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0 NewsGhana, Latest Updates and Breaking News of Ghana, News Ghana, https://www.newsghana.com.gh/accra-to-host-african-health-innovators-venture-festival/Thirty-six young health entrepreneurs will sit alongside investors, mentors and ecosystem leaders in Accra next month for a three-day festival designed to take African health innovations from prototype to market, with Ghana’s two leading technical universities hosting one of the continent’s most active platforms for youth-led healthcare solutions.
The Africa Health Collaborative (AHC) will hold its Health Innovation Festival (HIFest) 2026 at Ashesi University and Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) from June 4 to 6, drawing more than 100 participants from Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda, South Africa, Ethiopia, Cameroon, Senegal, Zambia and Canada. The event is backed by the Mastercard Foundation and will be accessible virtually through YouTube for those unable to attend in person.
The case for what HIFest can produce sits with those who went through it before. Dumisani Newton, founder of WeCure Pharmacy and winner of the Non-Communicable Diseases category at the previous Nairobi edition, said the mentorship he received at the festival changed how he understood his own business.
“My mentor helped me understand the exact problem that we are solving and who our target market is, so that our approach is more targeted,” he said.
More than 50 ventures received mentorship, training and pitching opportunities at last year’s edition, with selected teams accessing seed funding for their projects. HIFest 2026 aims to replicate and expand on that track record by putting participants through innovation labs, masterclasses, investor sessions and coaching clinics over three concentrated days, alongside industry visits designed to connect ideas to commercial reality.
This year’s festival brings a deliberately broadened thematic scope. In addition to core healthcare delivery challenges, the programme will spotlight artificial intelligence (AI) and digital health solutions, maternal and child health, mental health, climate and health resilience, water and sanitation, indigenous medicine and innovative medical devices, an agenda that reflects both the diversity of Africa’s health challenges and the range of interventions young innovators are already testing.
Prof. Wilberforce Owusu-Ansah, Lead for Health Entrepreneurship at KNUST, described health entrepreneurship as a tool for social transformation rather than simply a commercial pursuit, arguing that the sector demands a specific combination of qualities from those who pursue it.
Jessica Boifio, Associate Director at the Centre for Entrepreneurship at Ashesi University, said the rationale for hosting in Ghana goes beyond logistics. She pointed to the growing confidence across the African health innovation ecosystem in collaborative, ethics-driven approaches to solving healthcare problems, with Accra providing a fitting setting for that conversation across borders and disciplines.
NewsGhana, Latest Updates and Breaking News of Ghana, News Ghana, https://www.newsghana.com.gh/accra-to-host-african-health-innovators-venture-festival/
