HealthCap Africa seeks $5bn pension capital to close Nigeria’s healthcare funding gap

HealthCap Africa convened pension fund managers overseeing more than $5 billion in assets under management in Lagos to discuss how private and institutional capital can help address funding gaps in Nigeria’s healthcare sector following the pullback in USAID funding.

The Private Markets and Healthcare Roundtable was held alongside HealthCap Africa’s Annual General Meeting under the theme “Healthcare as an Asset Class.”

Institutions in the room included the Securities and Exchange Commission, National Pension Commission, Africa Finance Corporation, International Finance Corporation, World Bank, Stanbic CPFA, FCMB Pensions, PAC Capital, Leadway, PVAC Healthcare, Anchoria, PharmAccess, Afrinvest, ABC Health, ARM Holdco, and FMDQ.

The numbers that framed the discussion tell a story of persistent underinvestment. Africa carries 22% of the world’s disease burden but receives just 1% of global health spending. Nigeria’s position is particularly difficult. Despite representing 14% of Africa’s population, the country has attracted only 8% of the $4.2 billion invested in African healthcare since 2016.

Healthcare spending as a share of Nigeria’s 2026 federal budget sits at 3.7%, its lowest level since 2020. In the same period, approximately 505 specialist healthcare and life sciences investment managers in North America and Europe have collectively raised more than $300 billion over the past decade.

Turning interest into deployable capital: HealthCap Africa’s next step

Participants identified pension capital as one of the most significant and underutilised pools of funding available for healthcare investment in Africa, and set out a clear path to mobilise it.

The first outcome was a call for purpose-built investment products. Pension funds operate under strict fiduciary obligations. Deploying their assets into healthcare private markets requires products specifically designed to meet those obligations while generating institutional-grade returns. Participants called on the SEC and PenCom to work jointly with fund managers and institutional investors to design those products, rather than waiting for the market to produce them independently.

Furthermore, the Africa Finance Corporation (AFC) agreed to share the structure behind its new $100 million venture capital fund, already deployed into two underlying funds, as a working model that pension funds could adapt to spread risk across healthcare investments.

The World Bank’s Chishamiso Mawoyo stressed that government policy remains a foundational requirement and that private capital can only flow where the regulatory and fiscal environment makes it viable. Deji Alli took a more forward-looking position. “Innovation can overcome regulation,” he said, encouraging participants to work creatively within existing frameworks rather than waiting for new ones.

Dr Ola Brown, Founder and General Partner of HealthCap Africa, used India’s experience to anchor the ambition in evidence. Quadria Capital, one of Asia’s largest healthcare-focused venture funds, has raised over $1 billion and manages more than $4 billion in assets under management. During the period in which that capital was building India’s private healthcare infrastructure, the country’s maternal mortality rate fell from 384 to 80.5 per 100,000 live births between 2000 and 2023.

“The opportunity here for Africa is not necessarily to replicate India’s model, but to consider what similar pools of specialised capital could achieve for African healthcare,” Brown said.

Private capital is already producing results on Nigerian soil. Humphrey Oriakhi of PAC Capital pointed to his firm’s financing of a 250-bed multi-speciality tertiary hospital in Gateway, Abeokuta, built entirely without public funding. HealthCap Africa says its portfolio companies have created more than 1,000 direct jobs and reached more than two million patients and users across 10 African countries.

Dr Mories Atoki, Chief Executive of ABC Health, identified the structural mismatch keeping viable healthcare projects without funding.

“There’s no such thing as an unbankable project. There’s only such a thing as a risk-investor match,” he said. “Some are early-stage, some are later-stage, and we need to match the right investors, or we need to invest in the early-stage ecosystem if we want to get to growth.”

Participants also called for a deliberate effort to build a pipeline from private markets to public markets. Large healthcare companies, they argued, are built over time, starting in private markets, generating employment and tax revenue, and eventually reaching public listings.

Nigeria’s broader investment record gives the ambition credibility. Between 2021 and 2025, the country captured 513 seed-stage and above deals, representing more than a quarter of Africa’s early-stage investment activity, and is home to five of the continent’s eight unicorns.

The argument made in Lagos was straightforward: healthcare deserves the same quality of attention, and the capital to fund it already exists within Nigeria’s own institutions. The question now is whether the will to deploy it follows.

Read also: Alan acquires Senegalese healthtech Tanel in first move into Africa