My 2021 Year in Review

Hello friends,

Lovely to connect with all of you. I hope this newsletter meets you safe and well.

As, a physician, an economist, and an investor (VC/PE/Infrastructure), the most complicated thing I have observed this year as with 2020 is the balance that governments and global organisations have had to strike between saving lives (which of course the doctor in me wants) and protecting livelihoods (which resonates with my inner economist/banker).

My company: the Flying Doctors Healthcare Investment Company invests in and operates healthcare infrastructure PPP projects in emerging markets. We also invest in growth companies in the healthcare and fintech sector across Africa.

I will be sharing some of the highlights of my year with you and I hope to hear about some of yours too.

Highlights

• Our portfolio company Koniku closed its series A , I am so excited to watch Osh; the founder, potentially disrupt the diagnostics space in such a revolutionary way.
• We launched our Catalyst fund; a stand-alone angel collective focused on health tech and fintech which is open to anyone that is interested in angel investing. Would love you to consider becoming a member, find out more here
• I got to meet the French President and discussed some of the ways I believe Africa & France can work together, I outlined this in an open letter I wrote to him afterwards. You can read it here.
• We released a ton of knowledge assets including two publications I am particularly proud of our impact investing in healthcare report and our white paper on project financing in healthcare. Read here
• Celebrated a milestone anniversary with my husband and best friend, David aka Brown Envelope.
• We advised on a $20m healthcare infrastructure project in West Africa.
• We completed the construction phase of a healthcare public private partnership project in Nigeria.
• I was appointed head of healthcare at the Nigerian American Chamber of Commerce.

This year in learning

• I finished all the remaining coursework for my Master’s degree in finance and Economic Policy (Major). I also completed courses at Bocconi University, Harvard University and the New York Institute of Finance on infrastructure finance, public private partnerships, and project finance. For an introduction to project finance and healthcare please view my lecture series here
• We expanded our in house training program, I have been delighted to see our team members working through their MBA, FMVA, mMBA, FMI, ACCA and CFA qualifications sponsored by our company

Venture capital investments

Flying Doctors Healthcare Investment Company is ending the year with a total of 11 portfolio companies, adding 4 new Health tech and Fintech companies to the list.

• Instantrad - a teleradiology company committed to improving healthcare outcomes by creating a unified platform for connecting medical professionals with medical images and data needed to produce qualified medical reports.
• Payhippo - Payhippo is a fintech-focused on providing financing by African SMEs, using AI to identify creditworthy businesses.
• Nestcoin - Nestcoin builds, operates, and invests in products that make crypto opportunities accessible to everyone to democratize access to economic opportunity for everyday people in frontier markets.
• Infiuss health- Infiuss health is Africa's first remote clinical trials platform that enables pharmaceutical companies/research organizations to recruit enrollees from Africa.

My year around the world

I visited Durban, South Africa for the Afrexim Bank's Intra-African Trade Fair and also Paris & Montpellier in France for the Africa-France Economic summit.

I also had meetings in Gambia, Senegal, Ghana, and Rwanda to engage our stakeholders regarding various healthcare projects that we are working on in those countries.

One of the major lessons I learned from my travels this year is the fact that sometimes we need to slow down. It was probably my 9th trip to Cape Town and it was the first time I have even seen the beach, my schedule is usually packed so tightly that I only see what's between the conference centre and my hotel.

In the next year, as we travel and pursue our goals I would like to invite us all to try to enjoy the journey as well. The two or three hours spent exploring a new town can be very rewarding.

Speaking engagements

Was honored to be invited to speak on healthcare, venture capital, project finance, women and technology by CNBC, ABSA bank, the Islamic finance forum, Citibank, UNAIDS, Lagos Economic Summit, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC), Stanford University, Johns Hopkins University and London School of Economics. You can watch me discuss project finance/infrastructure finance at the Development Bank of South Africa's conference here

Portfolio wins

• Helium Health, which is one of our portfolio companies acquired MEDDY, a UAE-based doctor booking platform.
• Reel fruit raised $3m series A funding to help the expansion of its production capacity.
• Payhippo raised $3 million in a seed round, after being accepted to the prestigious Y-Combinator accelerator program. Payhippo plans to use the funding in sourcing the talent needed to optimize its technology as it ramps up effort to extend speedy credit to more small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in West Africa.

What we want to achieve

Africa has the worst healthcare outcomes in the world.

Our team of nearly 100 employees and contractors work every day towards solving this problem through investing in and operating large infrastructure projects across Africa, as well as investing in the technology that makes these large, costly assets work more efficiently.

We call it tech enabled infrastructure.

Diet and Exercise

I am really proud of the changes I made to my diet this year, I started eating somethings that many Nigerians would deem sacrilegious such as substituting vegetables for our usually starchy/carbohydrate heavy foods like pounded yam. For example, the 'spinach eba' you can see in the picture above. My diet this year was plant based, I almost complete cut out meat, focusing on chicken, prawns and fish. The champagne is just a prop ;-)

Due to my travel schedule didn't get to do as much yoga as I would have liked, but aiming to do more exercise in the New Year.

Key Insights

A team meeting that made me reflect on something Warren Buffet said in his 2002 annual report on peer pressure & corporate boards.

He admitted that even he the Oracle of Omaha, at one point the richest man in the world, boss of bosses...sometimes couldn't talk at board meetings when bad decisions were being made as he didn't want to rock the boat. So he chose politeness and liability over potential animosity. He wants people to like him. At his level, why should he care? But he does. He didn't want to be seen as disagreeable, despite the fact that everyone would have respected his opinion because of his stature and achievements.

This highlighted three main issues in my mind which I will treat one by one:

1. Crucial conversations 2. Corporate Governance 3. Women and wealth

On crucial conversations

One of my favorite books is called Crucial conversations by Joseph Grenny et al.

His research shows how an ability to have emotionally taxing & difficult discussions without causing offence is a skill that nearly all super successful executives have. Almost like a prerequisite. Luckily it's a skill that can be learned...like almost anything else.

Talented communicators are able to speak honestly without offending?people. To?be totally frank, but do it without causing upset. That's what effective crucial conversations are about.

On to corporate governance. I have had to speak up at board meetings when I disagree. I have also had to develop a lot of confidence to do that. I analyse numbers, trends and spreadsheets very quickly. I just see the way statistics fit together in a way that perhaps others don't. And I am able to keep numbers in my head for a long period of time. Reading and interpreting data is like a hobby for me. So it's easy for me to justify my assertions with hard data on a whim.

But many people work on with their "gut". How do those people make their points in a boardroom without feeling like they are being contrarian? We all get into situations where we have to make decisions with less data than we would like to?have. How?many board members actually feel confident enough to speak up on behalf of shareholders?? Especially in the light of almighty Warren Buffet saying that sometimes he chooses peace instead of violence. ????????

On women. The third point is about likeability and women. Power and money makes men more likeable and eligible for marriage. But women less likeable and eligible for marriage.

Even Warren Buffet with all his power still wanted people to like him. Its a fundamental human need. Do we women sometimes make financial decisions that would make us more likeable instead of wealthier?

If you want to learn more about crucial conversations or get better at them, watch this touching and insightful talk by Joseph Grenny here: https://lnkd.in/d5dt8fXS

Get involved

I would love to stay engaged and work more closely with you in 2022. Please engage further with me if you wish to do so in the following ways:

1. By investing alongside us as an angel investor by signing up to be a member of our collective. Learn more here.

2. By following me on social media

@Twitter: @naijalflyingdr

@Linkedin: here

@youtube: Dr Ola's Youtube Channel focused on Economics and Finance

3. Read my full profile and learn more about me here

Happy New Year everyone. May your 2022 be blessed.

Wishing you all the best, Ola