Build the Rails: Welcome to Season 2 of The Cure

Season 1 proved African healthcare innovation is real and led by Africans. Season 2 asks why it doesn't scale.

Host Temitope Coker introduces Build the Rails. Great ideas keep dying at pilot, and startups still can't plug into the public health system. What's missing isn't talent or ambition. It's the rails: regulation, financing, trusted health data, public-private collaboration, and the infrastructure that turns ideas into reliable care. This season we sit with the founders, CEOs, and investors laying those rails down, and we unpack why it matters now.

Powered by TC Health. 

The Cure is also going live at World Health Expo Lagos, 2–4 June 2026. Register here: http://bit.ly/4dLgvuI 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Hello, healthcare enthusiasts. We are back for season two. Last year, we launched the cure with a very simple question: What does it take to revolutionize the African healthcare business model? And we asked this question to pharmaceutical CEOs, biotech founders, health tech entrepreneurs, investors, and data scientists. Every conversation pushed us deeper into the same truth. Innovation in African healthcare is not some far-off dream. It's already happening right here, right now, in this country, in this city, on this continent. It's already moving. Season one was about proving that point. I think we did a good job proving that point. But season two is now about something different. In every conversation we had in season one, in all of the emails, in all of the DMs, in all of the interactions, a question kept coming up about how do we scale? Who's responsible for building the ecosystem? Who's responsible for the infrastructure? And the theme for season two kind of crystallized in that moment of building the rails. So that's what season two is called: building the rails. We are going to be having the conversations with the people that are doing the work to build the ecosystem that everyone else can build off of. And the leaders we're sitting down with this season are the ones that are putting in the work to build that infrastructure that will uplift the entire industry. Hello, healthcare enthusiasts, and welcome back to The Cure. This is the podcast where we're revolutionizing the African healthcare business model, one conversation at a time. I'm your host, Tim Topekoka. If you're new here, welcome. If you've been with us since season one, thank you for coming back. Either way, let me take a moment to just ground us and remind us of what The Cure is. The Cure is a deep dive podcast covering all things healthcare in Africa, from technology to infrastructure to the science, to the policy, to the research, and beyond. Each episode features industry leaders, founders, policymakers, investors, and innovators that are driving change in the healthcare sector. And at the heart of every question, of every conversation is one key question. What does it take to revolutionize the African healthcare business model? All of our insights are powered by TC Health, your trusted source for healthcare and pharmaceutical insights in sub-Saharan Africa. So if you missed season one, here's what you need to know. Our theme for season one was Buy Africa for Africa. We sat down with five leaders who are building healthcare solutions rooted in the realities for Africans and not copied and pasted and imported from Western markets. We spoke with Charles Ogumui, the CEO of SciGen Pharmaceuticals, and we spoke about the new wave of African pharma manufacturing, how local companies are repurposing drugs, building capacity, and driving research for African patients. We sat with Dr. Yao Bediako, co-founder of Yamachi Biotech, and explored how Africa's genomic diversity, which is the richest in the world, is being harnessed to transform cancer research and precision medicine as a whole. We heard from Dr. Nato, founder of Weller Health, and we spoke about all things health tech, including the harsh reality of the kind of funding that's needed for health tech in Africa and why telemedicine in Nigeria is experiencing a renaissance. We talked funding with Mrs. Fola Lauye, CEO and co-founder of EWOSan, about what it looks like when African capital funds African healthcare from within. And we followed the money with Michael Famarotti, co-founder and head of research at Steers, to understand what the capital flows are really telling us about where African healthcare investment is headed. Every one of these conversations reinforced a very core belief. African healthcare innovation is real. It is here, it is growing, it is being led by Africans. And if you haven't listened to season one, I'd encourage you to go back and catch up. Every episode is available on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts, and you won't regret it. So, season one showed us innovators building solutions. Season two is going to show us innovators building platforms that make those solutions scale. Innovators building the ecosystem, innovators bringing up the infrastructure one brick at a time. Because innovation without infrastructure is a prototype that never ships. It is a brilliant drug, game-changing drug that never gets regulatory approval. It is a diagnostic tool that can't reach the clinic that needs it the most. A health insurance scheme that collapses when the governor changes or when the legislation changes. A startup that raises funding but isn't able to plug into the public health system. The founders and leaders who see this clearly are the ones that are choosing to solve it. And those are the people that we're going to be sitting down with in this season. Founders, CEOs, coalition builders, investors, policymakers, all of those who have looked at the African healthcare landscape and asked a different question. Not how do I build the next product, but how do I build the platform that makes every other product work better? They're laying the rails, building the rails that everything else relies on. And so we're calling it build the rails because that's exactly what's missing. We're not missing ideas, we're not missing innovation, we're not missing ambition. In some cases, we're not even missing the money or the capital. What's missing are the rails, the infrastructure, the regulation, the public-private collaboration, the policies, the trusted data, the sustainable financing, all of these things that will turn a promising idea into reliable care, into sustainable care. And the people that we're speaking with this season are the ones that are building those rails. Before I get into why the season matters right now, I want to share something very exciting. The Cure is partnering with the World Health Expo in Lagos, West Africa's leading medical trade event taking place from the 2nd to the 4th of June 2026 at the Landmark Center in Lagos. WHX brings together over 500 exhibitors, 8,000 healthcare professionals, and 30 world-renowned speakers across diagnostics, medical devices, healthcare infrastructure, digital health, and more. This year's Hospital Investment and Buyer Leadership Forum is tackling one of the themes we deeply care about on this show. How do we build resilient health supply chains? How do we localize manufacturing and create the strategic partnerships that strengthen healthcare delivery across West Africa? So we're going to be on the ground at WHX, bringing you live interactive content shared straight from the floor. We'll be interviewing key stakeholders, we'll be bringing you behind-the-scenes conversations, mini podcast episodes with some of the most influential leaders in West African healthcare and the kind of insights that you won't just get from a press release. And so we can't wait to bring this sort of energy to our listeners this season. So stay tuned for our WHX coverage. And if you're attending, please, please, please come find us. So I said this in season one, and I'll say it again. Africa's healthcare sector is at an inflection point. The energy is real, the talent is real, the ambition is real. But between season one last year and now, the context has completely shifted and in some ways not exactly in our favor. Globally, we've seen ongoing conflicts that are pushing oil prices higher. And in an import-dependent economy like Nigeria and like a lot of African countries, that means everything gets more expensive. The drugs we use, the medical equipment, the reagents, the logistics, the fuel for the generators that are keeping clinics open. The economics of delivering healthcare are getting harder and not exactly easier. And we're getting closer to an election year in this country. If you follow the show, you already know what that means for healthcare programs. We've seen what happens when political transitions disrupt health initiatives, when PPPs that took years to build can just stall overnight. Insurance enrollment drives kind of lose momentum, policies lose momentum, infrastructure projects get deprioritized. And so the rails we're talking about this season need to be sturdy enough to survive all of this. And they need to be structurally resilient and not dependent on any one administration's goodwill. But here's what gives me hope because we always focus on hope. We are a podcast that aims to infuse hope back into the narrative. At the same time, we've seen the National Health Insurance Authority Act take hold in a very tangible way. We've seen Lagos states actually move to mandate mandatory health insurance and start to enforce mandatory health insurance. And that means for every Lagosian, having health insurance is now mandatory and will be enforced. It will be enforced with employers, it will be enforced with companies, it will be enforced with a range of stakeholders in the state. We've also seen that nine states have hit the 15% Abuja declaration target for health spending. And so the ground is shifting, the ground is moving, there is, there are things to spark hope. And the question now is whether Africa's health systems are ready to build on that momentum, or whether the old patterns of fragmentation, pilots, short-term thinking will hold us back. And so that's what this season is about. It's not hope for its own sake, but it's hope that is backed up by structure, hope that has rails sturdy enough to weather whatever comes next. All right. That's the roadmap. That's season two. Season two of The Cure is going to introduce you to the founders, the CEOs, and leaders who are building the infrastructure that the entire African healthcare ecosystem will run on. And we're going deeper, we're going more practical, we're sitting with people who saw a gap in the system and rolled up their sleeves and decided to fill it. If you haven't listened to season one, again, go back and start there. Every episode is on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. Season one gives you the innovators building solutions. Season two will give you the innovators building the platforms for scale. And so together they'll give you the full picture. So subscribe to TheCure wherever you get your podcasts. Follow at the CurePod Africa on every platform. If you know someone who should be a guest on this show, or if you are someone building something in African healthcare and you want to be a part of this conversation, please reach out to us at tchealthng at gmail.com. Follow TC Health for research drops and thought pieces that go deeper on the topics that we cover here on The Cure. And we're now on Substack. So subscribe to the TC Health Brief at tchealth.substack.com for everything from both TC Health and the Cure all in one place. Research drops, thought pieces, episode breakdowns, and insights that go deeper on all these topics that we'll be discussing. We'll drop the link in the episode description and all the links to follow as well. And don't forget, the cure will be live on the ground at the World Health Expo Lagos from the 2nd to the 4th of June at the Landmark Center. We'll bring you conversations with some of the most important voices in West African healthcare right from the exhibition floor. So if you're a healthcare professional, a supplier, an investor, or anyone who cares about the future of healthcare infrastructure in this region, you need to be there. So register now at worldhealthexpo.com. We'll drop the link in the episode description as well and in our bio and come find us at WHX and follow us on all platforms for live updates on the event. And finally, share this episode with someone who cares about the future of healthcare in Africa and someone who is tired of surface level conversations and wants to understand what exactly it takes to build. That is exactly who this show is for. Thank you for listening. I'm Tim Topeka. Welcome to season two of The Cure. See you in episode one. Bye.