Olamide Okulaja
Building markets that make health work.
A physician who learned to price health systems. For a decade he has argued, in ministries, development banks and boardrooms, that Africa's health gap is a market-design problem before it is a money problem.
Pro bono adviser, Lagos State Ministries of Health and Commerce
Grants end. Budgets shift. What lasts is care that someone can price, insure, finance and buy.
That conviction runs from community health insurance in Ogun State, through 68 revitalised clinics in Lagos and Delta, to pharmacy software that now turns the daily sales of 6,000 drug shops into evidence that lenders, manufacturers and governments can act on.
What he argues, and why.
Money follows value
Africa does not only lack health money. It lacks systems that can absorb it. Build the framework first, and capital follows.
"The solution with the Nigerian health sector is not on the financing, but in building frameworks and ecosystem that can absorb such financing."BusinessDay, 2018 → SustainabilityHealth is a business, so it can last
Clinics that cannot price, insurers that cannot pay and factories with no buyers fail the poor first. Commercial discipline is how care becomes permanent.
"If we don't view health as business, we would find out that it will not be sustainable at the end of the day."Vanguard, 2018 → Medicine self-sufficiencyDemand is the missing collateral
Pharmacies, lenders and local manufacturers have never been wired into one system. Verified demand is the wire.
"The gap is not in resources. It is in the connection between three layers that have never been brought into a single system."Vanguard, 2026 → Universal health coverageUHC is a journey
Coverage is built in financed, sequenced steps: mandatory insurance, enrolment, quality standards and private operators, one budget line at a time.
"UHC is a journey, not a destination."LISDEL, 2021 → Digital healthTechnology is the means
Innovators fall in love with the product. The point is the outcome: a correct diagnosis, a stocked shelf, a paid claim.
"A lot of times we look at our innovations as the end to a means meanwhile, it is the means to an end."GDHF Nairobi, 2024 → Enterprise & the creative economySkill before scale
Cheap money without capability is a trap. Pair loans with accelerators, start small, and use the tools already in your hand.
"It's not just about the loan, it's also about the skill for these people to scale."QED.NG, 2026 →
Tested in real markets.
Pharmacies and drug shops running Maisha Meds' free point-of-sale software.
Nigeria · Kenya · Uganda · TanzaniaHealth facilities revitalised through access-to-finance models with the Bank of Industry and Medical Credit Fund.
43 Lagos · 25 DeltaHMOs in the Lagos Private Health Partnership, priced on a certified actuarial framework.
Lagos State Health Scheme LawLASMECO MSME matching fund with the Bank of Industry and Sterling Bank.
Lagos, 2026African Health Markets for Equity, where he served as interim partnership lead.
Gates Foundation · DFIDYears across clinical practice, development finance, government and enterprise.
Since 2005Three layers, one signal.
Verified demand
Demand recorded at the pharmacy counter, verified and organised, is the signal that lets lenders and manufacturers move together.
The gap is not in resources. It is in the connection between three layers that have never been brought into a single system.
Vanguard, 16 April 2026We must begin to look at what we can do with what we have against always advocating for more.
Healthcare Nigeria Conference · Vanguard, 10 July 2018In 2018 the headline read "Nigeria must see healthcare delivery as business, not social service." He has not walked it back. The argument behind it, that sustainable care needs a working business model, now underpins pharmacy software that turns a drug shop's sales into a lender's evidence.
Latest dispatches.
Lagos, Kaduna, Keffi, Nairobi.
