Fern Capital and Futurize Partner to Advance Women's Health Innovation Across Africa
Futurize and Fern Capital are proud to announce a strategic partnership to accelerate innovation in women's and maternal healthcare across Africa. This collaboration is centered around the Futurize Incubator - a 6-month launchpad to identify and scale ventures tackling the most critical gaps in healthcare.
This partnership brings together Futurize's deep ecosystem expertise in building and scaling early-stage ventures with Fern Capital's investment focus on undercapitalized markets and FemTech. The Incubator provides cohort participants with mentorship, product development support, the tools to scale, and pathways to capital for their healthcare startup.
As part of the programme, Fern’s co-founders, Dr. Afua Basoah and Dr. Abigail Osei Kumi, will serve as advisors, specifically guiding entrepreneurs building solutions focused on maternal care, reproductive health, and early cancer screening.
Fern Capital’s co-founders, Dr. Abigail Osei Kumi and Dr. Afua Basoah
Commenting on the partnership, Dr. Abigail Osei Kumi said, "Women's health remains one of the most underinvested areas in global healthcare, despite the depth of the unmet need. At Fern Capital Group, we focus on conditions that affect women exclusively, disproportionately, or differently - areas that have historically received limited attention from both healthcare systems and investors. We believe the most important innovations will come from the markets where that need is greatest and partnering with Futurize gives us the opportunity to support founders building clinically grounded solutions designed to scale across African health systems."
A Gap Too Large to Ignore
Women account for 51% of the global population and drive 80% of healthcare spending, as reported by Fern Capital. Despite representing the majority of the global population, women remain underserved by traditional health systems - and the investment structures meant to support public health are failing to close the gap in ways that are both measurable and costly.
The World Economic Forum notes that despite living longer than men, women spend approximately 25% more of their lives in poor health or with a disability. A Foreign Policy Insight Brief reinforces this, finding that 66% of women in low- and middle-income countries face significant barriers to accessing quality healthcare. Together, these figures point to more than a funding gap - they reflect a systemic failure to treat women's health as an economic and social priority.
Women's health receives only 6% of global private healthcare innovation investment, according to the World Economic Forum - with FemTech accounting for just 2% of that, per the Foreign Policy Insight Brief.
The cost of this neglect is immense. The World Economic Forum estimates that closing the women's healthcare gap represents a $100 billion economic opportunity, not just a moral imperative. Better health outcomes for women translate directly into stronger labour participation, greater household prosperity, and more resilient national economies. The case for investing in women's healthcare innovation is irrefutable.
Why Women's and Maternal Health in Africa Demands Urgent Action
Africa's healthcare landscape has long been urban-centric, underfunded, and not designed around women's needs, leaving vast populations without access to adequate care for far too long. The consequences of this neglect are visible across every dimension of women's health.
Maternal health outcomes remain among the most pressing concerns. According to the Report of the Commission on Women's Health in the African Region, Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for more than half of all maternal deaths worldwide, an alarming statistic. Beyond maternal health, cervical and breast cancer screening remain severely constrained by inadequate infrastructure and limited resources, per the NIH. And heavy menstrual bleeding, chronically underreported across the continent, is estimated to affect between 10% and 30% of women in the region, a range that itself reflects how little data exists.
Collectively, these challenges carry a substantial economic cost. Unaddressed women's healthcare needs directly impact labour productivity and national income, compounding existing inequalities and constraining the productive capacity of Africa's workforce. Meeting the specific health needs of women by advancing Africa's healthcare systems is not only a matter of equity, it is a prerequisite for sustainable economic growth.
Closing the Gap: What It Actually Takes
Structural reform is long overdue. According to the Africa CDC, many countries across the continent have not been able to commit 15% of their national budgets to healthcare, with women bearing a disproportionate share of the consequences. Yet the United Nations Population Fund highlights that investment in women's health yields among the highest returns of any government expenditure, making the case for prioritising the funding gap in women's healthcare not just compelling, but economically sound.
Dr. Abigail Osei Kumi, Co-Founder at Fern Capital, believes that bringing about real systemic change in women's health requires more than increased funding; it requires supporting clinically credible innovation from the earliest stages. She emphasizes that “many health technologies fail because they lack strong clinical validation or delivery models that integrate effectively into healthcare systems.”
Innovations in the African FemTech sector are already underway to tackle this long-standing disadvantage. Dr. Kumi observes that "a new generation of entrepreneurs are addressing long-standing gaps in women's healthcare, from maternal health monitoring to reproductive health services and early cancer detection." Yet while many receive support from grant-funded programmes and NGOs, they are not always structured for scale.
She adds that Fern backs founders who "understand both the clinical problem and the operational realities of the systems they are building within - because that combination is what produces solutions that can reach women across the continent."
How This Partnership Moves the Needle
Fern Capital and Futurize have partnered to power the Futurize Incubator, combining Fern Capital's expertise across healthcare, finance, and impact investing with Futurize's track record in health innovation and early-stage venture building.
The Incubator is a six-month programme supporting founders working across three priority areas: Oncology & Non-Communicable Diseases, Women & Maternal Health, and Digital Health & Biotech.
Founders will receive personalised coaching from leading industry advisors, with mentorship spanning tech, legal, and finance. Through interactive workshops, they will build, refine, and test their healthtech ventures - developing scalable business models, validating their target users, and working toward a minimum viable product.
Through Futurize's partnerships with VCs and angel investors, founders will also have the opportunity to pitch directly to investors.
Building on this year's focus on women's and maternal health, Fern Capital co-founders, Dr. Afua Basoah and Dr. Abigail Osei Kumi, will bring their combined clinical and investment expertise to the programme.
With women's healthcare receiving just 6% of global innovation investment despite representing a $100 billion opportunity, the Futurize Incubator represents something rare - a concrete, structured response to a failure that has gone unaddressed for too long.
Are you a founder?
If you are building in healthcare in Africa, we want to hear from you. Apply to the Futurize Incubator today! (Apply by May 11th, 2026)
Are you a potential partner or founder mentor?
Reach out to moritz@futurize.studio or reha@futurize.studio. We'd love to explore how we can work together.
About Futurize
Futurize is a venture-building platform working with universities and ecosystem partners to empower young innovators to launch impactful startups. Through programs such as the Futurize Academy and Incubator, Futurize has engaged thousands of students across more than 30 universities in Africa, supporting the creation of early-stage ventures addressing healthcare, climate, and technology challenges.
About Fern Capital
Fern Capital Group is a $25 million early-stage venture fund investing in the global women's health market - one of the fastest-growing yet most underfunded sectors in healthcare. Through the Fern Dignity Fund, we back scalable, clinically validated, tech-enabled solutions that predict, diagnose, and manage health challenges affecting women across both Global North and South markets. Founded by Dr. Afua Basoah and Dr. Abigail Osei Kumi, we operate across the UK and Europe, and across Africa in Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, and Egypt.
Partner with us
We are a social impact firm accelerating growth for organizations, governments & universities. Collaborate with Futurize to spearhead entrepreneurship programs, startup incubators, and inclusive innovation strategies to generate groundbreaking ideas and businesses for a sustainable future.
