Categories: Stories

Strive Masiyiwa accused of stealing medical app and defaming the original makers

The CEO of Cassava, Darlington Mandivenga, says that in fact AMSP was built by a group called Vaya Africa and not under Cassava, and was a gift to the African Union from Masiyiwa. AMSP has no relationship to or connection with Cassava Fintech.

“We are the biggest builders of digital platforms in Africa and we have numerous third-party platforms from well-established vendors in the US and China. We don’t need to go to a small team with no IP and no skills for something like this,” he says.

Cassava does run a health platform in Zimbabwe called Maisha Medik and it uses a platform licensed from a third-party vendor that is well established in the US, Lombard says.

He denies that Masiyiwa defamed PocketPatientMD and claims “from the information in our possession, it is clear to us that Mr Rice and Mr [Mark] Wien [co-founder and CEO of PocketPatientMD] have no other interest in this matter but to attempt to extort money from Cassava FinTech and/or Mr Masiyiwa”.

Rice responded by saying he had never asked Cassava for funding of any kind, and that the talks lasted much longer than Lombard suggests.

“Regarding our claim of defamation, there is a substantial paper trail since we and dozens of other members of the Special Envoy’s Alliance received the defamatory emails in question. We believe the defamatory remarks were made specifically because we raised the alarm about potential conflicts of interest. We were expelled from the Alliance shortly after raising these concerns.”

“We believe the defamatory remarks were made specifically because we raised the alarm about potential conflicts of interest. We were expelled from the Alliance shortly after raising these concerns.

“The entire PocketPatientMD platform has always been free for anyone to use,” he says.- Daily Maverick

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Charles Rukuni

The Insider is a political and business bulletin about Zimbabwe, edited by Charles Rukuni. Founded in 1990, it was a printed 12-page subscription only newsletter until 2003 when Zimbabwe's hyper-inflation made it impossible to continue printing.

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