Africa’s health intelligence
Sankofa builds medical AI from the most diverse health records on earth.
Sankofa curates African health data, builds AI models on it and creates AI-powered products and services for healthcare, precision medicine, pharmaceutical companies, researchers and AI companies worldwide.
What Sankofa does
Four services, one platform.
Sankofa Core is the integrated platform for data, models and analytics, and the foundation of everything Sankofa does. Sankofa Cohort brings African evidence to pharmaceutical companies, contract research organisations (CROs) and research institutions, and Sankofa Clinic and Sankofa Cold put edge AI beside the clinician and on the vaccine fridge. All three draw on Sankofa Core, and their outputs feed back into it.
The health records medical AI rarely sees.
More than 25 years of de-identified clinical records from multiple sources, following the same people over time and covering diagnoses, treatments, medicines, tests, admissions, pathology and imaging. AI companies, researchers and pharmaceutical companies build on Sankofa Core, and so does every other Sankofa service.
Explore Sankofa Core →
Medicine tested on the people it will treat.
Custom cohorts, trial design and synthetic data from African health records, for the pharmaceutical companies, contract research organisations, research institutions and hospitals bringing new medicines to the whole world.
Explore Sankofa Cohort →
Expert support in every consulting room, even when the internet is intermittent.
National primary-care guidelines and an AI model on a small device beside the clinician, so every diagnosis, medicine and warning sign is checked while the person is still in the room.
Explore Sankofa Clinic →
Edge AI that predicts a fridge failure and identifies what is failing.
Edge AI on the vaccine fridge reads 27 parameters, from electrical signals to temperature, humidity and vibration, to predict a failure before it happens and identify what is failing while every dose is still safe.
Explore Sankofa Cold →
Why it matters
Medicine and AI built without Africa are incomplete.
Africa’s 1.5 billion people number nearly twice the combined population of the United States and the European Union, and by 2050 more than one person in four on earth will be African. They are also the people medicine has studied least. Almost all the records behind today’s medicines and health AI come from a small part of the world’s population, so the treatments and models built on them work best for the people who supplied them.
Sankofa adds the rest of the picture. Models and medicines built with the health records of the world’s youngest and fastest-growing population serve pharmaceutical companies, precision medicine, medical research and AI companies everywhere.
Medicine that works for more people
When the data includes the widest range of people, the medicines and models built on it work for more of them, wherever they live.
Knowledge the world is missing
African clinical records show how diseases appear and how people respond to treatment across the greatest human variety on earth.
Who gains
Pharmaceutical companies, contract research organisations, research institutions, AI companies, health systems, clinics and vaccine programmes, and the people they all serve.
The scientific case
The world’s data describes a branch. African data describes the tree.
Every person alive today traces their ancestry to Africa, and the people of Africa carry the widest human variation on earth. That variation shows in everyday care: in how often diseases occur, how they present and how people respond to treatment.
Sankofa works with clinical records, the diagnoses, medicines, test results and images of everyday care, which capture that variation as it appears in real people. Most of the evidence behind today’s medicines and health AI comes from one narrow branch of humanity, and a model or a medicine built on one branch cannot serve the whole tree.
Source: Fatumo and others, Nature Medicine, 2022.
What African data shows
Studying more of humanity has already changed medicine.
Africa’s range of human variation produces a wider range of responses to disease and treatment, and medicine improves each time those responses are recorded and studied. Three examples are already in use or in trials.
PCSK9 and cholesterol
People of African descent who carried an inactive form of the PCSK9 gene had 88% less coronary heart disease. That finding led to a new class of cholesterol-lowering medicines now prescribed around the world.
Efavirenz and warfarin
Differences common in people of African descent change how quickly the body clears these medicines. Dosing guides built mainly on European data can give the wrong dose, with a risk of bleeding, clotting or side effects.
APOL1 and the kidney
Two variants found almost only in people of African ancestry raise the risk of kidney failure, and a new medicine designed around them is now in clinical trials.
The clinical records on Sankofa’s platform show how such differences play out in everyday care, across diagnoses, treatments, medicines dispensed, pathology and imaging, over more than 25 years.
How it works
One platform, from the data centre to the consulting room.
Sankofa runs each workload where it is most effective: large models in the data centre, analysis on the premises of hospitals, universities and pharmaceutical partners, and edge AI beside the clinician and on the vaccine fridge.
Training and hosting
Sankofa trains and hosts its models and curated data on accelerated computing in Africa.
Analysis on partners’ own systems
Hospitals, universities and pharmaceutical partners run Sankofa’s models on their own systems, and federated learning combines the results.
Edge AI at the point of care
Small edge AI devices in the consulting room and on the vaccine fridge, ready whether the network is up or down.
Every Sankofa Clinic and Sankofa Cold device uploads data to Sankofa Core whenever it connects, giving Sankofa a near real-time view of care across a vast clinical network: the conditions clinicians see, the medicines they prescribe and the state of every vaccine fridge. No one else in African health has that view.
Partner with us
We welcome new partners.
Sankofa grows with its partners. Whether you hold health records, run health services or build AI and new medicines, we would like to work with you.
Hospitals, laboratories, imaging groups and health networks
Add your records to Sankofa Core, retain ownership of them and share in the revenue they earn.
Become a data partner →Health networks, programmes and foundations
Take Sankofa Clinic and Sankofa Cold to clinics and vaccine programmes, with the reach you already have.
Talk to us →AI companies, researchers, pharmaceutical companies and CROs
Build and test with African health data and Sankofa’s models through Sankofa Core and Sankofa Cohort.
Talk to us →About Sankofa
A team that has built at scale before.
Sankofa’s founders have built and operated technology businesses at scale since 2004, for global telecoms and fast-moving consumer-goods companies, taking their platforms from a single site to thousands. Read about what we do, the people behind Sankofa and how to partner with us.
Work with us
Let’s talk.
Whether you build AI models, develop new medicines, run health services, fund health programmes or invest, we’d like to hear from you.
General enquiries: hello@sankofa.health
Media: press@sankofa.health
LinkedIn: Sankofa Health ↗
Sankofa Health (Pty) Ltd
Suite 102, 25 Richefond Circle
Ridgeside Office Estate, Umhlanga Rocks 4319
South Africa