Nigerian startup Medintech Africa is a cross-institutional health technology incubator and talent pipeline designed to embed healthcare students directly into Africa’s digital health ecosystem.
“Africa’s health-tech sector is growing rapidly, but most solutions are still built with limited involvement from frontline healthcare professionals. This disconnect often results in products that struggle with real-world clinical adoption,” Medintech founder Dr Isaac Ekundayo told Disrupt Africa.
Medintech addresses this gap by training and placing healthcare students across medicine, nursing, pharmacy, and allied health disciplines directly into health-tech startups, where they contribute to live product, data, and operational work.
Since 2023, the startup has enrolled more than 10,000 healthcare students across more than 10 African countries.
“Our model combines experiential digital health training, venture capital–led mentorship and founder access, structured internships with African health-tech startups, ecosystem research and open datasets to reduce information asymmetry, and partnerships with medical student associations,” said Ekundayo.
“Rather than positioning students as observers, we treat them as contributors, building a continuous pipeline of clinician-innovators for the continent.”
The idea for Medintech emerged while Ekundayo and co-founder Dr Faridat Musa were medical students, following firsthand exposure to how traditional medical education remained largely disconnected from the realities of health technology development and startup execution.
The core gap the startup fills, Ekundayo says, is structural.
“Health-tech startups across Africa struggle to access clinicians who understand both healthcare delivery and startup execution. At the same time, healthcare students are trained almost exclusively for clinical careers, with minimal exposure to product development, venture building, or innovation workflows,” he said.
Medintech Africa fills this gap by acting as ecosystem infrastructure, not just a training or innovation club.
“Unlike accelerators or hackathons that end at demo day, we provide long-term mentorship beyond events, real startup placements, and phased support that reduces post-hackathon project failure by 90 per cent,” Ekundayo said.
“Our differentiation lies in combining clinical depth, startup immersion, and venture exposure in a single pipeline.”
To date, Medintech Africa has raised around US$3,500 in non-dilutive funding, primarily to pilot programmes, run internships, and support ecosystem research. Ekundayo says uptake has been strong and largely organic.
“Through collaborations with medical student associations, in-person outreach at academic events, and featuring venture-backed founders as mentors, programme participation increased by 85 per cent over successive cohorts,” he said.
“Post-programme assessments showed a 70 per cent increase in digital health knowledge, high satisfaction across internship cohorts, and growing inbound demand from startups seeking clinically literate talent.”
Importantly, impact extends beyond immediate startup outcomes.
“Even where early ventures paused, alumni have gone on to join highly selective pan-African programmes and accelerators. One Medintech-supported founder whose startup paused in 2024 has since been admitted into the MEST AI Startup Programme in Accra, where they will spend a year building alongside leading African founders with global mentorship,” said Ekundayo.
“This reinforces our view that Medintech’s value is not just in company formation, but in producing durable founder and operator talent for the ecosystem.”
Nigeria remains the company’s primary operating market, accounting for most student participation and startup partnerships. However, Medintech Africa is increasingly pan-African. 01
“We are actively expanding partnerships into Rwanda, Kenya, and South Africa, with plans to scale internship cohorts from 25 to 50 students, expand curriculum into AI in healthcare and product scalability, and formalise partnerships with startups, investors, and innovation hubs across multiple African regions,” said Ekundayo.
Medintech Africa is early-stage, operates as a social enterprise, and is currently revenue-light.
Emerging revenue streams include programme sponsorships and institutional partnerships, talent placement and internship coordination fees from startups, and research, ecosystem mapping, and advisory engagements.
“At this stage, we prioritise proof of model, talent outcomes, and ecosystem value over short-term profitability,” Ekundayo said.
