After medical school, Victoria Duru’s fascination with across multiple roles, from flight physician to administrator. However, after three years of marriage without getting pregnant, her career and personal life collided, and she had to resign
Four months later, she became pregnant. But the experience left her questioning why women had to put their careers on hold just to build a family. And so, Duru founded Wakamedics, a mobile fertility clinic that brings fertility care closer to patients through technology.
In this edition of After Hours, she shares how a childhood curiosity for computers evolved into building a startup where telemedicine, AI, and digital tools are helping make fertility care fit around people’s lives.
My first interactions with technology
My earliest memories of technology take me back to a cyber café. Long before I owned a mobile phone, my parents enrolled me in computer training. I remember learning how to create an email account and using it to communicate with my uncle in the United States. I can still remember the email address I created back then.
At the time, I wasn’t fascinated by technology itself; I simply wanted to travel. Learning how to use a computer felt like one step closer to the bigger world I imagined. As I got older and entered university, technology became more than something I was curious about. It became part of the work I was doing.
While I was still an undergraduate, I worked with UNICEF on a campaign against female genital mutilation. I eventually became one of UNICEF’s social media partners, documenting the work happening in communities and helping amplify those stories online.
That changed how I saw technology. It wasn’t just about using a phone or sending emails anymore. We visited communities, collected real data, analysed it, compared results across different locations and used digital platforms to show the world what was happening at the grassroots. I learnt how powerful technology could be when used to tell important stories.
From a
After I finished medical school, the Ebonyi State Government announced it would sponsor the training of three female pilots. I applied and made the final three. It felt like everything was finally falling into place. The project was supposed to cost about ₦60 million, but it eventually fell through. But even then, I wasn’t ready to give up on a
During my national youth service, I met the founder of Flying Doctors while managing a project. She was impressed with how I handled it and invited me to Lagos after my service year, and that was how I entered the air ambulance industry.
Victoria Fakiya – Senior Writer
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Over the years, I worked in different capacities. I was a flight physician, served as a personal assistant, and also worked as the company’s administrator. It was demanding work, but I genuinely loved it.
However, I had been married for three years and wasn’t getting pregnant. Trying to balance fertility treatment with the demands of emergency medical evacuations became almost impossible. An appointment could be scheduled weeks in advance, only for an emergency evacuation to happen on the same day.
The patients always came first. Eventually, I had to make a choice, so I resigned. For four months, I focused almost entirely on my health. I attended every hospital appointment, every scan, and every consultation. Those four months changed everything because I finally became pregnant.
I realised I wasn’t the only woman making difficult career decisions because I wanted to have a child. Many women were sacrificing promotions, resigning from jobs, or struggling to keep demanding careers while navigating fertility treatment. I decided that if my experience had exposed a gap, I wanted to help close it.
So, I went back to study fertility care properly and also worked in a fertility clinic to understand how everything worked before launching Wakamedics in September 2022. We initially started as a physical fertility clinic but have gradually evolved into something much bigger.
Today, Wakamedics is a mobile fertility clinic and diagnostic centre that combines fertility care with diagnostics. We want fewer women to resign from their jobs just because they want to have children.
We’ve now helped more than 1,500 women get tested, educated over 3,500 people on fertility, and supported more than 200 pregnancies.
Building fertility care around convenience
One thing I learnt during my own fertility journey was that hospital visits don’t just take time; they interrupt life. That’s the problem we’re trying to solve.
Most people think of fertility clinics as somewhere you have to visit physically, but we’ve designed Wakamedics differently. We have fertility care kits that allow some tests to be done at home. For tests that require laboratory analysis, our team can collect samples from people’s homes or offices before analysing them at our facility. We also run community outreaches where our mobile setup allows us to collect and process samples on-site.
The process doesn’t end with testing either. Every fertility journey starts with a consultation. Results are emailed, reviewed virtually and followed up with a personalised treatment plan. For many women, it means they can continue working while receiving fertility care instead of choosing one over the other.
Interestingly, COVID-19 helped people become more comfortable with this model. When we launched, many people were sceptical about home sample collection. But trust gradually grew.
Technology powers almost every part of my day
It’s difficult to separate my work from technology because almost everything we do depends on it.
Most of our consultations are conductedRs because we run both a licensed clinic and a government-approved laboratory. Technology helps us organise patient records, monitor outcomes, and keep track of pregnancies as our patients progress through treatment
We’re also working on integrating artificial intelligence into our website. The idea is to help patients better understand their fertility results and make those records accessible wherever they are. If someone relocates outside Nigeria or decides to continue treatment elsewhere, they shouldn’t have to restart the entire testing process. Their records and explanations should already be available to them.
Technology also follows me long after I leave the clinic. Content creation has become one of the biggest ways I educate people about fertility because reproductive health education still isn’t as accessible as it should be. I’m constantly creating videos, editing content, and sharing information online.
I’ve also become intentional about keeping financial records. Even though the company has accountants, I use accounting software myself because I believe every founder should understand the financial side of their business, especially if you’re preparing for future investment.
Research is one of the biggest parts of my job, especially now that we’re preparing to launch another product. I recently returned from China, where I had several meetings around that project, and AI made almost every stage of that trip easier. Before I travelled, I used AI to research companies, build contact lists and organise my meetings. It helped me prepare long before I got on the plane.
These days, Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, and Grok have become part of my daily workflow. Each one serves a different purpose depending on what I’m working on. A lot of my time goes into research and development, so I find myself constantly asking questions, comparing ideas, and looking for better ways to solve problems.
Another area where AI has probably saved me the most time is grant applications. Over the years, I’ve attended several training sessions on grants, fundraising, and investor readiness. While they were useful, I still found the process overwhelming. Preparing reports, structuring responses, and putting together applications often felt like a project in itself.
Instead of paying someone else to do it, I decided to learn how to do it myself. I taught myself how to write stronger applications and how to use AI to improve my thinking rather than replace it.
For me, AI is more like a brainstorming partner. I spend time thinking about my prompts, asking better questions, and refining the responses until they reflect exactly what I want to say. I’ve always enjoyed writing, so AI simply helps me become a better writer.
So far, we’ve won about seven grants, and every single application was prepared in-house. There’s something satisfying about knowing we built those applications ourselves.
The biggest challenge with technology isn’t learning how to use it. It’s keeping up with how quickly it changes. There have been moments when I thought I had mastered a particular tool, only to return months later and discover that everything had changed.
Video editing is a good example. At one point, I felt comfortable editing my own videos. Later, after hiring a social media manager and a dedicated video editor, I tried doing some editing again and realised that many of the techniques I knew had already become outdated.
Technology moves fast. If you stop learning, you quickly discover that what you know is already old. That’s why I intentionally create time every day to learn. I belong to different founder communities, entrepreneurship groups, and marketing networks where people regularly share new tools and ideas.
I also learn a lot from my own team. We have regular review sessions, and because everyone works in different areas of the business, someone is almost always introducing a new platform or a better way of doing something.
Then there is social media. I dedicate at least one or two hours each day to seeing what’s new, not just because it helps my content creation, but because it helps me understand how technology is evolving.
If I could build one piece of technology today, it would be an AI-powered fertility assessment tool for men. People often associate fertility treatment with women, but pregnancy has always involved two people. It takes a man and a woman.
One of the biggest challenges we’ve encountered at Wakamedics is getting men to actively participate in fertility assessments. Many are reluctant, which slows down diagnosis and treatment. I keep thinking about how technology could remove some of those barriers. That’s something we’re already exploring.
Looking ahead
When I think about Africa’s future, I don’t see technology slowing down. I see more people learning how to use it because communities, organisations, and companies are investing in helping people build digital skills.
But I also think AI will become impossible to ignore. In healthcare alone, we’re already seeing things I never imagined would happen.
As an embryologist, you grow up believing certain parts of the fertilisation process require only human expertise. Yet today, robotic systems already assist with some of those procedures. That tells me we’re only at the beginning. I believe AI will transform healthcare, business, and many other industries over the next decade.
Of course, there are limits to what technology can replace. Healthcare will always need human judgement, empathy, and trust. But if there’s one lesson my journey has taught me, it’s that technology is at its best when it removes barriers rather than creates them.
Years ago, technology helped a young girl in a cyber café send emails to her uncle overseas. Later, it helped me tell stories with UNICEF, build a career in a of the hardest seasons of my life
Today, it helps me bring fertility care closer to women who might otherwise have to choose between building a family and building a career.
