A State-Backed Health Platform Enters Ethiopia’s Digital Space, Startups Fear Tilted Field

For decades, Ethiopia’s pharmaceutical supply chain has struggled under the weight of shortages, uneven distribution, and gaps in information. A generation of startups has attempted to bridge those cracks by digitizing pharmacy inventories, mapping the location of essential medicines, or compiling real-time price comparisons across outlets. A 2023 startup ecosystem report had identified over 40 health tech startups in the capital city alone.

Yet their progress has been slow. Essential-medicine availability hovers at about 81.3% across major institutions, an improvement for some facilities but still a persistent shortfall in a country where access can be a matter of life or death.

Now, a new government-backed platform is mounting the most ambitious attempt yet to impose order on the system. The all-in-one health service app, dubbed Tenenete, “my health” in Amharic, was introduced two weeks ago under the joint auspices of the Ministry of Health and the Prime Minister’s Office. Early adoption has been swift: 1,742 pharmacies and 134 hospitals across Addis Ababa have already registered while the platform is already among apps hosted on telebirr, a mobile money super-app with close to 55 million users. 

Yohanes Bekele, one of the developers behind Tenenete, said the rollout was coordinated with sub-city health offices, bureaus, and local health posts to ensure that providers were not only enrolled but trained to use the tools. “Every licensed pharmacy is now using the platform,” he told Shega, noting that facilities received hands-on guidance to integrate the platform’s enterprise resource planning system into their daily workflows.

Tenenete is designed as a comprehensive gateway for health-related services, allowing users to search for medicines, compare prices and availability, locate hospitals, and access toll free health advice. Users experiencing health issues ranging from heart attacks to trauma can access real-time information on nearby hospitals, which offer the necessary treatment. The platform’s features also include ambulance dispatching through the short-code 633 and the ability for users to browse pharmacy inventories and reserve medicines before traveling if they have prescriptions.

“We will continue expanding this feature to make emergency response faster and more accessible across the country,” Yohanes said.

The platform was formally unveiled at the Digital Health Conference and Exhibition at the Science Museum, a symbolic nod to the government’s growing emphasis on health-sector digitization. Mekdes Daba (M.D) said Teninete’s development followed directions by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed (PhD) emphasizing the importance of digital innovation to make health services more accessible.

“Digital health is vital to achieving universal health coverage,” the Minister noted during the launch.

Earlier this year, the Health Ministry signed service-level agreements with eight digital financial service providers as part of its broader national digital health strategy, an effort aimed at integrating payment, data, and service delivery systems.

On the ground, early reactions are mixed to the new platform. Four pharmacies in Addis Ababa that spoke to Shega said they had already begun using Tenenete. One reported completing a sale through the platform and expressed optimism about its reach when the delivery system is enabled. But some private-sector innovators view the government’s entry with apprehension. A founder of a telemedicine startup said the launch of a state-backed, all-in-one superapp could eclipse years of work by smaller companies.

“None of the digital health startups would be able to compete with such an app,” the founder said, adding that he wished the ministry had pursued partnerships that could lift both government and private players. “We have plans to lodge a formal complaint.”

Whether Tenenete becomes the long-awaited fix for Ethiopia’s fragmented health market, or a new source of friction, could depend on how it expands beyond Addis Ababa and how the government chooses to work with, rather than around, the ecosystem that came before it.