15 Years Building RxAll: A Field Guide for African Healthtech Founders
From a campus project to a 9 figures-per-month AI sales engine across three continents.
“We stand because others lifted us.”
This October 2025 marks 15 years since I sketched RxAll as a university project. I then carried it through Yale’s startup labs. It has grown into a company that now drives 9 figures-per-month sales. It employs people across Africa, China, and North America.
It has been many lows and a few highs.
The highs won.
Before “healthtech” was a hashtag
A small set of builders held the line. They include Gregory Rockson (mPharma), Ashifi Gogo (Sproxil), Bright Simons (mPedigree), and Chibuzo Opara (DrugStoc).
Ashifi mentored me at Yale. Chibuzo helped me test that RxScanner will be needed among wholesalers in Nigeria. Some have since stepped back; others still grind.
Either way— their flowers are due.
May they write their memoirs so the next wave can run farther.
I’m writing mine too. It tells the story of a boy born in Africa who survived a 21-day coma at home. He went on to help build the world’s first AI spectrometer. He also developed a global business around it.
Subscribe here and on Adebayo Alonge TV to be first when it drops.
What the market really looks like
Donor logic has distorted Africa’s health market for years.
Free pilots. Free POS. Free everything—until trust is broken and data of the poor is sold downstream while the poor get nothing.
In Kenya, independent pharmacies told us plainly: “No more free tools that sell our data.”
We listened. We priced fairly. We helped them monetize their data ethically.
The hard truth: your main obstacle isn’t “poverty.” It’s the absence of a real market where customers buy and value service.
When free floods the zone, you must build where incentives are honest—or create those incentives yourself.
Dignity needs markets, not favors.
Three rules that kept us alive
1) Start with a hard WHY
If your reason is money, pick fintech or build for U.S. buyers. Health is different. It is slow. It is political. It is sacred.
My north star never changed: get RxScanner into every pharmacy so no African dies from fake drugs.
That Why pulled us through dead ends, dry months, and long nights.
2) Don’t do “free”
Free work trains the market to disrespect you—and licenses middlemen to profit off your data.
If you must work with donors, go in eyes open:
→ Price your time and IP at market rates → Tranche grants in amounts that move milestones, not crumbs → Protect against “convenience cancellations” → Refuse to be announced for money not disbursed
We built with private investors and customer revenue. That’s why we’re still here.
3) Go where the market wants you
Sometimes your home market won’t believe until outsiders do.
We heard “toy” at home. Katapult (Norway) backed us. We won the Hello Tomorrow Deep Tech Grand Prize in Paris.
After that, doors opened that had stayed shut for years.
Lesson: Collect global validators. Sell in real markets. Bring those signals back home (if you need to). This will change the conversation.
Clarify your Why. Charge from day one. Go where the market wants you.
Opportunity ▸ What we’re building next (and who we need)
We’re scaling three fronts in 2026–2028:
A) Expand RxScanner and RxPay coverage across manufacturers, pharmacy networks and wholesalers →Why: counterfeit risk is continuous & liquidity is a blocker to quality medicines (meds) at the last mile
B) Data products for manufacturers, payers and regulators → Goal: deploy data dashboards that pay for themselves via fraud waste & abuse reduction → Why: better claims, safer supply , better GTM, available meds where needed in any community across Africa
C) Cross-border quality corridors → Goal: certify lanes from factory to pharmacy via our own data informed private label platform → Why: trust is the currency and our stellar reputation helps thos who would have doubted now take the medicines they need
Who should lean in now:
✓ Manufacturers, Pharmacy chains, distributors, and group purchasing bodies
✓ Health insurers and HMOs with leakage >3%
✓ Ministries, regulators, and sovereign buyers targeting safe-meds access
✓ Funds that back revenue-first healthtech in Africa with patient capital
Read, partner, build
📖 Subscribe to this newsletter, our Youtube Channel, and adebayoalonge.com for the memoir launch and rollout notes.
🤝 Partnerships: If you lead a manufacturer, pharmacy network, payer, or regulator, we should connect. You need to move 50+ outlets or 100k+ covered lives. DM me on LinkedIn to coordinate.
🚀 Founders: If you’re building in African healthtech, reply with your Why in one sentence. I’ll spotlight a few in the next issue.
We don’t beg our way to better health; we build our way there.
Godspeed.
#RxAll #DignityInHealthcare #AIforHealth #Africa #PublicPolicy #Healthtech #Entrepreneurship
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