While Africa’s health systems are still reeling from the effects of the COVID pandemic, the adoption of digital health services has been revved in some countries. Telemedicine, the standout offering, witnessed massive adoption during the pandemic, and in the last five years, no other service has been launched more by healthtech startups.

However, a particular segment has achieved scale faster within the past year. These startups digitize the supply chain and distribution to providers. And according to a new report from Salient Advisory, a global healthcare consulting firm, this is the segment where the most impressive growth has occurred for Africa’s healthcare in the last 12 months.

Companies in this segment work with community pharmacies and lower-end providers such as drug shops to help stock products. Some include mPharma, Lifestores, Shelf Life, and Maisha Meds.

“The fastest traction we’re seeing are those helping the providers--those who interface with the customer like pharmacies, clinics, and hospitals--to digitize distribution to the consumer. That’s where the greatest traction has happened,” said Remi Adeseun, the director, Africa at Salient Advisory, to TechCrunch in an interview.

Salient surveyed over 80 companies across Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, and Uganda, 25% more than the number it tracked in its last report in 2021.

The models of these B2B companies mirror their retail e-commerce counterparts such as Wasoko and TradeDepot, as they use tech-enabled solutions to digitize medicine distribution to underserved pharmacies, drug shops, clinics, and hospitals.

As such, their growth has been rapid, Salient says. Lifestores, for instance, increased its outlets from 85 to 600 in Nigeria; Maisha Meds grew from 400 to 900 outlets across Kenya and Nigeria; Shelf Life has over 1,630 outlets in Kenya and Nigeria, up from 400 the year before.

The report says 36% of all-time funding reported by the health supply chain startups it profiled was raised in the last 12 months. However, the segment is yet to record the type of investments that have poured into B2B retail e-commerce in the previous two years.