Advisory and Solina Center for International Development and Research (SCIDaR). It is sponsored by the Gates Foundation, MSD, Cencora (formerly AmerisourceBergen), Endless Foundation, HELP Logistics (a subsidiary of the Kühne Foundation), Sanofi’s Global Health Unit and Chemonics.