Chekkit Advances In Its Mission To Protect Africa Against Food And Drug Counterfeits
Africa is currently battling a drug and food counterfeit menace. The World Health Organisation (WHO) released a report that reveals that between 64,000 and 158,000 people die from counterfeit anti-malarial drugs in sub-Saharan Africa per year. Dare Odumade, 2019 TEF Alumna co-founded Chekkit to address this worrisome challenge that plagues the continent.
Chekkit is a Nigerian-based company that uses blockchain technology to help users verify the authenticity of products before consuming them.
The goal for Dare and his co-founder is to make Chekkit the seal of genuity for every great product, ensuring you know the story of everything you consume, and they are well on their way to achieving this in due time. Since its inception less than three years ago, over 7 million pharmaceutical products have been secured with Chekkit’s anti-fake sticker label and over 200,000 consumers have been protected from counterfeit food and drugs.
Dare is on an ambitious and equally important mission to grow Chekkit to become the leading product authentication and distribution tracking solution, not just for Africa alone but for the rest of the world.
The ease of use of the platform is also what makes it so appealing to consumers. They are able to verify products through the app by scanning barcodes or using USSD for confirmation. Similarly, Chekkit also provides insights on consumers to the manufacturers who can then choose to act on it by using rewards and loyalty programmes or upsell to customers.
This long existing pandemic of counterfeit food and drugs is gradually being mitigated by Chekkit as users can report a fake, expired, or bad product on the ChekkitApp while they in turn, share this information with regulatory bodies and the product manufacturers.
Since its launch, Chekkit has successfully expanded its operations to Afghanistan, with the support of an International partner to address the region’s pharma product counterfeiting challenge.
Chekkit is saving lives by simultaneously detecting and notifying consumers, manufacturers and policy makers from the minute fake or substandard drugs are detected.
