Hakim Kakooza is a biotech innovator and Founder of MariTest, a health technology company building Africa’s first non-invasive, AI-powered malaria diagnostic and real-time surveillance platform. His work focuses on reinventing diagnostics for low-resource settings by making testing faster, simpler, and accessible at the point of care.

Hakim’s mission is deeply personal. During a university internship in a remote Ugandan clinic, he nearly died after a delayed malaria diagnosis. The experience led him to dedicate his career to closing the diagnostic access gap in underserved communities.

A Business Strategy graduate of the African Leadership University, Hakim is currently specializing in Biotech Innovation at Stanford University. He brings a balance of business acumen, biotech expertise, and passion for healthcare to develop scalable medical technologies for emerging health systems. His work has been recognized by the University of Oxford, TechCrunch, Yale University, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and Microsoft.