Adebayo Alonge may not have seen the Murder Chose Me TV series or have heard the host and retired homicide detective, Rodney Demery, say in the intro “I didn’t choose Murder, Murder chose me”. He didn’t even say those words in the headline, but the similarity in what informed their choices of career is striking: personal experience with death.
Murder came for Demery’s mother, and a few years later, his brother. For the ailing Adebayo Alonge, murder was packaged as fake drugs. Gladly, he’s alive to tell the story.
Data from the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control reveals that the agency destroyed counterfeit drugs worth over $13 million in 2018 alone. Years before then, one found its way to the home of the Alonges.
At age 14, Adebayo Alonge slept in the night and did not wake up throughout the next day. And indeed, for the next 20 days as well he fell into a coma and was placed on life support. He had earlier been diagnosed with asthma and his father bought him Ventolin tablets from a street chemist in Ibadan, Oyo State, Nigeria.
He was taken to the hospital where it was discovered that the Ventolin tablet he took was a fake as it did not contain salbutamol sulfate – the active ingredient it is supposed to have. The unknown constituents had driven the young Adebayo Alonge into a deep sleep that could have led to The Big Sleep.
“I was almost killed by a fake drug because someone in Africa wanted to make a quick buck,” he said.
“Just as many African societies in the past, sacrificed their kind people for money and sold their kind as slaves for alcohol, many Africans continue today with the mentality of the easy dispensability of the African life. If I can make money at the expense of some other African, why not?” This is the same mentality that pervades Africa today that allows fake drugs to thrive in Africa,” he said.
“The foreigners seeing the Africans having no value for one another- support our quest to destroy one another. But that god-forsaken counterfeiter that almost killed me- made a mistake. Some men cower from their terror, others are activated by their terror.
“Fake drugs activated me and I have made it my life mission to end fake drugs. Either I succeed or I die trying – no going back. I devoted the last 15 years of my life to solving this problem – 10 years while based in Africa. My ideas only started to be taken seriously when I got into Yale. What I worked 10+ years for in Africa to no avail before moving to the USA, took off within months of showing up at the Yale campus. This is the power of a society that supports its best.
“This episode motivated me to go to pharmacy school and ultimately research into combating the fake drug scourge,” he said.
According to the United Nations (UN), 700,000 deaths a year are caused by fake malaria and tuberculosis drugs alone. In Africa, the annual death toll from counterfeit drugs is around 100,000. The UN says 1 in 10 drugs sold in developing countries are most likely fake and estimates the industry to be worth around $30 billion. The situation is dire in Nigeria with the absence of universal health coverage (UHC) in rural areas. This has left the field free for unscrupulous quacks to dispense fake drugs and even carry out minor surgeries in non-sterile wards, using the cheapest of supplies and materials. In rural areas, people often rely on herbs despite knowing that western medicine is more effective. Poor infrastructure and the cost of the drugs make most resort to using the herbs.
The Mission
After recovering from the near-death experience, Adebayo Alonge began his journey into the world of drugs. He attended King’s College, Lagos, between 1996 and 2002 and studied pharmacy at the University of Ibadan where he graduated with a first-class honor in 2008. He examined the significance of information communication technology to pharmaceutical practice in his final year project.
To prepare him for the world of business, he bagged a Master of Business Administration degree (with a focus on Strategy and Finance) at the Lagos Business School – Pan-Atlantic University. He didn’t stop there as he also holds a Master of Advanced Management from Yale University – Yale School of Management. Adebayo Alonge has more than eight years of experience in market development and strategy consulting across Africa, working with BCG, BASF, Roche, and Sanofi.
In late 2017 he co-founded the start-up RxAll – developing a handheld nano-scanner based on AI technology that enables users to verify the authenticity of medicines and help stop the scourge of fake drugs.
The RxAll team has three co-founders, Adebayo Alonge as the CEO, Amy Kao as the CMO, and Wei Liu as the CTO. They met at Yale University and decided to build out a product the Nigerian was initially working on back home.
The company was established to tackle the menace of fake drugs and invented the RxScanner for instant drug testing. The solution is “a miniature nano scanner that uses AI to identify drugs and assess their quality on mobile phones”. The RxAll platform is driven by the mission “to get the highest quality medicines into the hands of patients, no matter where they are”.
“We are using AI and molecular spectrometry. The hardware itself is a connected IoT with a programmable AI sensor,” he said.
Challenges
Between 2015 and 2016, the early days of RxAll, the company came up with its prototype – the RxScanner. However, the company was running out of the initial funding Yale had provided. Adebayo Alonge sought the support of one of the largest local venture capitalist funds in Lagos, Nigeria. The feedback he got cannot be blunter.
“Drug quality control is the purview of the government,” he was told.
“This idea makes no sense. If you get some traction, come back.”
In 2019, it was the VC that came back to RxAll.
“This same fund wants to invest in RxAll and claim they were there when it all started,” Adebayo Alonge, said.
“If they had come in three years ago when we were struggling and we first approached them, their investment would have been up 1500% today. Where do people burn bridges and expect you to send a yacht?”
The turnaround in fortune came when the company decided to build an eCommerce platform to distribute authenticated drugs. It was one of the first digital procurement platforms in Africa in 2016. The target market – the poorest and most affected by fake drugs – was the semi-urban regions of Western Nigeria outside Lagos. Within a few months, RxAll was able to build a multi-million Naira drug distribution platform with over 100 pharmacies and hospitals.
The platform sustained the company and helped validate its drug testing activities. The company was able to fund the development of its second prototype of the RxScanner. In 2017, the company launched the eCommerce platform and deployed this second prototype in Kenya. There, it signed up two of the largest distributors and several pharmacies. A renewed funding challenge put a stop to its expansion plans.
Continuous pitching of its proposal secured new funding from Europe. Adebayo Alonge cannot forget what the C-Suites of the company told him.
“This one idea of instant drug testing is so revolutionary and insane that it is likely to fail. But if it succeeds, these guys will be pioneering a new industry and will make it big”.
These words and gestures left an impression on him.
“These were Europeans who invested in us – in RxAll, a company led by an African,” he said.
“And they invested in us despite knowing that our probability of success at the time was probably closer to 0 than 1. So, when someone talks of racism – I know it exists – but my experience has been that it is often people who do not look like me who have done the most to support my mission.”
This singular investment from Europe gave RxAll the validation it needed as it was able to secure new tech partnerships, upgrade its prototype and launch the RxScanner platform commercially in October 2018 – three years after Adebayo Alonge first pitched the idea at the Yale SOM Entrepreneurship Lab.
So far, RxAll has deployed around 70 devices to the food and drug administration agencies of five African countries as well as 200 pharmacies across Nigeria and Kenya. The company’s goal is to provide every pharmacy with such a device across Africa.
“In terms of what the future holds for RxAII, our goal is to get out solutions into the rest of West Africa in the immediate time, over the long term, the next one-two years, we would continue to build out our redistribution, and collaboration awareness in Southeast Asia, and Latin America, and what we are essentially building is a multinational startup,” Adebayo Alonge said.
Awards
Adebayo Alonge was moved to the point of tears when his co-founded company was declared winner of the 2019 BNP Paribas Group Deep Tech Award, also known as the Hello Tomorrow deepTech contest. It competed with about 4,500 deep tech startups from 119 countries for a sum of €100,000.
He is the first African to win this contest, which took place in Paris on March 13 and 15, 2020 during the Hello Tomorrow Global Summit. Eighty finalists in 12 categories made it to the finals.
Adebayo Alonge walked away with the star prize for inventing the handheld nano-scanners used in detecting fake drugs in real-time.
In 2020, RxAll was named one of the Top 15 startups by G Startups Worldwide at the Global Mobile Internet Conference in Jakarta, Indonesia.
Adebayo Alonge is the recipient of the following awards: Adekunle Ajasin Award for Academic Excellence in 2008; Mandela Washington Fellowship from[11] the United States Department of State for outstanding contributions to business and entrepreneurship in Africa (2014); Global Social Venture Award (2016) from InnovateHealth, Yale; 2018 China Award for Best DeepTech Platform in the World;[12] Winner, Deep Tech Award with a €100,000 prize, 2019; Grand Winner & Digital Health Winner, Hello Tomorrow Global Challenge 2019; Young Innovator – YouWin!; Regional finalist, Hult Prize Global Case Competition; and awards in person from Barack Obama (ex-US President) and Justin Trudeau (prime minister of Canada).
Conclusion
Adebayo Alonge and RxAll hope to stay focused on its mission – to save lives.
“Especially the lives of the poor in the developing world and especially in Africa where the local elite would rather invest in money than in their people.,” he said.
“We will keep fighting for the right of the African to have access to good quality drugs. If you are not helping us with our mission, get the hell out of our way. RxAll is more than a device or a platform. RxAll is an unstoppable global movement for safe drugs. We will succeed in making drugs safe for everyone across the world. Hating crabs and criminal fake drugs syndicates take note.”
If they don’t take note, death will choose them.
Adebayo Alonge on…
Universal health coverage
Extending UHC is vital if we are to reduce out-of-pocket payments that typically and all too often encourage patronage of low-quality, frequently counterfeit medicines, and quack doctors and pharmacists. We need to create professionally run health centres and make these more accessible and affordable: the way to do this is by creating incentives for private healthcare entrepreneurs through reducing regulatory barriers, improving regulation, building up rural infrastructures such as roads and power grids. I would like to see private-sector-run health centres within six miles of each community.
Financing the healthcare system
Private and public sectors need to work together. My view is that health subsidies provided by the local government are required to improve access to quality treatments and medicines and make these affordable. Of course, there might be resistance because rural people are used to having healthcare free, even if it is substandard. What would help is, say, using mobile phones to operate healthcare micro-subscriptions for every rural dweller, with local government meeting the costs. My company uses methods such as cross-subsidies, and service contracts to deliver solutions. This is the best way to strengthen healthcare systems.
Digital health solutions
Developing Africa’s deep-tech capacities is vital. First, we need a robust IP framework to unleash local R&D competition and enable investment in local research. Second, we should create tax incentives for local investment into commercialising university research – and, fourth, do more to that end to retain our best brains at home rather than see them drain overseas. And we need to start from the earliest age by schooling the youngest pupils in the use of IT and science. I and others are working to create a digital city in Ibadan, Nigeria, and a network of digital skills work centres in municipal schools. Digital health solutions such as the nano-scanners my company makes play an increasingly important role in ensuring quality health care.
Indeed, most substandard and fake medicines are imported so it is crucial to strengthen the local manufacturing of essential pharmaceutical products. Increased in-country production of medicines has many positive benefits and, as in the US and China, African governments need to adopt their national strategies for supporting innovation. As I said at a recent Paris conference: “Africans cannot be non-aligned. They need to invest in, buy from and enable their deep-tech industries – ones infused with African values.”