He won a scholarship to Durham University for an academic career in astrophysics but in the end decided that it was “not sufficiently practical” and so gave it up to work in technology.
Now as one of Africa’s most dynamic technology innovators, the world is adopting Bright Simons’ system. He came up with a good idea to put a code on all pharmaceutical drug packaging, enabling consumers to check if it was authentic or not with a simple text message, so as to tackle the problem of counterfeit medicine which, according to WHO estimates, account for 30% of all medicines on sale, and kill up to 2,000 people daily worldwide.
As of 2013, Simons’ organisation, mPedigree, works with 20 telecoms companies and is in discussions with two dozen more. Its system has appeared on millions of packs of medicine and has been adopted as the national standard in three different countries.
Now, taken beyond Africa, the system has become a model for the industry in India and is being extended across south Asia. Simons discloses; “we’ve got a relationship with many of the major regional—and a growing number of multinational—pharmas, including Sanofi-Aventis. In Nigeria our codes are on 50 million packs of antimalarial drugs alone, and we have just signed up two Chinese drug makers.
A prolific writer, Simons writes for the Huffington Post and the Royal African Society’s online magazine, African Arguments. The 32 year old is a regular contributor to the BBC’s Business Daily programs. Simons has co-authored research at IMANI, Ghana’s leading and one of Africa’s top five political-economy think-tanks.