Want To Make Money In Africa? Start By Solving Any Of These 8 Serious Problems.

#3 – Diseases

Despite having less than 15 percent of the world's population, Africa alone accounts for nearly 24 percent of all diseases that occur in the world. Apart from poor access to essential medicines and vaccines, low quality healthcare, malnutrition, and poverty, our continent’s tropical (warm) climate favours the breeding of disease vectors (like mosquitoes which cause malaria). In addition to these factors, the rise of chronic diseases like heart attacks, cancer, respiratory diseases and diabetes is causing more deaths in Africa every year.

According to a recent WHO Report, infectious diseases are the leading causes of sickness and death in developing regions like Africa. Of these infectious diseases, malaria, HIV/AIDS, pneumonia, tuberculosis, diarrhoeal diseases, and measles make up more than 90 percent of over 10 million disease-related deaths that occur in Africa every year. Most of these diseases can be treated with the right drugs.

Africa’s serious disease problem has led to a huge and rapidly growing demand for drugs, medicines and other pharmaceutical products. The size of Africa’s pharmaceutical market is expected to reach nearly $45 billion by the year 2020 and entrepreneurs like Uganda’s Emmanuel Katongole are already taking advantage of this huge opportunity. Both giant drug manufacturing companies (inside and outside Africa) and small neighbourhood pharmacies are reaping huge benefits while they help to fight and reduce Africa’s huge disease burden. Our detailed article: ’Drugs and Medicines – How to tap into the million dollar market that helps to fight diseases in Africa’ takes a very close look at the opportunities in this sector.