Keynote Speaker · Healthcare Operator
Healthcare operator.
Frontier-market builder.
Keynote speaker.
Building healthcare infrastructure that serves 200,000+ patients across The Gambia — and bringing those frontier-market lessons to stages worldwide.
Selected stages.
- Stanford Seed Transformation Program
- TAFCON
- African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights
- African Youth Leadership Hub
- Gambian National Health Platforms
- 200,000+
- patients served across five regions of The Gambia.
- $2M on $740K
- revenue generated through COVID and a 2024 regulatory shutdown.
-
Medicines Act
2025 - advocated and passed into Gambian law.
Signature talks
Built for stages
that take ideas seriously.
Five keynotes drawn from a decade of frontier-market operating experience — calibrated for business schools, philanthropic funders, founder communities, public-health summits, and diaspora audiences.
All five talks-
Talk 01
Built Through Fire
Lessons from a regulatory shutdown, a pandemic, and a continent worth fighting for.
Read more -
Talk 02
The Silence That's Killing Men
Building community health through the conversations no one wants to have.
Read more -
Talk 03
Community Health, Rebuilt
An operator's playbook for non-communicable diseases in frontier markets.
Read more -
Talk 04
Truth and Optimism
What Africa's young builders actually need to hear.
Read more -
Talk 05 · In development
Coming Home
The diaspora's case for building Africa now.
Read more
About
Eleven years building
the Gambian healthcare
sector from inside it.
Dr. Badjie trained as a pharmacist at Purdue and built his early career as a Walgreens community pharmacist before founding InnovaRx Global Health in 2015. He returned to The Gambia in 2019 to launch the country operation, which now serves more than 200,000 patients across five regions.
Through COVID, a 2024 regulatory shutdown that confiscated FDA-approved medications, and prolonged capital constraints, he kept the company building — generating $2M in pilot-phase revenue on $740K raised. He went on to advocate for the Medicines and Related Products Amendment Act 2025, which resolved the regulatory barriers that had paralyzed the sector.
Today he speaks on what frontier-market healthcare actually requires — and what the next generation of African builders need to hear.
Ventures
Three companies. One thesis.
Dr. Badjie operates a vertically integrated group focused on the unfinished work of building healthcare infrastructure in West Africa — from delivery to wholesale to capital structure.
All three ventures-
Operating company
InnovaRx Global Health
Healthcare infrastructure for The Gambia and beyond. 200,000+ patients served across five regions; eleven years operating.
Partnership inquiries -
Pharmaceutical wholesale
Kartan Pharma
Pharmaceutical import and wholesale infrastructure for West Africa. Currently engaged in a capital raise with Africa-focused impact investors.
Investor inquiries -
Parent entity
Kartan Holdings
Delaware-domiciled parent entity for the group’s operating companies and capital structure.
Learn more
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Speaking inquiries