A young population, innovation and technology will transform Africa.

I was born in The Gambia. At 18 years old, I traveled to the United States to attend college, first at Tennessee State University, where I earned a degree in chemistry, and then at Purdue University for my Doctor of Pharmacy (PharmD).

After obtaining my PharmD, I started practicing at a Walgreens outlet in Charlotte, North Carolina. Before leaving Walgreens to start Innovarx, I was a pharmacy manager where I oversaw $1 million in inventory and helped generate $60 million annually.

In 2019, my co-founder Gerard Mengang and I left Walgreens to build Innovarx. Many people thought we were crazy, but we envisioned what the next 10 years of health care in sub-Saharan Africa would look like. It's a multibillion-dollar industry, and we wanted to get on the ground early to position ourselves to capture market share and be part of shaping the industry.

Today, we operate a brick-and-mortar store in Banjul [The Gambia's capital] and have an e-commerce business, a global telemedicine platform, electronic health record (EHR) integration support and a mobile clinical unit.

When and how did you start this project?

We founded Innovarx in 2015, before we left Walgreens, but it took another six years to get our first franchise opened.

We spent those six years learning about the future of health care, even traveling to India, the United Arab Emirates, Germany, and China to get a global perspective. Each country educated us about what was possible. Had we not done those travels, we would have created a substandard company.

Many companies create an African version of a business that operates in other regions. We decided to do something different. We took a global idea and were intentional about Africa being the first place to receive it.

We selected The Gambia as a starting point because it is familiar terrain; it has a small population, and we could control a lot of variables in this market. More importantly, there is a need because only 4 per cent of Gambians have health benefits, mostly in the form of private insurance, and can access preventative medicine.

Ismail Badjie, 36, co-founded Innovarx Global Health

Many companies create an African version of a business that operates in other regions. We decided to do something different. We took a global idea and were intentional about Africa being the first place to receive it.

Ismail Badjie

Founder and CEO of Innovarx Global Health

What problem does your project solve? How many people do you employ?

We built a...