Tell us about your capstone project: What is the health tech startup you are building? What problem does it solve, and who will it help?
My African STARS fellowship capstone project is called RRegalis (Yes, with two R). It is an ecosystem. RRegalis is made of three applications: “LookDoc” that helps to connect patients and health service/products providers directly to individual patients; “Mediconnect” which is an intelligent medical and paramedical AI assistant trained on Malagasy language and contextual epidemiological profile; and “LogiFacile” which is a free medicine and logistics management application to be used by pharmacies and legal drug distributors in order to make stocks availability accessible to those in needs. These three applications create the core components of the ecosystem with the financial model that has been used for other businesses running at minimal investment requirement. It will help first the population to get the care they need on time and without incurring extra and unnecessary prospect costs while ensuring serious and quality follow-up of each provided care and medicine. It will also accompany the Government and other key stakeholders (donors and academia) to monitor health events through the health data analytics. Lastly, it will serve also financial businesses to participate in the achievement of universal health coverage by having the opportunity to provide insurance to those in needs.
Where did you get the inspiration for this venture?
I want to build a company that brings scientists and business operators together to make access to care easy and affordable for people who currently struggle to get it.
This business comes initially from a sad personal experience of healthcare where I tried to figure out the best place to find a care for a beloved one, then when the acceptable care was found the challenge was on guessing where the medicine can be available, and while trying to find the medicine after few hours of movement the worst event came. Reflecting on this sad personal event, I was and am still convinced that similar system failure shouldn’t affect anyone more. Of course, as a scientist and a businessman, I owe the responsibility of providing the best care but also to impose the best-fit health system through the ecosystem I am working on with my team.
During the Fellowship, I have been analysing the market and investing in relationships with people who understand these problems well, so I can build a venture that is both successful and scalable.
What drew you to apply to the African STARS Fellowship and what were you hoping to get out of this experience?
I had worked in public health programme management and consulting across research, business development, and data science, so I understood the science and systems side reasonably well. What I was missing was structured guidance on the entrepreneurship side of health innovation. The Fellowship offered me this by placing me at Institut Pasteur de Dakar (IPD), which gave me personalized support through my capstone project.
The Fellowship pairs training with a work placement. What have you been working on?
The programme opens with four months of intensive training across health technologies, science, and entrepreneurship. After that, fellows placed at Institut Pasteur de Dakar move into departments that match their career plans and capstone projects. My placement includes climate health modelling for early warning systems, which is extremely pertinent in Africa at the moment. Extreme weather and climate-related events affected more than 13 million people in Africa in 2025, but only 40% of African countries currently have multi-hazard early warning systems. This scientific placement is accompanied by opportunities to learn skills in business intelligence and solutions development. I was able to develop “MonelNdox” which is an intelligence system made of advanced mathematics to monitor and optimize the use of strategic resources involved in Institut Pasteur de Dakar production and operation facilities. In addition to the climate & health project and the intelligence system, I was able to participate in innovative research combining molecular, biological and epidemiological data to estimate the needs for a newly discovered POC device by the institute. As my capstone is not only made of coding and mathematics (even if they are mainly made of applications), the two placements and the research project I was involved have greatly helped me to go beyond what normal scientists and businessmen can do while have exposed me to the practice of big enterprise of managing work, people and scientific products. The placements were followed up by close mentorship that has helped me to work on both my capstone project and organizational needs. This experience has transformed me from being a normal scientist and businessman into a scientific businessman who is ready to start a scientific business and an innovator who can work in complementary with all existing health and non-health businesses.
The pace and rigor are demanding, but that is what pushes us to grow and prepares us for the real world of science and entrepreneurship.
You say that you want to work at the intersection of global health and business. Why are you approaching it this way?
Through my work at IPD, I have seen scientific findings struggle to reach real world problems because of funding and operational gaps. Some vaccines carry development costs that are too high to recover, which keeps them from being produced at scale and reaching the people who need them. Bringing a new vaccine to market costs an average of over $2 billion, and the cost is hard to recover. Vaccines and diagnostics have to reach the market and generate enough return to fund the next round of research and keep serving African populations. Science is the start. Business is what gets it to people, rapidly and continuously.
In my capstone RRegalis, I am bringing together data, models, research, ideas and innovations sourced from a lot of research conducted in the area that spans from 1990 today. Some of the mathematical approaches we use have existed in the scientific literature for years, but have not always been translated into tools that people can use for routine health decisions. We can cite, as an example, location-allocation models such as the p-median and location set-covering models. These models can determine how health services should be distributed to reduce travel distance, improve population coverage and make better use of limited resources. Their potential for health planning in developing countries was already well documented by Rahman and Smith in 2000. The same problem can be seen directly in Madagascar. Research in Moramanga used GIS-based accessibility modelling to identify underserved populations and potential locations for health facilities, while later work in Ifanadiana showed that travel time to care could be modelled very precisely using roads, footpaths, terrain, rainfall and population data. What RRegalis wants to do differently is bring this type of science closer to the everyday decision itself. Instead of producing only a model or a map showing that a patient has poor access to care, LookDoc can help the patient identify an appropriate and reachable provider; LogiFacile can add information on whether the required medicine is actually available; and the wider RRegalis intelligence layer can continuously analyse these interactions to support providers, government and other health-system actors.
I am lucky to understand both what each scientific finding can mean and to understand what kind of business to draw from it. Global health goals may remain as goals without innovators who are ready to translate the science into business and always support the business with safe and ethical science.
You’ve moved from working primarily as a scientist and programme manager into building a health tech startup. What has that transition required of you?
It has required learning an entirely different set of skills alongside the ones I already had: financing, market strategy, and regulatory pathways. I have also built soft skills, like how to invest in relationships with people and businesses working in the fields of innovation and technology. Senegal and the wider West African market are a very different context from Madagascar, so I have also been able to see how things that worked at home, in one context, may not work in another. Experiencing this in person is vastly different from reading about it in a business textbook.
What do you see as the biggest barriers preventing African scientific innovations from reaching patients, even when the underlying science is strong?
One of the biggest barriers I have seen is the absence of a viable business model and a financing pathway. For example, Africa imports 99% of its vaccines and 80% of its pharmaceutical products, and that is not because the continent lacks scientific talent. It is because the pipeline from discovery to a sustainable, African owned company is lacking in opportunities and support. I want to close this gap by pairing the scientific and commercial sides.
Why does it matter that these companies are built and owned in Africa, rather than relying on solutions developed and manufactured elsewhere?
Simply because the products, the jobs, and the knowledge generated here are a better fit for solving Africa’s problems and boosting our growth and wellbeing. Building African owned health companies means the people who understand the problem best are the ones who develop the solution and adjust it as needed. When business ventures are successful, we want the Africans who own these solutions to benefit, to be recognized, to encourage others, and to re-invest it here.
Relying on imported solutions also keeps African health systems dependent on decisions made elsewhere. During COVID-19, more than 9 billion vaccine doses had been produced globally, but Africa had received only 6% of the total, despite being home to 17% of the world’s population. When the products are made elsewhere, Africa runs the risk of being last in line.
What has surprised you most about the fellowship experience so far?
We are encouraged to treat exploration and idea generation as worthy of investment, even if they take time and resources. During my placement, I was provided with all technology and resources I needed to test all new approaches I suggested. Like in all situations, success and failure both happen but they have never stopped the placement and the fellowship to support new ideas. The Fellowship encourages us to spend time on this because it is essential to creativity and innovation. I did not expect that philosophy to affect my perspective and mindset as much as it has. Now as I am setting up the startup, I have already explored many ways of doing business in science and developing solutions with different range of technologies, thus I can balance wisely each decision on resources use while welcoming innovation and creativity.
How would you describe the Fellowship in one phrase? How has it shaped your worldview?
Preparation for greater responsibility.
I want this Fellowship to bring scientists and business operators together to build real solutions for Africa. There is a lot of work still ahead, but this Fellowship is helping me build a solid and promising foundation.
What will be the next step for your venture after the Fellowship ends? When do you expect to have a working prototype or launch?
The actual step is on the development of the three applications. My team and I are at 60% after 8 months of work regarding application development. We expect the prototype of the ecosystem to be available in March 2027 and the launch in July 2027. We can say that we are fast enough if we do a benchmark with similar project size. However, we should be faster regarding the number of deaths and preoccupations that can be caused by care delay, poor follow-up and medicine shortage (that we are firmly against) in one year. As RRegalis is a social venture and made to support research and discoveries with its future benefits, we welcome support and advice.