Habtamu Abba Fogi is a graduate from Jimma Univeristy. He completed his first degree in Biomedical Engineering and his second in Business Administration.
More impressive, however, is that Habtamu has received 18 awards from 7 different countries. His accomplishments; building expensive medical equipment that Ethiopia imports at a high cost right here at home.
His first project was building an infant warming machine; an accomplishment that saw him win the African Development Bank’s African Entrepreneurship Award back in 2015.
The bank also granted him USD 25,000 which he used to establish Simbona Africa Healthcare PLC., along with 12 other colleagues.
Simbona is a healthcare research and development private company that intends to design, produce, innovate, and develop health care equipment and health ICT systems.
Since establishing Simbona, Habtamu and co have been able to construct oxygen machines and sanitation machines that can kill microorganisms like COVID-19 without using chemicals.
These efforts saw Habtamu receive the Africa Youth Entrepreneurship award as well as several recognitions from Canada, Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, South Africa, and the USA. Four of these were from this past year alone.
Now, the Simbona team is working on various projects at Jimma University and intends to contribute significantly to the modernisation of Ethiopia’s healthcare system.