Specialist African investment firm hosts round table in Lagos to explore
how Nigeria can mobilise institutional capital for healthcare.
Lagos Nigeria, September, 2026: As international donor funding from USAID and other foreign assistance programs for healthcare continues to shrink, leading financial stakeholders convened by HealthCap Africa, at its Private Markets & Healthcare Roundtable called for a stronger domestic capital ecosystem to help finance Africa’s critical healthcare needs. Pension fund representatives at the meeting came from institutions collectively managing more than US$5 billion in assets under management.
Themed Healthcare as an Asset Class, the invitation-only roundtable held
on 9 September in Lagos, alongside HealthCap Africa’s Annual General
Meeting. The high-level convening brought together regulators, pension
fund managers, development finance institutions, healthcare investors
and operators to examine how African countries, particularly Nigeria,
can mobilise more private and institutional capital for healthcare.
Pension funds were identified as one of the most significant pools of
capital that could help scale healthcare investment.
Africa carries 22% [3] of the world’s disease burden but receives just
1% of global health spending, with an estimated US$1.1 trillion annual
health financing gap. A key theme emerging from the discussion was the
need for Africa to move beyond reliance on external healthcare funding.
Instead, to build a more diversified and sustainable healthcare
financing model in which government, philanthropy, development finance
and private capital play complementary roles.
By contrast, in North America and Europe approximately 505 specialist
healthcare and life-sciences investment managers have raised more than
US$300 billion over the past decade.
The discussion was chaired by Deji Alli, Founder and Chairman of ARM,
and co-chaired by Abu Jimoh, Founder and Group CEO of TrustBanc
Financial Group. Participants included senior representatives from the
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), National Pension Commission
(PenCom), Africa Finance Corporation (AFC), International Finance
Corporation (IFC), World Bank, Stanbic CPFA, FCMB Pensions, PAC Capital,
Leadway, PVAC Healthcare, Anchoria, PharmAccess, Afrinvest, ABC Health,
ARM Holdco, and FMDQ.
Key practical steps identified at the roundtable to translate the
growing interest in healthcare investment into deployable capital:
- Mobilise domestic capital beyond philanthropy. With USAID gone and
international funding less certain, Africa needs to mobilise the
domestic capital base it already has, pension assets, insurers, family
capital, development institutions and entrepreneurs. - Translate pension interest into investable products. That means the SEC,
PenCom, fund managers and institutional investors jointly designing
products that meet fiduciary standards while still delivering
institutional-grade returns. - Use DFI fund-of-funds structures to spread risk. The Africa Finance
Corporation has offered to share the structure behind its new US$100
million venture capital fund, already deployed into two underlying
funds, as a model suited to pension funds seeking to spread risk. - Create the right policy environment. The World Bank’s Chishamiso Mawoyo
stressed that government policy remains important, and that government
has a role to play in creating the environment private investment needs
to work. - Keep deepening local capital pools rather than pivot away from
innovation, directing more of that momentum toward sectors with massive
unmet demand, healthcare among them. - Match capital to risk. The bottleneck is often the investor-stage match,
not the project itself, which means more capital dedicated to the early
stage, not only later-stage deals. - Build the pipeline from private markets to public markets. Big companies are built, not born: they start in the private market, pay tax and create jobs, and only then reach the public market and the stock exchange.
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Speaking at the event, Dr. Ola Brown, Founder and General Partner of
HealthCap Africa, highlighted Quadria Capital’s healthcare-focused
investment platform in India and its scale as an illustration of what
sustained private investment can build. “Quadria Capital is one of the
largest VC funds in Asia focused on healthcare. They have raised over $1
billion and have an AUM of over $4 billion. As you know, many Nigerians
go to India for healthcare. Now imagine how much private capital has
gone into building their healthcare sector.” The investment has
coincided with a decline in maternal mortality from 384 to 80.5 per
100,000 live births between 2000 and 2023.
“The opportunity here for Africa is not necessarily to replicate
India’s model, but to consider what similar pools of specialised
capital could achieve for African healthcare.” She added.
Pension funds represent a major pool of capital across African markets,
but deploying them into healthcare private markets requires a balance
between generating attractive returns and protecting savers.
Participants called for continued collaboration between managers,
institutional investors and regulators to develop transparent,
well-governed and appropriately structured investment products.
Private capital is already contributing to healthcare infrastructure in
Nigeria.
Humphrey Oriakhi of PAC Capital highlighted the firm’s financing of a
250-bed multi-specialty tertiary hospital in Gateway, Abeokuta, built
entirely with private capital. HealthCap Africa’s own pilot fund has
created more than 1,000 jobs in 10 African countries, reaching over 2
million patients.
Speaking on this, Dr. Mories Atoki, CEO of ABC Health said: “There
needs to be more early-stage investors. There’s no such thing as an
unbankable project. There’s only such a thing as a risk-investor
match. Some are early-stage, some are later-stage, and we need to match
the right investors, or we need to invest in the early-stage ecosystem
if we want to get to growth”
Deji Alli, Founder and Chairman of ARM, similarly highlighted the role
of innovation in addressing regulatory and market challenges, noting
that “Innovation can overcome regulation.”
Nigeria already has a significant base on which to build. Between 2021
and 2025, the country captured 513 Seed+ deals, representing more than a
quarter of Africa’s early-stage activity, and is home to five of the
continent’s eight unicorns. Participants argued that the opportunity is
now to deepen local pools of capital around sectors with significant
unmet demand, including healthcare.
