Summary:
- MYDAWA is creating a new healthcare market in Kenya and Uganda by integrating pharmacies, telehealth, diagnostics, and delivery to make quality healthcare more affordable, accessible, and convenient for underserved populations.
- Nonconsumption compounds, just as consumption does. Limited access to healthcare reduces productivity, income, and the ability to afford other goods and services, creating a cycle of nonconsumption that constrains economic growth.
- Africa’s vast nonconsumption represents an enormous market-creation opportunity. MYDAWA’s growth demonstrates how businesses can unlock unmet demand, expand access to essential services, and generate both economic and social impact.
MYDAWA is a healthcare company operating in Kenya and Uganda that is making quality medicines and other healthcare services more affordable and accessible. By integrating physical pharmacies, online ordering, telehealth, diagnostics, and last-mile delivery, the company is building a new model for delivering healthcare. Studying MYDAWA’s growth has reinforced something I’ve long believed and often write about: the vastness of nonconsumption in Africa represents an enormous opportunity for market creation.
What makes MYDAWA particularly interesting is how it is addressing the barriers that have historically made healthcare difficult to consume. By integrating consultations, pharmacies, diagnostics, and delivery into one platform, the company is reducing the cost, complexity, and inconvenience of accessing care. Rather than simply competing with existing pharmacies for customers, MYDAWA has an opportunity to expand the market by enabling people who previously struggled to access healthcare to become consumers.
Access to quality medicines and complementary healthcare services for millions of people in many high-income countries is near universal. For billions living in low-income countries, especially countries in Africa, access is low.
A 2025 household study in Uganda, for instance, found that being near a healthcare facility was not the same as being able to consume healthcare. More than 90% of those surveyed could reach a facility, however, only 6% could afford the services offered. In Kenya, one assessment found that the availability of essential medicines in public and private facilities was approximately 44% and 72% respectively. Even when patients can reach healthcare facilities and afford treatment, there is no guarantee that the medicines they need will be available.
In our research, this phenomenon is called nonconsumption. Nonconsumption is the inability of an entity (person or organization) to purchase and use (consume) a product or service required to relieve a struggle. This inability to purchase can arise from the product’s cost, inconvenience and complexity, along with a host of other factors—none of which tend to be limitations for the rich, skilled, and powerful in society.
High-income economies tend to have ample consumption while low-income ones tend to have ample nonconsumption. The key about consumption and nonconsumption is that they compound. For example, when a person is sick and can access affordable medicine, she can recover, return to work, earn an income, and provide for her family. Her ability to work creates opportunities for further consumption in the economy. Consumption, in a sense, breeds more consumption.
Alternatively, the same is true for nonconsumption. When a person in Kenya or Uganda is sick with a fever and cannot access quality medicines, that individual must either go to work sick or miss work entirely. Their productivity suffers, their income declines, and their ability to afford other goods and services diminishes. What begins as nonconsumption of medicine can quickly lead to nonconsumption in other things in the economy. Nonconsumption, too, compounds.
In healthcare, this compounding mechanism is all too common. In Kenya and Uganda, per capita healthcare spending is roughly $85 and $45 respectively. In the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom, per capita spending on healthcare is roughly $13,400, $6,400, and $5,400 respectively. Inability to purchase affordable medicines impacts a pharmaceutical company’s ability to invest in new and better drugs for future generations. When consumption stalls, so does progress.
This compounding mechanism is all around us in other parts of the economy. It is a reinforcing cycle in which consumption today creates the capacity and demand for more consumption tomorrow. Nonconsumption creates the opposite cycle. This is why the work of MYDAWA, and many other market-creating organizations, is so important.
In 2025, the company filled more than two million pharmacy orders and executed over 155,000 teleconsultations in its 35 pharmacies in both countries. This is progress. However, to get a sense of the vastness of nonconsumption of healthcare services in general and medicines in particular in these two countries, consider the following.
In 2025, CVS’ pharmacy business, one of the largest retail pharmacy chains in the United States, generated almost $140 billion in revenue across approximately 9,000 locations. Although the United States operates in a vastly different healthcare and economic environment, comparing CVS with MYDAWA helps illustrate the enormous differences in the scale of healthcare consumption across markets. It also raises the question of how large companies like MYDAWA could become if they successfully enabled millions more people to access affordable healthcare.
When investors consider Africa, they should think about the possibilities, not just the problems. They should realize that the continent remains the world’s most fertile ground for creating new markets, serving a young nonconsuming population, and creating significant transformational impact.
