Investors update: June 5 2023 - Helium Health gets $30m to power healthcare financing in Africa

Helium Health gets $30m to power healthcare financing in Africa

Highlights

• Helium Health, a Nigerian healthtech startup, has raised $30 million in a Series B funding round to expand the reach of its fintech product, HeliumCredit. 
• The company provides software-as-a-service tools, financing, and insights for healthcare providers and public health organizations. 
• With its latest round of funding, Helium Health has raised a combined amount of $42.12 million, after a $10 million Series A round in 2020. More so, the funding follows a deal involving the UAE-based healthcare provider-patient interaction platform Meddy.

Source: TechCabal

Our Takeaway

Africa’s healthcare sector is heavily undercapitalized, with a financing deficit of $66 billion per year. Healthcare funding disbursed by African governments declined by 8% over the last 15 years and 57% of private health facilities in Nigeria never access external funding sources. These highlight the challenges Helium is looking to address via its Credit product, which it claims has given over $3.5 million in loans to over 200 healthcare facilities and plans to roll out in Kenya this year.

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Afreximbank partners Fiducia to boost supply chain finance

Highlights

• The African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) and the supply chain financing company, Fiducia, have entered into a deal to promote factoring across the continent and help reduce the supply chain finance gap.
• Afreximbank will provide Fiducia with additional liquidity for trade facilitation through factoring on the latter’s marketplace while also exploring collaboration opportunities with Fiducia and Access Corporation for payables financing across African markets.
• SMEs contribute the majority of economic output and employment generation in Africa. Greater access to bank financing will, therefore, enhance the growth of this vital segment.

Source: ABC

Our Takeaway

Across Africa, there is a clear supply chain finance gap for SMEs that is not being met by traditional banking institutions and other lending services companies. As such, businesses miss out on significant business opportunities without the requisite capital to support their transactions. Fiducia’s business is yet another example in Africa’s alternative lending market focused on SMEs, which is gathering momentum thanks to the emergence of financial technology (fintech) on the continent. 

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Oil prices rise on Saudi Arabia-led OPEC+ production cuts

Highlights

• Oil advanced at the week’s open after Saudi Arabia pledged to shave an extra 1 million barrel-a-day from its production in July.
• International benchmark Brent crude futures traded at $77.89 a barrel at 9:50 a.m. London time, up 2.3%, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate futures stood at $73.50, over 2.4% higher.
• The cut takes output to the lowest level in years in an effort to stabilize the market, with the Kingdom promising to do “whatever is necessary to bring stability to this market” following an OPEC+ meeting over the weekend.

Source: Bloomberg

Our Takeaway

OPEC+ pumps approximately 40% of the world’s crude and policy decisions can have a significant impact on prices. On April 3, several producers of the oil cartel revealed a combined 1.66 million barrels per day of production declines until the end of this year. And many market watchers, including analysts at Goldman Sachs, had expected the alliance to keep output unchanged this time around. Higher oil prices are crucial for a host of major African countries, such as Nigeria and Angola,  whose economies are reliant on energy exports.