NaYa, a digital health credit

Sub-Saharan African has one the highest adoption rate of digital wallets known as mobile money wallets, with over 500 million mobile money accounts open in the last decade skipping the banks. Yet financial inclusion, like access to basic safety nets, credit lines, has yet to happen for the 12 billion of unbanked on the continent who are adopting mobile money. The unbanked still don’t have access to cash or financing tools to fully transact on the digital economy by accessing the service they need. To solve for the lack of funds to access services in the digital economy we made it easy for low income and employees of small businesses to get funding from our digital health credit infrastructure to access an essential service such as healthcare  service from almost anywhere.

Lack of funds is a major barrier to digital healthcare. While COVID pandemics has led to the expansion of numerous affordable digital health solutions (telemedicine, medicine delivery service etc..) the ability to pay for those services remain a barriers to many low income people to fully participate to the digital ecosystem. In 2017, WHO /World Bank jointly reported that at least 100 million people could not afford healthcare worldwide. In Cameroon, a country of 26 millions  people, over 58% of sick people don't access basic healthcare services because they do not have money. Intermittent revenues, required upfront payments for services and limited access to health financing exacerbated by the lack of universal health coverage, are factors contributing to the inability of low income, SME's employees to afford health care in the digital economy.

Our solution is a universal digital health credit which allows people to access financing for health expenses from their mobile phones at any time in Cameroon and beyond. Using feature phones or internet connected-phones, individuals can access our services on a chatbot via SMS or Telegram.  Approved individuals can use their health credit, which works as a line of credit, to pay for their care at any of NaYa affiliated medical providers. 

 Medical service providers such as pharmacies access our platform on the web to accept payments,  view and capture patient-health information. Very much like a line of credit, the repayment of the cashless health credit is flexible with splitted payments options over time through mobile money wallets offered by local telecommunications companies. A unique advantage of our service is that our health credit service is accessible to people   regardless of the economic status ,with  and without  internet access right at the tip of their finger across country. In addition, our platform empowers medical service providers to serve a larger universe of patients than ever before while strengthening their health documentation processes. 

 Acting like a line of credit for health expenses  provides to both the financial tools and the infrastructure for patients to afford digital services  (and in-person) and for providers infrastructure to thrive in the digital economy. 

Employees from small medium enterprises and workers from the informal sector are our end-customers. Learning from our pilot phase providing digital health credit to uninsured people in Cameroon, we established  that over 70% of our clientele comes from the informal sector with the two third being African women market. Similar to SME's employees, informal workers are not covered by group medical insurance and they don't have access to line of credit from banks as they are for the most unbanked. However,  SMEs' employees  and informal workers are familiar with the mechanics of consumption credit as they routinely leverage high-interest informal cash loans from peers and tontines to cover unexpected medical expenses and loss of revenues. In addition, both customer types have some awareness of digital payments as in the absence of bank accounts they use telecommunications mobile money wallets for peer-to-peer transactions. Despite their awareness of the digital economy both SME's employees and informal workers are still underserved in the digital economy as they can only participate in this economy if they have money or capital. Hence like the traditional economy the digital economy remains inaccessible to them without proper access to digital capital to address their most urgent needs,  like healthcare access, in the digital ecosystem. Our digital health credit solution provides to cash constraint uninsured informal workers and SMEs employees a way to fund their access to the digital services and  affordable health care. Thereby providing digital funding but also a documented credit history with a potential to help them access other services in the digital ecosystem. To serve and better understand our customers needs we meet them where they are already, messaging platforms such as WhatsApp and SMS. By making our solution available through those customer friendly channels we  use conversational messaging flows to break down language and geographical barriers to accessing digital economy and make it easier to gather feedback from end-users in a culturally acceptable fashion.

Our solution solves for the lack of capital to access the digital economy by the target population of the selected challenge's dimension: people and small businesses. Our digital health credit solution acts as a financial tool for SME to access services in the digital economy and building financial history. Because our solution is tied to an essential service this allows the target population to thrive in the ecosystem as they not only have the means to afford digital transactions  but more importantly to continue to transact as our solution fills a thus far unmet need for an essential service: healthcare.

We tested our solution with a selected group of medical providers, pharmacies in Yaounde (Cameroon's capital),  and a portion of our target population identified via self-declaration. To further test the robustness of our market fit we have to extend our pilot to include a larger number of medical providers in Yaounde and Douala, Cameroon's main cities, and serve 3000+ people in our target population through partnerships with third parties.

Our solution not only solves for people but for also small businesses access challenges to the digital ecosystem by providing access to capital. Current digital solutions on the continent focus on mobile payments but do not provide funding to transact in the digital economy. Unlike mobile money wallet which is limited in its used to people who already have money to store in and pay from their digital wallets, our solution not only provides people funding in the form of a digital health credit to access service particularly when they do not have enough money, and in addition it allows small businesses, like pharmacies and clinics, to access a broader customer universe by accepting our digital health credit as payment. 

Our unique advantages over mobile money payments

• For people: collateral-free funding to access essential services in the digital economy from their phones
• For small businesses: ability to increase their revenues with digital transactions through a plug and use infrastructure

As both SME and people use the platform we will be building a credit bureau infrastructure providing for the first time documented credit and financial history for both user types. We anticipate that unlike widely adopted mobile money wallets on the continent, our solution will truly unlock more capital in the digital and offline economies for populations which so far have been underserved by banks and microfinances due to lack of verified documented credit/financial history.

During our pilot phase of providing digital health credit, we directly offer a safety net to more than uninsured 200 informal workers, with 65% of the beneficiaries being women with low income. In addition, we helped three local  small businesses- individually owned pharmacies- to thrive as we guaranteed providers' payments. Allowing them to not miss a sale and maintain their business even during economically challenged times.

1 year

•An estimated of 34.8% of people are sick in a year period in Cameroon's main cities* bringing our addressable market to 3 millions. Considering that  a third of sick people don't access care due to lack of funds with close to 80% of them owning a phone, we assume to capture about 20% of that population in one year. Thus effectively serving  200  000 people and empowering a total of 10 small businesses providing access to care using our digital facility.

5 years

Collectively the estimated population of West Africa countries is 349 millions. WHO estimated that only 10% of West African country's population has access to healthcare services. In five years with distribution in Cameroon and three countries in the West Africa region we anticipate to reach 10 millions with our Digital health credit.

1 year impact goal: to increase access to essential drugs for malaria, respiratory infections and NCDs proportionally to their prevalence in Cameroon's burden of disease profile. 

Impact metric: tracking the coverage over time of essential medications for diseases of interest (i.e: anti-malaria, anti-hypertensive and pediatric medicines for infections and diarrheal diseases) paid for through health credit in our consumer portfolio.

 5 years impact goals

Goal1: Reducing maternal mortality related to the lack of access to prenatal care in Cameroon. 200 000 don't access prenatal visits /year in Cameroon. 

Impact metric: increasing by 20% the number of women accessing preventative care including prenatal vitamins, prenatal visits, via our health credit platform.

Goal2: Promote economic growth through digital inclusion of people affected with NCDs in West sub-Saharan Africa

• Metric: coverage for at least 65% of NCDs affected patients in our network on a sustainable basis
• Metric:  proportion of the population with large household expenditures on health as a share of total household expenditure or income

Our personnel is composed of the founders acting as managing directors, the  local field staff, the remote technical staff and the marketing contractor.

• Co-founders/Managing director : n=2
• Advisor: n=1
• Field local staff and local in-country manager: 3 (full-time)
• Developer team (contractors): n=5
• Local business developer ( contract): n=1

Building on our proof-of-concept phase on health credit, our team has the field experience of working and gaining adoption of informal workers for digital financial tools. 

Moreover, NaYa managing team has complementary expertise in financial/investment services, team building, health care products launch, partnerships and Data analytics.

Dr. Marthe-Sandrine Mpollo a trained scientist and healthcare consulting professional has extensive experience building strategic partnership in healthcare, communicating treatment outcomes,  managing health Data insights to maximize patient outcomes. During COVID outbreak, Marthe-Sandrine successfully designed a donor-sponsored medicine access program at NaYa. The ongoing program administered through NaYa provided three-month access to life saving medicines to pregnant women and chronically ill children. 

As a former principal in an established private equity firms, NaYa’s co-founder Yannick has over 10 years of experience managing investment funds and corporate finance advisory. Under his leadership, the team succeeded in investing in excess of US$ 70 million in sub-Saharan Africa over the last few years.

The managing team is advised Mr. Stean Mpolo, former bank officer at the reserve bank of Cameroon (BEAC), founder of Cameroon finance advisory and SME funding firm Marabout Finance and the current Regional Coordinator for Central Africa of the African Business Roundtable.

Lastly, the established relationships of our operating field team with the target population of small businesses and informal workers  favorably position us to rapidly implement tactics to drive adoption of the digital health credit by the targeted population.

Our core values are centered around inclusion which we embody by providing formal channels for employees to provide feedback on the way we operate and serve the community.

We recognize and celebrate diversity by proactively soliciting diverse thoughts and insights from employees and business partners in our decision-making process. 

We are committed to equity through equal opportunity employment. To date NaYa as always maintained a diverse workforce with representation of more than 4 ethnic groups and a 1:1 or 2:3 ratio of women and men at the leadership and technical level respectively.

We designed our operating practices to allow  everyone to get access to the health service without discrimination. Close to 65% of informal workers and parent of young children have used our platform.

We are applying to Solve to get access to partners that can help with distribution of our service and brand recognition.

We also look to get funding to finance our talent acquisition strategy.

Additionally, we seek to reach  telecommunications in order to facilitate the integration our solution with they mobile money payment system and access to communication channel

Getting Marketing and branding  support will help raise awareness, acquire customers  and communicate and attract distribution partners 

Partnerships with NGOs, and healthcare organization and local  small businesses will build brand recognition and  expand client base

Getting telecommunications company support will increase customer experience and secure our operating model. 

We would like to partner with NGOs addressing the health care needs of populations in Cameroon and across Africa (doctors without borders, Helen Keller

Partnering with healthcare companies to offer affordable essential medications at an affordable rate.

Partner with Cameroun Centre Pasteur to offer affordable coverage for lab tests.

Partner with  microfinances like Kiva  to expand our service distribution in key markets in West Africa.

Our solution advances economic and digital inclusion for populations that have been historically underserved: women, low income population and unbanked populations.

90% of informal workers in West Africa are women. With their revenues leaving them without access to formal social protection or financing options available to people in the formal economy.

65% of our users are women in the informal sector with no bank account and therefore have limited access to financing through local intuitions.

Our solution provides a collateral free digital health credit allowing to economically challenged people to get funding to access basic health care , thereby increasing health inclusion through digital financing.

Because our solution is offered through a low cost convenient channel a SMS chatbot, it makes easy for people with low digital literacy skills or with no internet access to still access the digital health and get get the funds to do so regardless of their economic status, gender, social determinants.

Through our digital health credit we empower women to early and timely access healthcare services. In addition, our digital health credit gives women the decision-making power to choose which care they want to access including contraceptives' products, which traditionally may have not been accessible to them because the power to pay for their care was with other family members.

In Cameroon, over 50% of women cite lack of money to attend antenatal care in urban areas. Our digital health credit reduces this financial barrier to women's well being. We are currently tracking the access to prenatal vitamins and women's health products with our health credit. In addition, during COVID we have run a donor-funded medication access program which provided free  three-month supply of prenatal medicines to pregnant women 

Our distribution channels focus on women led-groups such as tontine ( informal community savings clubs in West Africa). As those group access the digital health credit facility at lower cost compared to other customers.

As a result our health credit portfolio show over 65% of our beneficiaries are women.

We use data to provide digital health financing to patients and increase guarantee revenue to  medical providers. As we leverage data input by patients ( customers) to extend funding that would help them access care timely, we also provide a revenue to small business owners like medical providers ( pharmacies, local health centers). The circulation  of the economic value and care allow  communities to be thrive by maintain health and economic growth.

In addition, our solution allows patients to access care and providers to document the care, the data generating in this process constitute real world data on health care utilization ( treatment, demographics, signs and symptoms of disease). Because we utilize a data algorithm to screen for patients' digital health credit affordability we can tie health care utilization to social determinants providing a tool for public health ( MoH) and healthcare organizations to allocate resource to prevent and treat diseases.

We will use the AI for Humanity prize to build secure data capabilities to  generate- high grade real world data on care utilization and social determinants of health to improve public health  and reduce and informed affordable health care coverage by manufacturers.