Presibo Founder, Tony Elumelu Foundation’s $5,000 Grant Recipient, Jerry Nwobodo, Accelerates Africa’s Digital Health Transformation with AI Powered Automation

For more than a decade, the Tony Elumelu Foundation (TEF) has stood at the forefront of Africa’s entrepreneurial revolution, funding bold ideas, empowering young founders, and enabling solutions that directly reshape communities across the continent. In a region where innovation often emerges from necessity, TEF has become a launchpad for startups tackling some of Africa’s most pressing challenges from energy and agriculture to education and healthcare.

Today, one of those rising innovators is Jerry Nwobodo, founder of Presibo, a rapidly emerging health-tech platform leveraging artificial intelligence to close critical gaps in healthcare access for underserved populations. The TEF $5,000 seed grant to Presibo is more than a funding milestone but a validation of the urgent need for smarter, more connected and more equitable healthcare systems across Africa. Today, users can access Presibo’s services seamlessly through their mobile app, web app, or even by call and text, making quality care reachable for families regardless of device, literacy, or location.
Presibo’s mission is clear. To make healthcare personal, digital and accessible for every African, regardless of income or location. With AI-assisted diagnostics, remote doctor access, workflow automation and tools designed for both patients and medical professionals, the platform offers a lifeline for millions facing long wait times, fragmented systems, and costly care.

Nwobodo, a tech trailblazer whose journey into health innovation was sparked by the stark disparities he witnessed in rural medical access during his childhood, founded Presibo to bridge that gap. At the heart of the company’s portfolio is Presibo Flow AI, an intelligent triage and diagnostics assistant designed to empower frontline health workers with real-time decision-making tools. The grant, drawn from TEF’s flagship Entrepreneurship Programme, a pan-African initiative that has empowered over 18,000 entrepreneurs since 2015 with $100 million in non-repayable seed capital, provides the runway Presibo needs to accelerate development. These funds will directly fuel early-stage costs, including software enhancements, cloud computing credits, and the meticulous annotation of data in local languages like Yoruba, Igbo, and Hausa, ensuring the tool resonates deeply with Nigeria’s diverse populations.

For Jerry Nwobodo and his team of co-founders, comprising seasoned medical doctors, Dr. Enny AIkodon and Dr. Derrick Udah, this is more than a cash infusion. It is credibility in a sector where trust is as vital as technology. TEF, renowned for its rigorous vetting that prioritizes scalability, social impact and sustainability, has long served as a beacon for emerging African ventures. Selection by such an institution broadcasts a powerful market signal to investors, potential partners, and even regulatory bodies. It validates Presibo’s model as being viable, transformative and poised to redefine how AI intersects with public health in resource-strapped environments.

The ripple effects extend far beyond the balance sheet. TEF’s ecosystem, a vibrant network comprising over 54 African alumni founders, unlocks invaluable mentorship, pathways to subsequent funding rounds, and collaborative opportunities that could fast-track pilot deployments in clinics from the bustling markets of Aba to the remote villages of Benue State. Imagine a community health extension worker in Kano, armed with a smartphone app that triages symptoms in real-time, flagging critical cases for urgent referral while optimizing scarce resources: that’s the promise Presibo Flow AI holds, now supercharged by this strategic alliance.

In the broader landscape of Nigerian innovation, where startups routinely grapple with funding droughts, infrastructural bottlenecks, and talent shortages, Nwobodo’s triumph signals a quiet but powerful revolution. TEF’s entrepreneurship programme long celebrated for catalyzing over 400,000 direct and indirect jobs across Africa has found in Presibo a venture capable of magnifying that legacy at home.
“The TEF seed grand is highly needed to scale faster, strengthen our clinical operations and employ more young Nigerians into meaningful healthcare and tech jobs. Every kobo pushes us closer to hiring, training and building at a level that lifts families and communities,” Nwobodo says.
With Presibo’s rapid adoption curve and its expanding network of medical professionals, the impact of this support could ripple far beyond digital clinics, reaching households, hospitals, and underserved regions across the country.

As Nigeria grapples with a healthcare system strained by a doctor-to-patient ratio of 1:2,500, far below the World Health Organization’s benchmark, ventures like Presibo emerge as lifelines, blending cutting-edge tech with grassroots empathy.

With this momentum, the startup is now laser-focused on proving that AI-assisted healthcare automation isn’t a luxury for the elite but a scalable solution for thousands of medical facilities and he masses. As doors swing open to larger partnerships, Presibo stands on the cusp of scaling from prototype to pan-African powerhouse.

Presibo has built on this success. Early pilots caught the eye of global accelerators like MIT Solve. The startup earned a spot as a semifinalist in its 2024 Global Health Equity Challenge. Presibo also took part in the 2024 Africa Impact Challenge in collaboration with the University of Toronto. It stands as one of the startups supported by the Lagos State Employment Trust Fund (LSETF) which helps create jobs and spark innovation in Nigeria’s tech scene.

At a time when Africa is brimming with young talent and urgent healthcare gaps, Jerry Nwobodo represents what is possible when ingenuity meets opportunity. The TEF’s $5,000 seed grant is a spark with potential to fuel a product positioned in a market expected to hit multi-billion-dollar growth within the decade. If Presibo continues on its trajectory, it could join the ranks of Nigeria’s few billion-dollar unicorn status companies by reshaping how millions access healthcare.