BRIDGING THE GAP
Towards affordable, accessible, and quality healthcare.
In Swahili, "Jaza" means to fill or to bridge.
With nearly 2.5bn people expected by 2050 with 50% urban and 50% below 25 years old, Africa is the next investment frontier, yet healthcare startups raised less than 3% of total $4.85bn venture capital funds invested in 2022 and $4.63bn in 2021. Incubators, accelerators and angel investors provide the first checks, while most venture capital funds target post series A investment, creating a huge gap between $200k and $5M: the missing middle.
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Jaza Rift Ventures bridges this gap. We invest $200k-$2M in the most innovative and invention-based pre-Seed, Seed and Series A stage healthcare startups. Our aim is to help Founders scale their healthcare innovations and inventions 10x over the next 5-7 years.
A GREATER, GLOBAL RESULT
We believe in creating value that betters healthcare for Africa and the world.
We focus on funding solutions that can be scaled across the continent and the globe, using healthtech, medtech and biotech innovations in Africa as a model for the rest of the world. We support innovations and inventions that improve the quality and reduce the costs of delivering accessible, quality and affordable healthcare to everyone, everywhere.
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We look at opportunities across Africa - Anglophone and Francophone - with a preference for East and West Africa, with options to invest beyond those two zones.
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We believe our investments have the potential to solve both African challenges and Global ones as healthcare costs across the world are skyrocketing while investments are still lagging.
DEEP HEALTHCARE EXPERTISE & NETWORKS
We’re proud to partner with Villgro Africa to access their strong pipeline, their deep technical healthcare expertise and networks to increase the chance of success for the high performing entrepreneurs we invest in.
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We also partner with other venture funds, incubators, accelerators, venture builders and venture studios to achieve scale and local support across Africa.
Upstream and downstream partnerships
From incubators, accelerators and angel investors to impact funds and venture capital funds, our partnerships across the investment continuum ("conveyor belt") help us set entrepreneurs up for sustainable growth and long term impact.
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We are also developing networks with large local and international corporates (pharmaceutical groups and conglomerates) for insights, research and exit partners.
HEALTHCARE VERTICALS
We invest in high performing entrepreneurs who are developing and commercializing innovations and inventions in healthcare software and hardware (digital health), nutrition, wellness, medical devices (medtech), health insurance, health financial technology (healthtech), biotechnologies and pharmaceuticals (biotech) with the potential of meeting the healthcare needs in Africa and the world.
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Healthcare Software & Hardware
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Nutrition & Wellness
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Devices & Medtech
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Health Insurance
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Health Financial Technology
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Biotech, Pharmaceuticals
OUR TEAM
Jaza Rift Ventures is led by a team of professionals with more than 20 years of combined experience across healthcare, agritech, fintech, retail and related sectors in Africa and deep expertise in fund management and value creation for startups in Africa and Europe.
Monica Ng'aru
Investment Analyst
Under Recruitment
Investment & Data Scientist
INVESTMENT COMMITTEE
Our outstanding Investment Committee members are fully dedicated to healthcare in Africa.
Dr. Joshua Adeoye
Life Sciences Investor, Medical Doctor
ADVISORS & ECOSYSTEM PARTNERS
Our focus on healthtech, medtech and biotech investments requires a deep sector expertise provided by our partnerships across the ecosystem
Thane Kreiner, PhD
Impact & Healthcare Advisor
OUR TECHNICAL ADVISORS
Jaza Rift Ventures is looking for Investment Advisors (VC, PE, Impact etc. for General Advisory Board) and Healthcare Advisors (Strategic Healthcare Board, Founder Advisory Network) across the whole value chain. From Infrastructure to Medical Devices, ML/AI for health, Supply Chain, Telemedicine etc. Very specialized skills such as Oncology, Pediatrics, Neurosurgery, Palliative Care, Radiology etc. are also sought.
Strategic Healthcare Board (SHB)
We're looking for 20 carefully selected gender-balanced deep healthcare sector experts as Advisors. From all walks of life and anywhere in the world, your experience and networks across one or several healthcare verticals are critical and are aligned to our mission to provide Better Healthcare for Africa.
Founder Advisory Network (FAN)
We're looking for 10 Series B or later Founders and Operators carefully selected based on their experience in growing a startup from pre-Seed to Series A and beyond with a genuine interest in Africa. Chosen from anywhere in the world, you must be fully aligned to our mission to provide Better Healthcare for Africa.
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Better healthcare for Africa
Jaza Rift Ventures is a healthcare venture capital fund investing in innovative early-stage startups and invention-based healthtech, medtech and biotech enterprises that aim at providing Better healthcare for Africa ©.