On this episode of Built in Africa, we'll be looking at how Nigerian rental marketplace, Rentit , helps people rent goods and cut down the cost of buying to meet really temporary needs.

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To mark the return of Built in Africa, we spotlight Tibu Health a startup looking to take away the long queues and inefficiencies that plague Kenya’s healthcare sector by coming to your doorstep with a world-class clinic on cue.

Welcome to Season 2!!! Thanks for coming back.

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In this episode of Built in Africa, we examine how Nigerian e-mobility company, Savenhart Technology Limited (Siltech), wants to foster a cleaner Africa through Electric Vehicles production.

This episode is brought to you by Whogohost WordPress Hosting. Visit builtin.africa/whogohost and use coupon code BUILTINAFRICA to get 25% off on any annual plan.

This episode is brought to you by Whogohost WordPress Hosting. Visit builtin.africa/whogohost and use coupon code BUILTINAFRICA to get 25% off on any annual plan.

This episode is brought to you by Whogohost WordPress Hosting. Visit builtin.africa/whogohost and use coupon code BUILTINAFRICA to get 25% off on any annual plan.

Narrator: I remember ten years ago when African music didn’t get as much global attention as it does now. Interestingly, now that I think of it, it wasn’t because of a lack of talent or content. So, I wonder what has changed. Well, your guess is as good as mine.

But Africa now has a growing youth population, exceptional music talents, unique genres, and streaming companies. Africa’s music industry is doing so well that global companies are eager to sign deals with artistes to get a share of their earnings.

Guess what? Streaming made up 62.3% of the $21.5 billion revenue made by the global music industry in 2020.

If you ask me, digital distribution was clearly the game-changer. And the good thing is that apart from foreign platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, Deezer, and Shazam, local streaming platforms are also contributing their quota.

On this episode of Built in Africa, we explore how indigenous music streaming platform, AfroCharts, is offering unreached African music talents the opportunity to get paid for their content.

Narrator: Burundi-born Leonard Novati, AfroCharts founder, lived his early life in Tanzanian refugee camps because of the constant civil wars in his home country. During his stay, music was one of the things he loved doing asides from other menial jobs he did to make ends meet, so he stuck with that on reaching the US in 2007 at the age of 16.

However, he needed to fuel his thirst for entrepreneurship. But what were his options: become a musician, a music producer, or a disc jockey (DJ). Eventually, Leonard chose to make a living from DJing for some reason.

Leonard Novati: When I got here where there was so much technology, I thought I could sing like most young kids, young boys and girls, I tried that, it didn’t work. And then I tried to open a recording studio, it didn’t work either. So, I’m like, well, I love music, I must share with the public. You know, somehow, I have to make people happy through music. If I cannot sing, I cannot produce, why don’t I become a DJ? From there, I started teaching myself to DJ.

Narrator: So, he founded a DJ company to make a living while in college and focused majorly on African music, which turned out to be his selling point. He often got invited to African and American events.

While he trained himself to become a DJ, he graduated with a computer science degree and later became a web developer.

In 2014, he saw a need. People listening to his Afrobeats mix asked where they could get it, and some African artistes also contacted him to add their songs to his mix. That was when he had the idea for AfroCharts. But his first attempt wasn’t a success.

Leonard Novati: While I was in college, I actually tried to create something similar but for beats. Like an online beat-selling marketplace. Whether you’re an African or not, where you can sell your beats to the world. Artistes are looking for fresh beats. That failed. That was in 2014.

Narration: After that, he started brainstorming the idea for AfroCharts in 2016.

Leonard Novati: All these streaming platforms, African listeners and artistes still feel like they’re left out. That’s when it hit me, I’m like why don’t we create our own platform? Our platform focuses on African artistes, African music listeners… I wanted to find a...

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SFX: Ambulance siren

Narrator: Access to healthcare is one of Africa’s biggest challenges. The World Health Organization’s recommended doctor to patient ratio is 1:600, but Nigeria falls short with 1:2,753 as revealed by its federal government in March 2020 at the onset of the pandemic. From this, one thing is sure: Nigeria is a far cry from having decent healthcare.

With these statistics come a string of casualties. For Ifeanyi Ossai, a Nigeria and US-based entrepreneur, his aunt died on her way to a distant hospital following a protracted allergic reaction, a death that could have been avoided if she had received medical attention sooner.

SFX: Sombre sound

This sad event would soon inspire Ifeanyi to build four functional medical clinics in Delta state, Nigeria, a place he grew up. Enter WeCare in 2017. to provide superior medical care to underserved areas to reduce or eliminate preventable deaths.

Narrator: On this episode of Built in Africa, we examine how a Nigerian-founded healthcare business, WeCare evolved into a full-blown telemedicine healthtech startup, CribMD.

Narrator: Although it was a well-thought-out idea, Ifeanyi soon discovered that many patients went home without getting the healthcare they sought; with the problem of accessibility solved, the challenge of demand surfaced.

Ifeanyi Ossai: Our physical clinics could not accommodate most of the customers we get on any given day. On any given day, we could only see about 10% of the customers that come to our doorsteps”

Narrator: That’s Ifeanyi Ossai, CEO and Chairman, WeCare and co-founder, CribMD.

In a bid to solve the demand problem, WeCare planned to open 300 clinics in sub-Saharan Africa. But in 2020, it became clear that the demand for healthcare would always exceed supply.

Ifeanyi Ossai: That is when we came to the realisation that we need to solve healthcare in Africa another way.”

Narrator: So, in WeCare’s third year of operation, Ifeanyi sourced out the best brains he could get, to help him salvage the leftovers of his passion for affordable and accessible healthcare. He found two.

In June 2020, Ifeanyi co-founded CribMD with Ngiri Michael, an experienced software engineer who serves as Chief Technology Officer (CTO); and Lorna Mae Johnson, a nurse and midwife running some medical clinics in Los Angeles, serving as Chief Financial Officer (CFO).

Narrator: So, here’s exactly how CribMD works.

Ifeanyi Ossai: Instead of you coming to our physical clinics, we can deliver the doctor to your home at your comfort and convenience So, our goal is to democratise health care by delivering quality, affordable, and accessible healthcare to you wherever you are in Africa.”

Narrator: … and how the business makes money?

Ifeanyi Ossai: CribMD makes money by charging monthly subscriptions. So, we charge you a very small amount of money so that you can access our healthcare on-demand.”

Narrator: Through the mobile app and website, users can have access to doctor home calls, telemedicine, prescription delivery, and many other features that don’t require them to visit a hospital by subscribing to CribMD’s different plans.

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Narrator: Port Harcourt, Nigeria, Saturday March 25 2017. Chukwuma Eleje, father of four, says goodbye to his family as he sets out to make deliveries for the day. Chukwuma works for one of the third-party logistics partners of eCommerce giant, Jumia. But little does he know that it’s his last goodbye.

Chukwuma ended up being murdered by 2 young men who ordered 2 iPhone 7 devices using Pay on Delivery, a popular payment option on Nigerian eCommerce platforms. After brutally snuffing the life of Mr. Eleje, the young men tied Chukwuma up and stuffed him into a septic tank.

The unfortunate incident happened at a time when Nigerians were still coming to terms with online shopping. Pay on Delivery was the preferred option, given the level of distrust and fear they feel. But the murder incident didn’t look good on the industry.

The question is if they took Pay on Delivery out of the equation in those early days, what were the chances of survival for eCommerce businesses in Nigeria?

Naturally, these platforms began to explore safer options as it became clearer that Pay on Delivery wouldn’t be sustainable in the long haul. Soon, escrow services became the perfect replacement but they were quite unpopular at the time.

Somewhere in Ghana in 2017, on the floors of the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST) accelerator programme, three Nigerians, Ehi Aigiomawu, Ibrahim Oladele, and Tomisin Adeshiyan came up with the idea for a bespoke escrow service. They named it Vesicash. Globally, the eCommerce sector is predicted to be worth $6.5 billion by 2022, and Vesicash plans to make it safe for Nigerian online businesses

Ehi Aigiomawu: We found out that buyers could not trust the sellers to deliver the right items, so they would prefer Pay on Delivery instead. And sellers, on the other hand, people who sell, are not really convinced that “oh, if I ship this item, am I really sure this person will pay me? Won’t it be an issue later on?”. So most of the time, this was leading to lots of unfulfilled orders. So how do we solve this problem? We knew that the main issue that these two people — the buy and the seller — had was trust. So they couldn’t trust each other. So we asked, “how could we build a platform to foster trust between these sets of people so that they can transact smoothly?”

Narrator: That’s Ehi Aigiomawu, Vesicash Co-founder and Chief Technical Officer.

Ehi Aigiomawu: We did a couple of research in different spaces, and we found out that the problem was not just in the eCommerce space, it was also in the freelance sector, it was also in the real estate sector, and in other sectors too. So, we narrowed down and we decided that we’re going to solve this problem, and we decided that escrow was a way for us to solve this problem, to foster trust between buyer and seller. So, we immediately registered the company called Vesicash with the sole purpose of guaranteeing payment security for digital transactions across Africa.

Narrator: So, they pitched the idea and it sounded good.

Ehi Aigiomawu: MEST liked it but then, we had to come back to Nigeria to validate the idea… MEST is in Ghana. Nigeria is a bigger market than Ghana so we had to come back to Nigeria, to actually validate the idea here in Nigeria, to ensure that it’s actually a problem that is not just in Ghana but, b...