WEBVTT 00:00:05.099 --> 00:00:08.599 Hello, and welcome to the So What podcast, in 00:00:08.599 --> 00:00:11.119 which political economic analyst J .P. Landman 00:00:11.119 --> 00:00:13.919 discusses the issues uppermost in the minds of 00:00:13.919 --> 00:00:16.640 South Africans. You can find a written version 00:00:16.640 --> 00:00:19.739 of this content on J .P.'s website, jplandman 00:00:19.739 --> 00:00:24.120 .co .za. I am Ruda Landman, and I am your host. 00:00:27.980 --> 00:00:32.039 Hello and welcome to this edition of the So What 00:00:32.039 --> 00:00:35.740 podcast, which accompanies JP's newsletter dated 00:00:35.740 --> 00:00:40.460 the 4th of February 2026 and titled A Story of 00:00:40.460 --> 00:00:44.299 African Innovation. JP, this is a bit of a different 00:00:44.299 --> 00:00:48.020 format. It is more of a report than what you 00:00:48.020 --> 00:00:50.799 usually write. Yes, absolutely. It's basically 00:00:50.799 --> 00:00:53.759 the story of a young entrepreneur from Pretoria. 00:00:53.880 --> 00:00:55.920 But it is such a good story that I thought I 00:00:55.920 --> 00:00:59.130 wanted to share it with readers. But also, secondly, 00:00:59.270 --> 00:01:02.490 because sadly, no South African media that I've 00:01:02.490 --> 00:01:05.329 seen reported on this story, and I thought it 00:01:05.329 --> 00:01:07.650 would be a useful thing to share. Where did you 00:01:07.650 --> 00:01:09.609 come across it? I came across it in the South 00:01:09.609 --> 00:01:11.829 China Morning Post, which is one of the newspapers 00:01:11.829 --> 00:01:14.670 that I read every day. And they carried a report 00:01:14.670 --> 00:01:17.810 in December, just before Christmas, of a function 00:01:17.810 --> 00:01:21.209 in Kigali in Rwanda, the African Business Heroes 00:01:21.209 --> 00:01:25.269 function, where people from all over Africa... 00:01:26.380 --> 00:01:29.140 were selected for the most innovative business 00:01:29.140 --> 00:01:33.719 ideas. And a young, as I said, entrepreneur from 00:01:33.719 --> 00:01:37.500 Pretoria, Adrian Krier, got the third prize of 00:01:37.500 --> 00:01:40.780 $150 ,000, which is about 2 .1 million rand. 00:01:40.879 --> 00:01:44.519 How many entries and how did Adrian Krier do? 00:01:45.000 --> 00:01:48.319 There were 32 ,000 entries from all over Africa. 00:01:48.379 --> 00:01:51.439 This is the seventh year. that the African Business 00:01:51.439 --> 00:01:55.180 Heroes competition is run. It is run by the Jack 00:01:55.180 --> 00:01:58.459 Ma Foundation and Alibaba Philanthropy. Now, 00:01:58.459 --> 00:02:01.540 readers will know that Jack Ma is the former 00:02:01.540 --> 00:02:04.239 schoolteacher who started the internet giant 00:02:04.239 --> 00:02:07.599 company Alibaba, now one of the biggest internet 00:02:07.599 --> 00:02:10.960 companies in the world. And they organized this 00:02:10.960 --> 00:02:13.840 competition, the African Business Heroes competition. 00:02:14.240 --> 00:02:17.669 And as I've said, it's in its seventh year. You 00:02:17.669 --> 00:02:20.310 ask how many people entered, 32 ,000 from all 00:02:20.310 --> 00:02:22.689 over Africa. The competition is very, very stiff. 00:02:23.270 --> 00:02:28.310 And you go through various interviews and rounds. 00:02:28.750 --> 00:02:31.069 And in the end, for the people in the final rounds, 00:02:31.189 --> 00:02:33.490 they go down and they do a due diligence on the 00:02:33.490 --> 00:02:35.990 company, right down to whether your tax affairs 00:02:35.990 --> 00:02:38.930 in your country are in order. So it's really 00:02:38.930 --> 00:02:42.789 a tough competition. And Adrian Krier, as I've 00:02:42.789 --> 00:02:47.719 said, got the third prize, $150 ,000. about 2 00:02:47.719 --> 00:02:51.800 .1, 2 .2 million rand tax -free, which is a huge 00:02:51.800 --> 00:02:54.300 amount of money. For a small business, definitely. 00:02:55.219 --> 00:02:57.800 How did he, his company's called what? Nouveau 00:02:57.800 --> 00:03:00.780 Tech, huh? With a Q at the end. How did it start? 00:03:01.020 --> 00:03:03.919 What was the problem they wanted to solve? It's 00:03:03.919 --> 00:03:06.240 a very interesting story. They started in 2014, 00:03:06.639 --> 00:03:10.259 12 years ago. He was a software specialist at 00:03:10.259 --> 00:03:12.500 Oracle and he resigned from his job together 00:03:12.500 --> 00:03:15.449 with his close friend, Abraham van Wyk. who used 00:03:15.449 --> 00:03:18.490 to be a medical practitioner. They both resigned 00:03:18.490 --> 00:03:21.550 their jobs and they started this company, NovoTech. 00:03:21.990 --> 00:03:24.930 Now, to understand what the company does, we've 00:03:24.930 --> 00:03:26.750 got to stand back a little bit. A little bit 00:03:26.750 --> 00:03:29.830 of background is necessary. Africa carries about 00:03:29.830 --> 00:03:33.689 18 % of the world's population, but it has about 00:03:33.689 --> 00:03:38.889 roughly 25 % of the global disease burden. Yet 00:03:38.889 --> 00:03:41.969 it only attracts about 3 % of global clinical 00:03:41.969 --> 00:03:45.729 research funding. So 80 % of the population, 00:03:45.909 --> 00:03:50.550 1 .8, 25 % of the disease burden, but only 3 00:03:50.550 --> 00:03:53.949 % of clinical trials. In other words, of every 00:03:53.949 --> 00:03:56.889 10 ,000 clinical trial projects that are run 00:03:56.889 --> 00:03:59.729 worldwide every year, only about 300 are run 00:03:59.729 --> 00:04:02.530 in Africa. Now, this is most regrettable from 00:04:02.530 --> 00:04:05.370 two points of view. The one is it's a small participation 00:04:05.370 --> 00:04:08.650 by Africa in global medicine and global clinical 00:04:08.650 --> 00:04:11.900 trials. But secondly, Africa has got the unique 00:04:11.900 --> 00:04:15.599 advantage of a very wide genetic diversity pool. 00:04:16.639 --> 00:04:20.579 If you test a medicine here and it works, the 00:04:20.579 --> 00:04:22.519 chances are very good that it will work all over 00:04:22.519 --> 00:04:25.220 the world. China, Western Europe, North America, 00:04:25.420 --> 00:04:28.180 India. On the other hand, if you test the medicine 00:04:28.180 --> 00:04:31.420 in Scandinavia, for example, you don't know how 00:04:31.420 --> 00:04:35.519 people in China or in Latin America will metabolize 00:04:35.519 --> 00:04:39.720 that medicine. And it's very different. Now, 00:04:39.759 --> 00:04:43.300 more and more international biomedical companies 00:04:43.300 --> 00:04:46.699 realize this and they want to test or they want 00:04:46.699 --> 00:04:50.459 to run clinical tests here in Africa. Now, in 00:04:50.459 --> 00:04:53.189 Europe and in North America, Clinical trials 00:04:53.189 --> 00:04:55.610 are conducted digitally. Everything is done on 00:04:55.610 --> 00:04:58.910 computer, not the internet. In Africa, virtually 00:04:58.910 --> 00:05:02.579 all of it is done manually on paper. And there 00:05:02.579 --> 00:05:05.839 are several problems. You can imagine the stack 00:05:05.839 --> 00:05:08.560 of forms that you have to fill in. You can imagine 00:05:08.560 --> 00:05:11.399 the errors that creep in. You can imagine the 00:05:11.399 --> 00:05:14.519 time that it takes. So if you can digitize clinical 00:05:14.519 --> 00:05:18.139 trials or the running of clinical trials in Africa 00:05:18.139 --> 00:05:21.600 and get the process up to the standard of North 00:05:21.600 --> 00:05:24.540 America or Western Europe, it's really a huge 00:05:24.540 --> 00:05:27.339 step forward. And that is where they saw the 00:05:27.339 --> 00:05:31.420 gap. Plus, linked to that, the fact that Your 00:05:31.420 --> 00:05:34.339 big software companies are all based in Europe 00:05:34.339 --> 00:05:36.100 and North America. They're not based in Africa. 00:05:36.620 --> 00:05:40.000 So they thought as two Africans that they can 00:05:40.000 --> 00:05:43.379 step into this void and turn it into a business 00:05:43.379 --> 00:05:45.879 opportunity. And that is exactly what happened. 00:05:46.199 --> 00:05:50.120 Is it difficult to get into this field? It seems 00:05:50.120 --> 00:05:52.959 that software companies are a dime a dozen. Absolutely. 00:05:53.220 --> 00:05:55.439 Yes, it is difficult because you can't just write 00:05:55.439 --> 00:05:58.009 an app. to test medicine or to run a clinical 00:05:58.009 --> 00:06:00.949 trial. You have to meet the standards of the 00:06:00.949 --> 00:06:03.930 United States Federal Drug Administration and 00:06:03.930 --> 00:06:07.430 the European Medicines Council. They've got onerous 00:06:07.430 --> 00:06:09.170 standards and you've got to meet those standards. 00:06:09.490 --> 00:06:12.670 So the medical field is, what's the word, sui 00:06:12.670 --> 00:06:14.829 generis. It's something on its own. Something 00:06:14.829 --> 00:06:18.350 on its own, highly, highly regulated. And there 00:06:18.350 --> 00:06:20.910 is no room for mistakes, obviously, because it 00:06:20.910 --> 00:06:24.069 affects people's lives. In addition to that, 00:06:24.129 --> 00:06:26.209 what you find with the big pharmaceutical companies, 00:06:26.310 --> 00:06:28.750 they're very risk -averse. So they'll much rather 00:06:28.750 --> 00:06:32.329 run a trial in Canada or in Scandinavia than 00:06:32.329 --> 00:06:35.709 what they run it in Africa. Now, what the Novatec 00:06:35.709 --> 00:06:39.589 platforms do is they digitize the trial processes 00:06:39.589 --> 00:06:42.910 from end to end. And that is data capture of 00:06:42.910 --> 00:06:45.730 the people who are tested, validation, audit 00:06:45.730 --> 00:06:48.750 trails, compliance, and advanced analytics afterwards. 00:06:50.580 --> 00:06:54.339 It's clinical research today. It's clinical software. 00:06:54.939 --> 00:06:57.620 Processes are being used by universities, hospitals, 00:06:58.100 --> 00:07:01.300 research organizations, and pharmaceutical companies 00:07:01.300 --> 00:07:04.680 worldwide. Well, it seems to me that trust is 00:07:04.680 --> 00:07:07.220 the key. How did they build that? Absolutely. 00:07:07.240 --> 00:07:10.699 As Adrian Krieger himself says, you know, nobody 00:07:10.699 --> 00:07:13.199 would trust software that comes from two young 00:07:13.199 --> 00:07:17.240 guys in Pretoria. So they had to work hard at 00:07:17.240 --> 00:07:19.449 it. They started off with the help of an old 00:07:19.449 --> 00:07:21.649 university professor of his, Professor Koppel, 00:07:21.750 --> 00:07:24.370 who encouraged them and got them started on the 00:07:24.370 --> 00:07:27.310 road. But he admits that in the beginning they 00:07:27.310 --> 00:07:30.889 made many mistakes. They took shortcuts. They 00:07:30.889 --> 00:07:34.250 hired too cheaply. The software they developed 00:07:34.250 --> 00:07:38.970 was not good enough. And they had to rethink 00:07:38.970 --> 00:07:42.009 their game plan. which they did. They raised 00:07:42.009 --> 00:07:44.689 the rebuild properly. They raised money internationally 00:07:44.689 --> 00:07:48.209 from respected figures in global clinical research. 00:07:48.569 --> 00:07:51.389 They hired top -tier talent. What does top -tier 00:07:51.389 --> 00:07:54.410 talent mean? It means software engineers, medical 00:07:54.410 --> 00:07:57.430 doctors, statisticians, actuaries, and PhDs. 00:07:57.949 --> 00:08:00.870 Today they employ 70 highly qualified people 00:08:00.870 --> 00:08:04.329 all over the world, 35 in Gauteng, 10 in Cape 00:08:04.329 --> 00:08:07.709 Town, and the rest spread out in India, Brazil, 00:08:07.990 --> 00:08:11.529 Europe, and Kenya. So it's a big operation. And 00:08:11.529 --> 00:08:15.449 as Kriya says, the biggest factor that let him 00:08:15.449 --> 00:08:18.110 lie awake at night is that every month he's got 00:08:18.110 --> 00:08:20.709 to pay these highly qualified people 60 of them 00:08:20.709 --> 00:08:23.649 salaries. So the more than 2 million Rand prize 00:08:23.649 --> 00:08:27.389 money will come in very handy. Was there a breakthrough 00:08:27.389 --> 00:08:30.250 moment for them? Indeed, the breakthrough moment 00:08:30.250 --> 00:08:34.190 came with COVID -19. And what happened was a 00:08:34.190 --> 00:08:37.460 company from India. that they were in partnership 00:08:37.460 --> 00:08:40.740 with, contacted them and selected them, Nuvotec 00:08:40.740 --> 00:08:44.259 and Pretoria, to run a global clinical trial 00:08:44.259 --> 00:08:47.899 for COVID medicine. The trial was run across 00:08:47.899 --> 00:08:50.860 more than 50 hospitals and thousands of patients. 00:08:51.759 --> 00:08:54.899 And those results were tested and retested by 00:08:54.899 --> 00:08:57.480 the big pharmaceutical companies and the drug 00:08:57.480 --> 00:09:00.059 administration authorities. The global regulators. 00:09:00.419 --> 00:09:02.460 The global regulators. They went through the 00:09:02.460 --> 00:09:05.019 results with a fine tooth comb and accepted them. 00:09:05.139 --> 00:09:07.080 And that was the moment of breakthrough. That 00:09:07.080 --> 00:09:10.279 gave the trust, that gave the credibility. And 00:09:10.279 --> 00:09:13.549 the footprint today? Well, the footprint today 00:09:13.549 --> 00:09:16.570 is, as I've said, universities, research organizations 00:09:16.570 --> 00:09:20.330 worldwide use them, pharmaceutical companies 00:09:20.330 --> 00:09:22.970 use them, and they're the only company from Africa 00:09:22.970 --> 00:09:26.950 whose processes and products complies fully with 00:09:26.950 --> 00:09:29.389 the international regulators, specifically North 00:09:29.389 --> 00:09:32.820 American and European regulators. To go back 00:09:32.820 --> 00:09:34.879 to what you said in the beginning, what is the 00:09:34.879 --> 00:09:39.679 impact of this lack of digitization, apart from 00:09:39.679 --> 00:09:42.299 being a hindrance in finding research funding? 00:09:42.500 --> 00:09:45.620 But what does it mean in Africa? What it means 00:09:45.620 --> 00:09:49.940 in Africa is that patients still pay top prices 00:09:49.940 --> 00:09:53.779 for drugs, medicines, which are patented, while 00:09:53.779 --> 00:09:57.080 cheaper genetics are available. But the genetics 00:09:57.080 --> 00:09:59.620 have not been registered by the different authorities. 00:10:00.700 --> 00:10:03.779 So you pay five rand for a diabetes pill that 00:10:03.779 --> 00:10:07.000 could cost 50 cents. That is the biggest single 00:10:07.000 --> 00:10:10.279 problem in Africa. Why? Because the registration 00:10:10.279 --> 00:10:14.100 process is too cumbersome? Absolutely. It's cumbersome. 00:10:14.120 --> 00:10:16.279 Remember what I said, it's all paper -based. 00:10:17.100 --> 00:10:20.820 So it's a difficult process. For example, it 00:10:20.820 --> 00:10:23.100 takes the South African health products regulator 00:10:23.100 --> 00:10:26.259 about two months to work through one application 00:10:26.259 --> 00:10:30.139 for registration. It's a pack of documents that 00:10:30.139 --> 00:10:33.139 has to be submitted to the regulator and they 00:10:33.139 --> 00:10:35.840 have to go through it. They can't just skip the 00:10:35.840 --> 00:10:39.340 pages. And it takes about two months. So there 00:10:39.340 --> 00:10:44.139 are about 50 ,000 applications for generic medicines 00:10:44.139 --> 00:10:47.639 sitting with various regulators across the African 00:10:47.639 --> 00:10:51.480 continent. If you can clear that 50 ,000 backlog, 00:10:51.799 --> 00:10:55.799 it means it's 50 ,000 medicines or drugs which 00:10:55.799 --> 00:10:58.490 overnight will become much, much cheaper. And 00:10:58.490 --> 00:11:01.570 that will have a huge impact on health in Africa. 00:11:02.190 --> 00:11:07.750 So what can NovoTech and their processes do about 00:11:07.750 --> 00:11:10.049 this? How can they affect it? Yes, what NovoTech 00:11:10.049 --> 00:11:12.509 did is they created a not -for -profit division 00:11:12.509 --> 00:11:16.809 called the NovoTech Foundation. And they interact 00:11:16.809 --> 00:11:19.110 with these various regulators across Africa, 00:11:19.230 --> 00:11:22.409 also with the South African one, and they try 00:11:22.409 --> 00:11:25.590 and help them to digitize their processes. The 00:11:25.590 --> 00:11:27.690 funding for that comes from international philanthropy, 00:11:27.870 --> 00:11:30.610 like the Gates Foundation for one, and the other 00:11:30.610 --> 00:11:34.429 one is the European and Developing Countries 00:11:34.429 --> 00:11:38.149 Clinical Trials Partnership, EDCTP, a long, long 00:11:38.149 --> 00:11:41.169 name. In any case, they pay NovoTech Foundation. 00:11:42.200 --> 00:11:44.639 to conduct the research, conduct the development 00:11:44.639 --> 00:11:48.519 of programs. And they are being remunerated by 00:11:48.519 --> 00:11:50.700 these international philanthropy organizations. 00:11:51.360 --> 00:11:53.600 Now, in the case of South Africa, with the South 00:11:53.600 --> 00:11:56.039 African Health Products Regulatory Authority, 00:11:56.500 --> 00:12:01.179 it's the same story. They still follow very inefficient 00:12:01.179 --> 00:12:05.000 paper -based processes. So NovoTech is working 00:12:05.000 --> 00:12:07.580 with them. And through one of their subsidiaries 00:12:07.580 --> 00:12:11.710 called Sygenic, NovoTech has developed... using 00:12:11.710 --> 00:12:14.649 a team of data scientists and pharmacologists, 00:12:14.789 --> 00:12:17.289 they are building a solution for the South African 00:12:17.289 --> 00:12:20.210 Authority. What is the solution? Well, they took 00:12:20.210 --> 00:12:23.789 a large language model from Meta in the US, but 00:12:23.789 --> 00:12:26.029 based it in South Africa, in South African service, 00:12:26.210 --> 00:12:28.889 so that the information, the data, doesn't leave 00:12:28.889 --> 00:12:31.799 the continent. and make sure it's secured and 00:12:31.799 --> 00:12:34.500 based here. Because the cloud is not really in 00:12:34.500 --> 00:12:37.519 the cloud. It is actually somewhere on the servers. 00:12:37.759 --> 00:12:42.340 Exactly. So they hope to go alive with the Health 00:12:42.340 --> 00:12:44.559 Products Authority in South Africa within the 00:12:44.559 --> 00:12:48.039 course of 2026. Adrian is talking within a couple 00:12:48.039 --> 00:12:51.259 of months. What will that do to the registration 00:12:51.259 --> 00:12:54.500 of medicines? It will cut the processing time 00:12:54.500 --> 00:12:57.460 from, as I said earlier, about two months down 00:12:57.460 --> 00:13:01.379 to 45 minutes. It's an extraordinary solution. 00:13:01.659 --> 00:13:04.539 Now, those of you who've worked with AI will 00:13:04.539 --> 00:13:06.759 know this is precisely how it goes. You can take 00:13:06.759 --> 00:13:10.120 a long document of 50, 60 pages, and it gets 00:13:10.120 --> 00:13:13.220 summarized for you by AI. Better by some than 00:13:13.220 --> 00:13:15.950 by others, but it's being done. So that's what 00:13:15.950 --> 00:13:19.629 they're aiming for in South Africa in 2026. That'll 00:13:19.629 --> 00:13:22.169 make a huge difference to unlock the registration 00:13:22.169 --> 00:13:25.090 of medicines here in South Africa. What fascinates 00:13:25.090 --> 00:13:27.970 me about this is that so many of those documents 00:13:27.970 --> 00:13:31.669 are handwritten. Very true. So what they had 00:13:31.669 --> 00:13:33.409 to do, they had to train this large language 00:13:33.409 --> 00:13:36.610 model, not just to read all the documents and 00:13:36.610 --> 00:13:39.509 so on, but also to read handwriting. And it is 00:13:39.509 --> 00:13:41.389 still a bit of a mystery to me how they do that, 00:13:41.429 --> 00:13:43.190 because if you look at most doctors' handwriting. 00:13:45.120 --> 00:13:47.899 It is illegible even for a human. It is illegible 00:13:47.899 --> 00:13:51.860 even for a human. So how they taught the LLM 00:13:51.860 --> 00:13:55.039 to read that, I don't know, but they have. And 00:13:55.039 --> 00:13:58.279 yeah, as I said, they hope to go live later this 00:13:58.279 --> 00:14:01.700 year. In summary, so what? The first so what 00:14:01.700 --> 00:14:04.679 is Kruger's vision is very, very simple. Clinical 00:14:04.679 --> 00:14:08.340 research is $100 billion a year industry. And 00:14:08.340 --> 00:14:11.340 Africa only received about 3 % of that, $3 billion. 00:14:12.750 --> 00:14:16.929 If one can increase that share from 3 % to 5%, 00:14:16.929 --> 00:14:19.529 it will make a huge difference to healthcare, 00:14:19.889 --> 00:14:22.149 health infrastructure, and health professions 00:14:22.149 --> 00:14:25.629 here in Africa. That's the first so what. The 00:14:25.629 --> 00:14:28.450 second so what is clinical trials are very interesting 00:14:28.450 --> 00:14:31.889 in the sense that once the trial is over, it 00:14:31.889 --> 00:14:35.509 leaves behind it a sophisticated infrastructure, 00:14:35.970 --> 00:14:38.929 computer systems, knowledge, and so on. And you 00:14:38.929 --> 00:14:40.990 train people. You train people in the process 00:14:40.990 --> 00:14:44.460 of running the trial. That remains behind. So 00:14:44.460 --> 00:14:46.519 it's not just a question of doing the trial. 00:14:46.820 --> 00:14:49.960 You do it, but there's a footprint that is left 00:14:49.960 --> 00:14:52.480 behind on which you can build. The third one 00:14:52.480 --> 00:14:54.460 is I really cannot do better than just to quote 00:14:54.460 --> 00:14:58.240 Adrian Creer himself. He says, standing next 00:14:58.240 --> 00:15:01.299 to Jack Ma on stage in Rwanda was one of the 00:15:01.299 --> 00:15:04.240 most profound moments of my life, not because 00:15:04.240 --> 00:15:07.139 of the spotlight, but because it validated something 00:15:07.139 --> 00:15:10.710 we believed in for years. Africa doesn't need 00:15:10.710 --> 00:15:14.049 charity. It needs systems that works, and we're 00:15:14.049 --> 00:15:18.529 building them. On that very uplifting note, thank 00:15:18.529 --> 00:15:21.629 you very much, and good luck to Adrian and his 00:15:21.629 --> 00:15:26.269 team. Indeed. Thank you for listening to the 00:15:26.269 --> 00:15:29.610 So What Podcast. If you enjoy this content, please 00:15:29.610 --> 00:15:31.970 don't forget to leave a review and a rating, 00:15:32.029 --> 00:15:34.769 and please consider subscribing so you don't 00:15:34.769 --> 00:15:37.950 miss any future episodes. Also, tell your friends. 00:15:38.370 --> 00:15:40.950 Remember, you can find a written version of all 00:15:40.950 --> 00:15:44.649 JP's content at jplandman .co .za.