When Blessing Aniefiok watched her aunt navigate life after losing a limb to diabetes, she saw more than the physical effects of amputation. She saw how losing mobility could affect a person’s ability to work, care for family, participate in society and live independently.
That experience would eventually become part of the motivation behind Dynalimb Technologies, a Nigerian health technology company co-founded by Aniefiok that is using 3D printing, digital tools and clinical expertise to rethink how prosthetic and orthotic care is delivered across Africa.
Aniefiok, a trained prosthetist and orthotist, had already seen the challenges patients faced through her clinical work. People could wait weeks or even months for prosthetic and orthotic devices, while conventional production methods could make the devices expensive and difficult to access.
Rather than accepting those limitations as inevitable, the Dynalimb team began exploring how 3D technology could change the process.
At the time, there was limited local infrastructure and reference material for applying 3D technology to prosthetics and orthotics in Nigeria. The team therefore had to experiment, learn and develop many of its processes themselves.
That experimentation has since grown into a technology-enabled mobility company working across prosthetics, orthotics and rehabilitation.
One part of Dynalimb’s model is the production of 3D-printed prosthetic and orthotic devices. According to Aniefiok, a basic traditional prosthetic device in Nigeria can cost upwards of ₦1.6 million and take approximately four to six weeks to produce, while Dynalimb’s average prosthetic device costs around ₦800,000 and can be delivered in about seven days, depending on the device and clinical requirements.
But the company is looking beyond making devices faster and more affordable.
Dynalimb has also developed DynaX, a digital platform designed to connect different parts of the mobility-care journey, including digital measurement and scanning, patient management, virtual clinical collaboration, therapy support and other aspects of rehabilitation.
The idea is to reduce the dependence on manual processes such as plaster casting, paper records and fragmented communication between patients and healthcare professionals.
For Aniefiok and her team, technology is not intended to replace the clinical relationship between patients and healthcare professionals. Instead, it is being used to make that relationship more efficient and extend access to specialised care.
“Our long-term vision is for DynaX to become infrastructure that connects the different stages of mobility care from assessment and measurement through device design, manufacturing, rehabilitation and follow-up,” Aniefiok said.
The need is significant.
More than 30 million people across Africa require prosthetic, orthotic and rehabilitation services, according to the figures cited by Dynalimb, while access remains constrained by cost, limited numbers of trained professionals, long production times and the concentration of specialist services in a small number of locations.
Dynalimb says it has now served more than 1,000 patients, including individuals seeking prosthetic and orthotic care and healthcare institutions looking to strengthen their services.
The company is also developing its own portfolio of assistive devices. Its current offerings include products such as the Macy Foot, Donde Foot, Aveon Seat Brace and custom-fitted orthotic solutions.
For Aniefiok, however, the ambition is not simply to manufacture cheaper prosthetic devices.
“We want to make the entire mobility-care journey more accessible, efficient and dignified,” she said.
That approach has also shaped the company’s expansion plans.
Nigeria remains Dynalimb’s primary market, with the company working to strengthen partnerships with hospitals and expand its operational presence in Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt and Kano.
Beyond Nigeria, Dynalimb is exploring markets including Ghana, Kenya and Rwanda, where similar challenges exist around access to prosthetic and orthotic services.
The company says it does not intend to simply export products into these markets. Instead, it plans to work with local healthcare providers and adapt its technology and service model to each market.
This is part of a longer-term ambition to build an African mobility-care infrastructure that makes quality prosthetic, orthotic and rehabilitation services more accessible regardless of where a person lives.
Building that infrastructure will require more than technology. Dynalimb has had to balance investment in equipment, product development and people with the need to keep its services affordable, while navigating the difficulty of raising early-stage capital for healthcare hardware and manufacturing businesses.
Support programmes have therefore played a role in the company’s growth. Dynalimb participated in the Standard Chartered Foundation’s Women in Tech Accelerator, implemented locally by the Enterprise Development Centre with support from Village Capital.
Beyond funding, Aniefiok said the programme provided mentorship, networks, visibility and a community of other founders, while giving the team an opportunity to step back from daily operations and think more strategically about growth.
The company is now entering a new phase, with ambitions that extend beyond Nigeria.
Aniefiok’s story illustrates a growing trend within Africa’s technology ecosystem: innovators are increasingly applying advanced technologies not simply to create digital products, but to address problems in healthcare and other sectors where access has traditionally been limited.
For people living with limb loss or mobility challenges, the impact of that innovation is ultimately measured in very practical terms — whether someone can walk, work, return to school, care for their family or participate more fully in everyday life.
That is what makes Dynalimb’s work bigger than 3D printing.
It is an attempt to use technology to change what access to mobility care can look like in Africa.
And for Aniefiok, a personal experience with disability has become the starting point for building a company that hopes to make that care more accessible to thousands more people across the continent.
