Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Clivate Maiba. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, Clivate thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

when I worked as a clinician I could see my patients suffering from prolonged illnesses and succumbing to preventable deaths, this wasn’t because I was incompetent but because my facility faced challenges in receiving life-saving medical commodities due to poor logistics systems. also when I prescribed medications, patients would come back weeks later with a worsened condition because they couldn’t find the needed medication at the nearby pharmacy. when I researched I discovered that there were over 1800 rural health facilities in Zambia that faced the same challenges and put at risk the 10.1 million people they serve not to access the needed health services.
It was sad that women could also die during childbirth because there was no available blood to transfuse them, This challenged me to find a way on how I can contribute In improving health access.
To solve this problem we started a startup known as Denga health to improve health access by leveraging on a digital health platform, electric bikes, mobile clinics and electric bikes to transport life saving medical commodities such as blood, vaccines, contraceptives, maternal products, and medical samples.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I am a trained clinician, public health scientist and entrepreneur. A friend of mine from Indonesia invited me to participate in a virtual hackathon hosted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I had no prior background in tech, innovation or understanding of how to leverage technology to solve most of the pressing issues. after that experience and exposure, I developed a passion for innovation and technology. I then started to combine my skills in clinical, public health, entrepreneurship and technology and innovation to solve most of the pressing issues.
with the experience I had, working at a health facility and doing community work, I was able to come up with a tech solution with friends who experienced similar challenges and we brainstormed on the use of drones in improving health access. As time went by we started improving our system and discovering more sustainable ways such as the use of electric motorbikes and mobile ambulances.
Our solution improves health access in underserved communities, taking healthcare to as close to the people. we also empowering local health centres with no in-house laboratories by connecting them to the state of the art laboratories through our platform. it takes days to get medical commodities to hard to reach health facilities via the traditional use of trucks but our Drone solution will make deliveries in less than 2 hours for a reasonable distance.

Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?

Networking is a very important skill in the life of an entrepreneur, as an entrepreneur we need to find ourselves in places and events that can allow us to network with others. I met my co-founder at the MIT hackathon, we were the only Zambians and he reached out to me. After the hackathon, we met for coffee with his other friend and we realized we shared similar interests and our skills could complement each other. That’s how we started building Denga Health.

How do you keep your team’s morale high?

From my experience working with a team, I realized that building relationships through activities, eating food together, playing games and having ice-breakers before team meetings helps Forster good relationships and creates the motivation to teams.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.dengahealth.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dengahealth?mibextid=LQQJ4d
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/denga-logistics-limited/