Dr. Precious Lunga

Co-Founder & CEO | Baobab Circle

Dr Precious Lunga is CEO and Co-Founder of Baobab Circle Ltd, a health technology company using artificial intelligence to address the growing problem of chronic diseases such as diabetes and hypertension across Africa. Prior to this she was at Econet Wireless where she established the Health business unit delivering services across the mobile operator’s networks in Zimbabwe and Lesotho. She introduced several commercial health offerings including the health SMS platform which acquired more than 750,000 paying customers within its first year of launch as well as connected health devices.

Dr Lunga has more than 15 years of experience of working in the African health sector. She trained as a neuroscientist and epidemiologist. She has worked in the biotechnology industry and as a field epidemiologist conducting HIV clinical trials in Eastern and Southern Africa. This was followed by a period of working at the World Health Organisation and UNAIDS in Geneva where she was involved in working with more than 14 African countries in spearheading the implementation of HIV prevention.

She was strategic advisor at the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation funding health programmes in Nigeria and Zimbabwe.  Dr Lunga is an advocate for the use of technology to improve access to health. She has appeared on BBC Radio 4’s Great Lives, the Women of the World festival and as a health tech expert commentator on various media programs including the BBC World Service and Sky News.

Dr Lunga is a member of the boards of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Malaria Consortium, and Grassroots Soccer UK. She also sits on the Advisory Board for Oxford University’s Weidenfeld-Hoffman Trust’s Leadership and Scholarships Programme.

Dr Lunga has a PhD in Neuroscience from Cambridge University, MSc Epidemiology from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and a BSc (Hons) Neuroscience from Edinburgh University. She is a Yale World Fellow.