The Social Innovation
Conventional African healthcare delivery methods have struggled to address the needs of people with chronic diseases, highlighting the necessity for innovative solutions like e-Health.
mDoc has been working to close this gap since 2011 by equipping end users with digital health literacy, self-efficacy, and a stronger sense of agency. Through mobile and web platforms, it delivers AI-enabled virtual self-care coaching while also strengthening health systems with actionable data for systemic improvement. In parallel, mDoc builds the capacity of healthcare providers and policymakers in clinical care, quality improvement, and digital/AI competencies.
By 2020, their programs had supported over 11,000 patients.
Magnitude of the Problem, and its Root Causes
The World Health Organization predicts that by 2030, the burden of mortality and morbidity due to chronic diseases in Africa will surpass that of communicable diseases such as Ebola, tuberculosis, and HIV/AIDS. According to the Non-Communicable Disease Alliance (NCD Alliance report, 2025), in 2019, noncommunicable diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular diseases, and diabetes were responsible for about 37% of all deaths in sub-Saharan Africa, up from 24% in 2000.
This increase is attributed largely to weaknesses in prevention, diagnosis, and care measures. This mortality rate continues to rise.
During their participation in the Accelerating Healthcare Access Globalizer, co-created by Ashoka and the Philips Foundation in 2020, the mDoc team identified the following key factors contributing to high mortality from chronic diseases in Africa:
- Poor knowledge and management of chronic diseases
- Poor distribution of doctors and allied healthcare services
- Disruptions to service delivery
- Low insurance coverage and insufficient government support for those without insurance
Based on their systems change analysis, the mDoc team made it their mission to address the challenge of poor distribution of doctors and allied healthcare services in African healthcare systems by working to strengthen the clinical, quality improvement, and digital capacity of healthcare providers to make care more accessible to patients.
Strategy to Catalyze a Network of Changemakers towards the Targeted Mission
The strategy involves mobilizing and empowering healthcare providers to become more proactive about reaching, consulting with and treating patients by providing respectful patient-centered care, leveraging technology.
Some of the tactics they deployed towards the mission as a part of the strategy include:
1) Co-Creating In-Person, Tech-Enabled NudgeHubs with Community Allies to Expand Healthcare Access in Low- and Middle-Income Communities Across Nigeria
Based on their published prevalence and photo-vocie studies, mDoc is scaling a human-centered self-care model through its CompleteHealth™ platform, which integrates AI, behavioral science, and technology to deliver care directly to homes and communities. This approach is rooted in mDoc’s commitment to human-centered design, with insights from the studies informing more responsive and contextually relevant interventions.
To date, they have established six NudgeHubs across Nigeria, offering a low-cost, community-based model for delivering digital health education and linking patients to care. These hubs leverage an omnichannel approach including mDoc’s CompleteHealth™ platform, web-based tools, USSD and messaging platforms like Telegram and WhatsApp to ensure patients become comfortable with technology and confident in using it daily to make informed health decisions for themselves and their families.
By 2024, mDoc’s programs had reached and supported over 130,000 members and trained 14,000 healthcare providers.
2) Co-Creating a Partnership with Allies to Involve and Build the Capacity of Healthcare Providers in Clinical, Quality Improvement, and Digital/AI competencies
The mDoc team have co-created a partnership with Project ECHO (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes), Making More Health (MMH), Jacaranda Maternity, CDMS, Farm Alert, and Sustyvibes to establish the Tele Education for Clinicians and Leaders in Africa (TeCLA) Program.
The TeCLA program uses online lectures, case-based learning, sharing of best practices, access to peer networks, and global resource libraries to drive shared learning across African countries. These tools enhance clinical skills, confidence, and knowledge, enabling healthcare providers to offer specialist care to patients.
As of 2025, mDoc has empowered over 14,000 healthcare providers, mainly from 26 countries in Africa, to be changemakers to make healthcare more accessible, which has helped support 18.36 million patients to date.
Importantly, the accelerator was instrumental in our efforts at mDoc to create a connected ecosystem aimed at driving equitable adoption of technology in health and wellness. It equipped us with the tools and understanding necessary to approach this complex challenge holistically, ensuring that technology serves as a bridge rather than a barrier in health equity. This experience has not only enhanced my approach to social entrepreneurship but has also instilled a greater sense of responsibility to engage more changemakers in our mission to drive the adoption of self-care globally. The accelerator journey was more than an educational endeavor; it was a pivotal point for us at mDoc, emphasizing the importance of collaborative and systemic solutions to tackle the multifaceted challenges we face in health and wellness, and beyond.
For more than 40 years, Ashoka has built and nurtured a network of 4000+ leading social entrepreneurs in the world. Read more about the Ashoka Fellowship here.
- 2020,
The Globalizer strategy accelerator supports social entrepreneurs gain clarity on systemic root causes of social and environmental problems and the importance of engaging more changemakers as part of the solutions. It enables them to design effective collaborative systems change strategies (based on respect to all humans and nature).
Refined since 2010, the accelerator is a structured collective thinking and experimenting process between social entrepreneurs, systems thought partners from Ashoka and selected leaders from business and the social sector.
Participated with support from
Elements of the Collaborative Systems Change Strategy
Hover/Click on things to dive deepType of Root Cause identified as a Leverage Point for Systems Change (Donella Meadows)
The first element of crafting a collaborative systems change strategy to address a problem is to define the problem and identify the most strategic change needed to address the root cause(s) of the problem. That becomes the targeted Systems Change Goal or the Mission.
To identify it, analyze the root causes—barriers, factors, dynamics, points or conditions driving the problem—and determine which offers the greatest leverage for change.
According to the FSG, leverage points include:
- Policies
- Practices
- Resource Flows
- Relationships & Roles
- Power Dynamics
- Mental Models
These "leverage points" are derived from the work of Donella Meadows, the pioneer in the field of systems thinking who articulated and conceptualized "Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System to Create Effective Change".
Explore Case Studies of different types of "Systems Change Goal(s)" in our Library.
Endgame / Pathway applied towards Activating a Network of Changemakers towards the targeted Systems Change
The second element of crafting a collaborative systems change strategy includes determining how to achieve the systems change goal.
This means choosing a strategy suited to the system’s context. The strategy could be to:
- Work with government
- Create a new field/market
- Build a competitive advantage
- Shift societal narratives
The items on the list are neither mutually exclusive, nor collectively exhaustive.
You can read more about the types of systems change strategies/pathways/endgames/stories we have come across in this article by Odin Muehlenbein.
Explore Case Studies on different "Types of Strategy" in our Library.
Types of stakeholders activated as changemakers towards the systems change
The third element of crafting a collaborative systems change strategy includes identifying the critical stakeholders to activate as partners- those who influence an exponential number of people in the context of the system.
Irrespective of the type of strategy, systemic change always requires activation of a network of stakeholders for different tactics towards the mission.
Typical stakeholder groups for systemic change include:
- government agencies
- universities (e.g. education schools for the empathy paradigm, public health and med schools for the health paradigm, etc.)
- publishers (e.g. education publishers for empathy, medical journals for health, etc.)
- informal & formal communities / unions (e.g. AARP for longevity, teachers' unions for empathy, families, etc.)
- media companies
- industry-specific companies / organizations (e.g. tech companies and financial institutions for the technology paradigm, insurance and healthcare companies for longevity, relevant civil society organizations etc.).
Explore Case Studies on different "Types of Partners Engaged" in our Library.
The depths of engagements in play for the different stakeholders (CoCreative)
The fourth and final element of crafting a collaborative systems change strategy includes reflecting on what depth to engage with each stakeholder.
Activating a broad network is essential, but so is clarifying their role: Are they simply informed, consulted, or co-creating the strategy?
CoCreative's Five Levels of Engagement Framework guides how one may engage with each stakeholder. Are you:
- co-creating?
- collaborating?
- involving?
- consulting?
- informing?
Explore Case Studies on different "Levels of Stakeholder Engagement" in our Library.
Their work contributes towards
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by all United Nations Member States in 2015, provides a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future. At its heart are the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which are an urgent call for action by all countries - developed and developing - in a global partnership.
Explore Case Studies on strategies contributing to addressing different "SDGs" in our Library.
The root causes of global socio-ecological unsustainability their work is addressing (FSSD)
According to the Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development (FSSD) co-created by Ashoka Fellow Dr. Karl-Henrik Robèrt and Dr. Göran Broman and Dr. Merlina Missimer of the Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden, there are 8 root causes of all socio-ecological unsustainability problems (also referred to as Sustainability Principles):
- extraction from Earth's crust
- chemical pollution
- physical destruction
- barriers to health
- barriers to competence
- barriers to influence/participation
- barriers to impartiality
- barriers to meaning-making
To get a deeper feel, here are videos on the ecological and social sustainability principles.
You can see case studies of changemakers contributing to addressing different root causes ("Sustainability Principles") in our Library.
