French health insurer Alan is buying Senegalese healthtech startup Tanel, taking its first step into Africa through a company backed by investors including football star Kylian Mbappé.
The acquisition gives Alan a foothold in two of West Africa’s fastest-growing healthcare markets and turns Tanel into the launchpad for an expansion that the companies expect will reach more than 1 million members across Africa by 2030.
Tanel, founded in 2021 by Mouhamed Ndoye and Makhtar Diop, has built a digital platform for managing employee health coverage in markets where healthcare administration remains heavily fragmented. The company operates in Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire, serving about 70,000 members at more than 400 companies and linking them to more than 1,200 pharmacies and healthcare providers.
Alan first backed Tanel in its 2024 seed round. The relationship has since evolved into an acquisition, giving the French company local infrastructure, healthcare partnerships and regulatory knowledge as it enters a continent where it previously had no operating presence.
The companies plan to strengthen their businesses in Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire before targeting Anglophone markets in West and East Africa. The first phase will focus on integrating their platforms, improving the digital patient experience and bringing Alan’s preventive healthcare and telehealth services to Tanel customers.
The deal is also an exit for Tanel’s founders and early investors, including Ventures Platform and AAIC Investment, as well as angel investors such as Dr. Mussaad M. Al-Razouki, Alyune-Blondin Diop and Charles “Chuck” Slaughter.
For Ventures Platform, which backed Tanel early, the transaction highlights the growing potential for African startups to attract strategic buyers despite a still-thin market for technology exits.
“African tech still sees too few exits, particularly in Francophone Africa,” Dotun Olowoporoku, Managing Partner at Ventures Platform, said. “Alan’s acquisition validates their vision and demonstrates the potential for ambitious, locally built companies to create lasting value.”
Alan has more than 1.2 million members across France, Spain, Belgium and Canada. Its entry into Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire gives it access to a regional health-insurance market estimated at almost €600 million, growing at about 10% annually.
For Alan co-founder and CEO Jean-Charles Samuelian-Werve, Tanel offers something difficult to build from scratch: an established network across local healthcare systems.
“Tanel has done the hard work of building relationships with users, companies, healthcare providers and regulators in Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire,” Samuelian-Werve said. “Combining that knowledge with Alan’s platform gives us a strong base from which to build in Africa.”
Ndoye and Diop will remain in charge of Tanel’s operations and Alan’s African expansion, with the startup’s full team staying in place.
Tanel began by building infrastructure for pharmacies before expanding into tools covering the broader healthcare journey, as the founders sought to replace paper-heavy processes with digital services.
The acquisition gives Alan a ready-made African operation while giving Tanel access to the technology, capital and product expertise of a European healthtech company. It also marks another major liquidity event for Africa’s startup ecosystem, where large strategic acquisitions remain relatively rare.