Innovation at the Intersection: How Young African Entrepreneurs Are Using Technology to Advance Women’s Health

When the 59th Commission on Population and Development meets this April under the theme of Population, Technology and Research, the conversations will largely take place in New York. But the work being discussed is already happening on the ground, in communities across East Africa, where a new generation of young entrepreneurs is quietly reshaping how women access sexual and reproductive health services.

POWER is a DSW initiative that equips young women aged 18 to 30 to become leaders and innovators in family planning and sexual and reproductive health. Operating across Uganda and Tanzania, it combines business development training, mentorship, and access to financing through its Multi-Sectoral Investment Fund, a women-led financial model that provides seed capital and affordable loans to early-stage enterprises. Since 2022, POWER has supported over 70 young female entrepreneurs across five accelerator cohorts.

Two of those entrepreneurs are Nadia Malker Nanteza in Uganda and Faustina Goodluck Munisi in Tanzania. Both are building solutions that use technology not as a buzzword, but as a practical tool for reaching women who have historically been underserved by health systems. Their approaches are different, but the underlying logic is the same: if the system cannot reach women, bring the system to them.

Data, Diagnostics and Prevention: Nadia Malker Nanteza and Lyfex Africa

Nadia Malker Nanteza takes a different angle, one rooted in her background as a nutritionist. Through Lyfex Africa, a social enterprise she founded and developed through the POWER initiative in Uganda, Nadia has built a model that treats nutrition, SRHR, and preventive health as a single interconnected challenge rather than three separate programmes.

The starting point was a recognition that reproductive health outcomes are profoundly shaped by a woman’s nutritional and metabolic health. Conditions like gestational hypertension, anaemia, and gestational diabetes affect a significant proportion of pregnant women and are largely preventable with the right support. Yet that support is often absent, particularly in low-resource communities where women may receive pharmaceutical care but rarely the nutrition guidance that should accompany it.

Nadia is also developing what she calls Nutrition-Financial Literacy programming, helping women make healthier choices within their actual economic circumstances, and is planning a micro-family Takaful initiative, a form of ethical micro health insurance that reflects both the financial realities and cultural contexts of the communities she serves.

Nadia Malker Nanteza receiving the POWER 2025 Championship Award at Makerere University hall, Kampala, Uganda.

“I was able to secure a scholarship for an international online program GOLD Lactation to expand my knowledge in lactation consultancy. Additionally, my company Lyfex Africa received smart portable nutrition examination machines worth over EUR 5,000 thanks to the fundraising training from the POWER program.”

Nadia Malker, Founder & CEO, Lyfex Africa.

To find out more about Lyfex Africa, visit:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nadia-malker-nanteza/

Website: https://lyfexafrica.com/

Healthcare at Your Fingertips: Faustina Goodluck Munisi and Livian Health

Faustina Goodluck Munisi did not set out to build a tech company. She set out to solve a problem she kept seeing around her: women in Tanzania who needed reproductive health support but could not or would not access it through conventional channels. The reasons were familiar ones. Long distances to health facilities. The fear of being seen. Not enough time in the day. These are not new barriers, but they have proven stubbornly difficult to shift.

Her response was Livian Health, a platform built around the idea that trusted women’s healthcare should be accessible to anyone, anytime. Through telehealth consultations and a mobile app, women can speak to health professionals about reproductive health and family planning privately, without needing to travel or explain themselves at a reception desk. The platform also offers a range of health products, from menstrual diaries to nutritional supplements, which can be ordered and delivered directly.

The technology is built around three practical goals:

• Private consultations that remove the stigma associated with in-person visits
• On-demand access that removes distance and travel as obstacles
• A service model broad enough to cover reproductive health, maternal care, and support for women living with non-communicable diseases

What makes Livian Health worth watching is not just the technology itself, but the thinking behind it. Faustina has been careful to build the platform around real user experience, running a pilot phase and using the feedback to refine how the app works in practice. Like many entrepreneurs at this stage, she is still some way from a full launch, and the road ahead involves further development, finding the right partners, and building a sustainable user base. But the foundation is there, and the problem she is trying to solve is real and urgent.

“We are building solutions that meet women where they are, ensuring that access to trusted, quality healthcare is no longer a privilege, but a reality for every woman, anytime and anywhere.”

Faustina Goodluck Munisi, Founder, Livian Health

What This Tells Us

Faustina and Nadia are doing very different things, but together they make a broader point about what technology-driven innovation in SRHR can look like when it is locally led. Neither of them started with a technology solution and worked backwards. They started with a problem they understood from the inside, and found that technology was one of the most effective tools available for addressing it.

As CPD59 takes up questions of how technology and research can support population and development goals, their experience offers a useful reminder: the most impactful innovations are often not the most complex ones. They are the ones built closest to the communities they serve, by people who already understand what those communities need.

For policymakers and development partners, the practical implications are clear:

• Invest in women-led digital health solutions that are designed with real community needs at their core
• Create regulatory environments in which telehealth and digital health data can operate safely and effectively
• Support integrated service delivery models that combine digital access with physical community outreach
• Centre user feedback and community data in how innovations are designed and refined

The future of SRHR is being built right now, in places like Dar es Salaam and Kampala, by people like Faustina and Nadia. It would be worth paying attention.

Learn more

To learn more about DSW’s work at the intersection of FemTech, social entrepreneurship, and innovation in sexual and reproductive health and family planning, including how we support the development of women-led startups and emerging digital health solutions, contact:

Shane O’Halloran
Head of Digital Transformation & Business Development Unit, DSW
shane.ohalloran@dsw.org

Faustina Goodluck Munisi and Nadia Malker Nanteza are both beneficiaries of POWER, a DSW initiative that supports young women entrepreneurs working in sexual and reproductive health across Uganda and Tanzania.