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Senegalese startup JokkoSanté has launched a “medicinal cooperative” with a community of 6,000 inhabitants, allowing customers to recycle their unused packaged medicines in what it describes as the first of its kind in Africa.

Launched in August of last year by Adama Kane, JokkoSanté allows people with leftover medication to sell it online at an affordable rate to those in need.

Users register on the website with a personal account tied to their mobile phone number, which is credited or debited based on medicines sold or bought. JokkoSanté is built to allows ordinary members of the population, philanthropists and NGOs to donate medicine obtain better communication methods and more transparency.

In Senegal, 80 per cent of the working population is not covered by any healthcare system, while as much as 72 per cent of a family’s spending on health is on drugs expenses.

“In this context of scarcity, drugs consumption is not optimised as unused medicines accumulate in families’ first-aid boxes till lapsing,” Kane told Disrupt Africa.

Kane’s answer is JokkoSanté, is a community system for the deposit, storage, sharing, and cross-financing of medicine, merging all families’ first-aid boxes into a single community pharmacy.

“For deprived people, prescription are funded by the private sector under their CSR activities. As a benefit, these private companies are guaranteed an increased and direct visibility as their action are advertised by branded text messages sent to each of the beneficiaries.”

Initially self-funded, JokkoSanté this year won a US$150,000 award from the BMCE Bank of Morocco, and is now looking for US$100,000 to expand its operations throughout Senegal and into other African countries.

“We are finalising our deployment in Senegal in 2016. We aim to cover more than 15 African countries by 2017,” Kane said.

The startup gains revenues from commissions of between five and seven per cent on funds made available by the corporate sector, credit card and mobile money payments, as well as advertising.

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