Three African health tech start-up companies, from Kenya, Nigeria and Zimbabwe have each won €250,000 in prize money after taking top honours in the 2022 Kofi Annan Award for Innovation in Africa, which took place in Austria earlier this month.

Kenyan health-tech start-up Flarelooks was established to improve access to emergency healthcare services across Africa. It secured first prize and beat off 329 competitors.

Nigeria’s MyPaddi took second place. This is a discreet social network that allows young people to access information pertaining to sexual reproduction and relevant healthcare services.

In third place, Zimbabwe’s Vaxiglobal runs a security-based biometric data system for vaccination program, including vaccination passports for COVID-19.

All three winners have pledged to use the prize money to develop their innovations.

Austria’s Foreign Minister, Alexander Schallenberg, said, “There is a risk that much of the progress we have made in recent years on development and healthcare could be undone. The projects that have won awards today represent creative, innovation solutions.”

Tsitsi Sifelani, founder of Vaxiglobal, was quoted by Zimbabwe state media as saying the goal of the start-up is to ensure that “by 2030, every vaccine dose distributed is linked to an individual.”

The company will achieve this through digital archiving of vaccination and health information of individuals, with the ultimate goal of working with the Centre for Diseases Control in Africa.

Whenever a patient or vaccine beneficiary visits at a health facility, health workers can just “pull up his or her record using face biometrics, ensuring that the right record is identified and a continuum of care” is maintained.