TIBU Health Gets Proparco Loan to Scale Kenya Clinics

In Short

• Proparco has backed TIBU Health with a financing facility to expand access to primary healthcare in Kenya.
• The funding comes via the Bridge Fund under the Digital Africa facility.
• TIBU Health plans to scale its network of embedded “Minute Clinics” linked to a central “Hub” clinic.

What Happened

TIBU Health has received a financing facility from Proparco to accelerate its rollout of proximity clinics in Kenya. TIBU Health is a Kenyan healthtech startup founded in 2020 by Jason Carmichael.

The company’s approach is built around “Minute Clinics”, small clinics embedded inside places people already visit, such as pharmacies and supermarkets. Embedded clinics are care points placed inside another business, similar to a mini-branch inside a retail store.

Since 2024, TIBU Health has expanded this model through partnerships, including a pharmacy partnership with Goodlife. The Minute Clinics connect to a central “Hub” clinic that provides specialist services like imaging, pediatrics, gynecology, lab testing, and telemedicine, which is remote care via phone or video.

Proparco says the hub-and-spoke setup helps replicate primary care quickly across urban and peri-urban areas. The goal is to reduce gaps that lead to self-medication, where patients treat themselves without seeing a clinician.

TIBU Health currently operates 10 Minute Clinics across four Kenyan counties, including Nairobi. The startup says it has delivered more than 45,000 diagnoses and administered 2,500 vaccines.

Why It Matters

Debt financing can be a better fit than equity for clinic expansion because it funds rollout without changing ownership, as long as unit economics hold up.

For Kenya’s health system, embedded clinics can lower the friction of seeking care by placing basic services closer to where people shop and pick up medicines. If the model scales, it could also shift demand away from informal drug purchases toward supervised diagnosis, vaccinations, and referrals.

For the wider African healthtech ecosystem, this deal is another signal that funders are willing to support offline delivery networks, not just apps. It also highlights a growing focus on telemedicine and diagnostics as add-ons to physical primary care sites, rather than standalone products.