ECOWAS Startup Awards: HubPharm Wins Top Prize
Abuja, 30 September 2026
HubPharm Africa has won the first prize of $30,000 at the second ECOWAS Startup Awards in Abuja, taking the top position in a regional field of 60 finalists drawn from 12 member states.
Our Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, Tope Kareem, accepted the award on behalf of the team.
“I want to say a very big thank you to ECOWAS for believing in startups like us, because we are truly building something that can change the face of Africa,” she said.
What happened at the ECOWAS Startup Awards
The ECOWAS Startup Awards closed on 30 September with live pitches from 20 finalists. HubPharm Africa took the first prize from a total pool of $65,000.
| Position | Company | Country | Prize |
| First | HubPharm Africa | Nigeria | $30,000 |
| Second | Gaynako | Senegal | $20,000 |
| Third | My Opinion | Côte d’Ivoire | $15,000 |
| Fourth | Baykart | The Gambia | |
| Fifth | Afrikan Coders | Cape Verde |
The programme ran from 21 to 30 September, beginning virtually and moving to an in-person phase in Abuja from 28 to 30 September.
Tope Kareem led the pitch in Abuja
Tope has run HubPharm’s operations since we started, and the discipline that won in Abuja is the same discipline that moves medicine to a patient in Ikorodu on the day it matters.
She is a licensed pharmacist and our Chief Executive Officer, and she built the operating model that allows a chronic care patient to stay on treatment for years rather than months. Standing on that stage in Abuja, she represented a team that has done the unglamorous work of refills, cold chain and follow-up calls.
You can read more about Tope Kareem and her work here.
How the ECOWAS Startup Awards selected its winners
The ECOWAS Commission organised the competition alongside the Pan African Alliance of Small and Medium Industries and investment promotion agencies from across West Africa.
According to the Commission, the ECOWAS Startup Awards attracted 8,679 registrations. From those the organisers assessed 1,499 qualified applications and chose 60 finalists across 12 ECOWAS member states.
Startups competed across six tracks:
- EdTech
- FinTech
- HealthTech
- AgriTech and food systems
- CleanTech and green innovation
- Tourism, hospitality and travel technology
HubPharm Africa competed in HealthTech and won the overall first prize across all six.
What the organisers of the ECOWAS Startup Awards said
Dehpue Yenpea Zuo, ECOWAS Commissioner for Economic Affairs and Agriculture, framed the awards around impact rather than prize money.
“The money is not what we are thinking about, but the idea, the message of saving lives beyond your border,” Zuo said. In the Commission’s own statement he added: “Our ambition is not simply to produce award winners. It is to produce businesses that survive, scale.”
Peter Oluonye, Acting Director of Private Sector and Industry at the ECOWAS Commission, made clear that the region intends to follow the outcomes. “We are going to follow the money,” he said.
That accountability suits us. We would rather answer for how many patients stay on treatment than for an award certificate.
What the ECOWAS Startup Awards win unlocks
The prize is the smallest part of what the ECOWAS Startup Awards deliver. The top three winners gain access to investor deal rooms, with organisers targeting roughly $5 million in potential deals across the six tracks.
All winners also enter:
- A six month acceleration and mentorship programme
- The ECOWAS Startup Network
- The newly announced ECOWAS Private Sector Development Academy, an online learning platform for entrepreneurs
The Commission has not yet published details of how it will disburse the prize money or how it will structure the acceleration programme.
Why a chronic care company winning matters
A regional field covering fintech, agriculture and clean energy chose a medicine access company. That is worth pausing on.
Across West Africa, most patients living with hypertension, diabetes, sickle cell disease and other long-term conditions pay for their care out of pocket. Treatment stops when money runs out, when a product is unavailable, or when nobody follows up. The clinical consequence of that interruption arrives years later as a stroke, an amputation or a crisis admission.
We built HubPharm Africa to close that gap. We operate a clinical pharmacy and medicine supply service for people living with long-term conditions, and WorldStage reported that we now serve more than 10,200 chronic care patients, built within 28 months of operation.
“Chronic care is infrastructure, not retail,” said Pharm. Sesan Kareem, Founder and President of HubPharm Africa. “A region that treats medicine access as investable is a region where fewer people die waiting for a refill.”
What comes next
The ECOWAS Startup Awards place us inside a regional network at exactly the point where we are extending beyond Nigeria. We intend to use the acceleration programme and the investor access it brings to do one thing: keep more patients on treatment for longer, in more countries.
Our thanks go to the ECOWAS Commission, to the Pan African Alliance of Small and Medium Industries, to the investment promotion agencies that supported the programme, and to the judges.
Most of all, our thanks go to the HubPharm team, and to the patients who trusted us with their treatment long before anyone was handing out prizes.
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About HubPharm Africa
HubPharm Africa is a tech-enabled specialty pharmacy and coordinated care platform based in Lagos, Nigeria. We source verified medicines through licensed channels, deliver across Nigeria, coordinate refills so treatment does not lapse, and put a pharmacist within reach of every patient we serve. HubPharm holds Nigerian company registration RC 1812043 and Pharmacists Council of Nigeria licence LAG20247B39C9.
Media enquiries: hubpharmnig@gmail.com
Address: 17 Ademola Osinowo Street, Ikosi Ketu, Lagos, Nigeria
Sources
- WorldStage, “Nigerian health tech startup clinches $30,000 star prize at ECOWAS Startup Awards”, 1 October 2026.
- ECOWAS Commission, “ECOWAS Startup Awards 2026: celebrating West Africa’s innovation and entrepreneurial potential”, 30 September 2026.
- ThisDay, reporting on the ECOWAS Startup Awards programme schedule, September 2026.