Originally posted on Supply Chain Now.
We are excited to share a Supply Chain Now episode as part of the popular Supply Chain Leadership Across Africa Series.
In this episode titled: Increasing Private Sector Engagement for Quality Healthcare Anderson Ti-Timi from VillageReach and Trip Allport from X2Meds speak with host Scott Luton about the complex pharmaceutical value chain and the urgent need to build up local private distributors through improved procurement systems and working capital management.
Anderson shares insights from working with private distributors in the Democratic Republic of the Congo—and emphasizes the importance of trust, visibility and scalable systems. Trip highlights how lessons from 15 years of outsourced distribution can now be applied across the health supply chain to accelerate innovation, integration and cost reduction. Together, they underscore how collaboration among governments, donors, manufacturers and distributors is the key to achieving universal health coverage.
Anderson Ti-Timi is a Manager of Private Sector Engagement at VillageReach. He leads consultancy services that support innovators and startups, ensuring alignment between innovator products and services with the public health customers specific needs and contexts across Africa. He specializes in building the capacities of both private and public entities, preparing private companies for financing and investment, and facilitating sustainable market entries. His expertise and background in finance further extends to market development and shaping, providing advisory support to ensure the long-term success of innovations.
Trip Allport is the Chief Growth Officer of XS2Meds, an i+solutions subsidiary focused on providing pooled procurement to the private sector. The goal of XS2Meds is to increase affordable access to high quality medicines and health products. Prior to XS2Meds, Trip was the Chief Growth Officer of Kasha, a digital and physical platform for access to health and pharmaceutical products to the ‘ultra-last mile’ in Africa. From 2017-2021, he was the Founder and Managing Director of the Africa Resource Centre (ARC), an independent institution aimed at improving availability of medicines across Africa by strengthening health systems in partnership between country Governments and private sector partners. Before ARC, Trip was the Delivery Lead for Project Last Mile (PLM), designing and developing transformation initiatives that leveraged Coca-Cola expertise in supply chain and strategic marketing to improve health across 10 countries in Africa. Across both ARC and PLM, Trip was responsible for building and managing the donor partnerships with USAID, PEPFAR, The Global Fund and The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. His professional passion is transforming health on the continent leveraging private sector expertise and building cross-sector partnerships. He received his Bachelor of Commerce in strategy, finance and entrepreneurship from McGill University in Montreal, Canada.
