From a Near-Death Birth to Saving 40,000 Lives: The Temie Giwa-Tubosun Story

She was a young Nigerian-American health manager who watched a woman named Aisha nearly bleed to death after childbirth. Years later, she almost died the same way but survived because she had access to a blood bank. That contrast lit a fire. Today, Temie Giwa-Tubosun runs LifeBank, Africa’s foremost healthcare technology and logistics company, and she has set her sights on saving one million lives. Temie Giwa-Tubosun (born Oluwaloni Olamide Giwa in December 1985) is a Nigerian-American health manager, entrepreneur, and the founder of LifeBank. She was born in Ila Orangun, Osun State, Nigeria, the fourth of six children to a university professor father and a schoolteacher mother. She grew up moving between Ila, Ilesha, and Ibadan, absorbing the rhythms of small-town and urban Nigeria. At age fifteen, in 2001, her family won the US Diversity Immigrant Visa lottery. Temie left Nigeria to join her parents and older siblings in the United States. She attended Osseo Senior High School in Minnesota, graduating in 2003. That immigrant teenager’s journey from rural Osun State to a Minnesota high school would later inform her unique perspective on global health disparities.

Building a Global Health Résumé

Temie pursued higher education at Minnesota State University Moorhead, graduating in 2007. She then enrolled at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, earning a master’s degree in International Public Management in July 2010.

Her early career reads like a masterclass in global health experience:

• 2009: Interned for the UK Department for International Development (DFID) at Paths2 in Abuja, Nigeria
• January – July 2010: Graduate fellowship at the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, Switzerland
• 2010: Brief stint at Fairview Health Services in Minnesota
• August 2011 – 2012: Global Health Corps fellow in Mbarara, Uganda, working with the Millennium Villages Project (a joint initiative of the UN Development Programme and Millennium Promise)

She later worked with the Lagos State Government and accumulated over a decade of health management experience with major international organizations. On paper, she was a rising star. But the real education was happening outside the classroom in a hospital ward in Abuja.

The Aisha Moment: A Life on the Edge, a Call for Action

During her DFID internship in Nigeria in 2009, Temie met a young pregnant woman named Aisha. Aisha had endured three days of prolonged labor and nearly lost her life due to massive blood loss. The scene haunted Temie. She couldn’t shake the injustice: a woman dying not from a lack of medical knowledge, but from a lack of supplies. Years later, in 2014, Temie herself gave birth to her son on Valentine’s Day. She suffered a severe postpartum hemorrhage, the same condition that had nearly killed Aisha. But Temie had access to a blood bank. She and her baby received intensive care and survived. The contrast was devastating and clarifying. Why should one woman live and another die based solely on geography and supply chains? Temie learned the staggering statistics: 550 women in sub-Saharan Africa lose their lives every day due to excessive bleeding during childbirth. Access to blood supplies could save 75% of those lives. She also discovered that over 14.9 million people die annually in Africa from a shortage of essential medical products.

The One Percent Project: Proving the Model

Temie returned to Nigeria in July 2012 permanently. On May 21, 2012, she founded the One Percent Blood Donation Enlightenment Foundation known as the One Percent Project. The NGO had a deceptively simple goal: end blood shortages in Nigeria by educating the public, overcoming fears and myths about donation, and building efficient distribution networks. The project collected over 3,100 imperial pints (1,800 liters) of blood. It was proof of concept: Nigerians would donate, and blood could move. During this period, from February 2012 to October 2013, Temie also wrote a weekly column for YNaija, a Nigerian youth-focused web magazine, using her voice to advocate for health awareness. From June 2014 to October 2015, she served as Program Manager for Nollywood Workshops, an NGO supporting filmmakers in Lagos. During the 2014 Ebola scare, she helped supervise the production of public service announcements to educate Nigerians about healthy prevention practices. Even before LifeBank, she was already a public health communicator.

LifeBank: Technology Meets the Last Mile

January 2016 marked the transformation of the One Percent Project into LifeBank, a commercial health technology and logistics company led by Temie. The company was incubated at Co-Creation Hub (CCHub) in Yaba, Lagos, Nigeria’s premier technology hub.

LifeBank’s mission is elegant and profound: to create a health supply chain that delivers vital products and equipment from ports to clinics 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The company operates on what Temie calls “the four Ds”:

• Data: Gathering daily inventory data from 60 blood suppliers in Lagos
• Discovery: Hospitals communicate needs via LifeBank’s platform or 24/7 call center
• Delivery: Using motorcycles, boats, trucks, tricycles, and drones to deliver within 55 minutes
• Donors: An online platform helping the public become blood donors

LifeBank delivers blood in WHO Blood Transfusion Safety-compliant cold chain, ensuring products arrive in optimal condition. The company has developed groundbreaking innovations, including a blockchain-powered essential medical product integrity solution that improves safety standards and reduces transfusion-transmissible infections like HIV and Hepatitis. It has also built solutions for medical oxygen delivery (scaled dramatically during COVID-19) and for medical consumables and equipment.

The Mark Zuckerberg Moment: Global Validation

Marked by his first trip to sub-Saharan Africa, Mark Zuckerberg visited Nigeria on August 31, 2016. The following day, during a town hall meeting, Zuckerberg mentioned Temie by name, one of only two women he referenced. His words were electric:

“If everyone had the opportunity to build something like this, then the world would be a better place… I have been to a lot of different cities… people around the world are trying to build stuff like that. If she actually pulls it off, then she’d show a model that will impact not just Lagos, not just Nigeria, but countries all around the world.”

Temie’s response was measured but proud: “Mark’s visit is validation for years of work and everything we’re trying to do.” The tech world was now watching.

Impact by the Numbers: Scaling a Life-Saving Machine

LifeBank’s growth has been extraordinary:

• January 2017: Over 2,000 pints of blood delivered
• 2020: Over 19,000 units delivered to 400+ hospitals, 6,500+ lives saved
• 2021: 155,569 units of blood and medical products transported, 1,200 hospitals served, 40,000+ lives saved
• Current: Operations in 11 cities across Nigeria, Kenya, and Ethiopia

The company has expanded beyond blood to deliver oxygen, platelets, plasma, vaccines, medical consumables, and medical equipment. It has developed proof of concept using drones (UAVs) to deliver critical medical products in Ethiopia. 2020 saw Temie establish the Blood Oxygen Access Trust (BOAT) Foundation to deliver subsidized essential medical items to vulnerable patients. To date, the foundation has provided over 1,500 supplies to more than 4,200 patients.

COVID-19: Pivoting to a Pandemic

When COVID-19 struck, Temie and her team pivoted LifeBank’s logistics infrastructure to meet emergency needs. They launched a service bringing COVID-19 PCR testing to the doorsteps of thousands of Nigerians, with efficient transport back to labs to minimize person-to-person contact. They also established testing centers and provided free delivery of medical oxygen to COVID-19 patients in isolation centers. The pandemic proved what Temie had always known: a resilient supply chain is a matter of life and death.

A Trophy Case of Global Recognition

Temie’s work has earned her a remarkable collection of honors:

• BBC 100 Women (2014): The youngest Nigerian on the list, described as someone “to take notice of now and in the future”
• TEDxEuston Speaker (2016): Talk titled “Healthcare is a Right”
• World Economic Forum Innovators (2017): One of six entrepreneurs demonstrating the positive role of women in the Fourth Industrial Revolution
• Jack Ma’s Africa Netpreneur Prize (2019): Grand Prize Winner, beating 10,000 startups from 50 African countries; $250,000 award, with an official congratulations from President Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria
• TIME100 Next (2020): One of TIME magazine’s 100 Most Influential People
• Global Citizen Prize for Business Leader (2020): For addressing blood shortages and COVID-19 response
• Cartier Women’s Initiative Impact Awardee (2020, 2022)
• MOI Awards Nomination (2025): Young Executive to Watch Under 40

She has also been featured on YNaija’s 100 Most Inspiring Women (2017), Quartz African Innovators List (2017), and African Folder’s 15 African Female Founders You Should Know (2023).

The Funding Gap and a Powerful TED Talk

Temie has become a prominent voice on the challenges facing female entrepreneurs, particularly Black women in tech. Her TED Talk, “The Funding Gap in Start-up Investing,” delivers a blunt message: “It is time to close the funding gap for Black female-led start-ups the world over.”

She speaks candidly about the barriers she faces:

“I think they have never met anyone like me before; I don’t look like an entrepreneur: I look big, I’m a mom, I am a girl. You will rarely find people who look like me that can found companies that are global in nature.”

Her response is not a complaint; it is proof: “I basically have to prove to the world that I can pull it off. There are lots of women who look like me who are entrepreneurs, who are tough, who are courageous, who can do hard things and who can lean in and get things done and win.”

The One Million Lives Vision

Temie’s ambition for LifeBank is clear and staggering: to be the supply chain engine for healthcare systems across Africa and save the lives of one million Africans in the next ten years. She plans to expand to all of Africa, India, Southeast Asia, and South America, with the ultimate goal of becoming a profitable public company.

Her personal mantra cuts through the noise:

“What keeps me going is that someone is about to die, and they don’t die.”

She also fights against the numbing effect of large numbers: “Sometimes measuring impact by the numbers can seem theoretical. We started printing the first names of everybody we have saved on a card that we hang on the wall. It seems more real when you see their name and the date we rescued them.”

Inspiration from Everyday Women

Temie draws strength not from celebrity entrepreneurs but from the women in her own life:

“I have started getting inspiration from people like my mother, who worked two jobs and raised six children… I get inspiration from everyday women who are doing tough things that nobody knows about; nobody knows their story, nobody cares about their story, but they still do these amazing, incredible things.”

Personal Life

Temie is married to Kola Tubosun, a Nigerian linguist and writer. She is the mother of three children: Tia, Eni, and Kiitan. Her Twitter/X bio sums her up perfectly: “CEO of LifeBank, @kolatubosun’s Wife, Tia, Eni and Kiitan’s Mom!”