Alan, the French health insurance company, said on 2 September 2026 that it had completed its acquisition of Tanel, a digital health insurance company based in Dakar, Senegal. The deal is Alan's first move into Africa.
Neither company disclosed the price. Alan said the transaction gives an exit to Tanel's founders and to its investors, including the venture firm Ventures Platform, AAIC Investment and a group of angel investors.
Tanel's co-founders, Mouhamed Ndoye and Makhtar Diop, will keep running Tanel's operations and will also lead Alan's development in Africa. Alan said Tanel's whole team stays in place and that customers and partners will keep working with the people they already know.
What Tanel built
Ndoye and Diop founded Tanel in 2021. The company started out with software for managing pharmacies and moved into health coverage for employers. It now operates in Senegal and Côte d'Ivoire, where it covers about 70,000 people across more than 400 client companies.
Members use a network of more than 1,200 pharmacies, clinics, hospitals and other healthcare providers. Alan described Tanel's long-term aim as building digital healthcare infrastructure across Africa.
“Alan has backed us since 2024 and understands both the problem we are solving and the size of the opportunity.”
Why Alan is buying
Alan already knew the business well. It invested in Tanel's seed round in 2024 and has followed the company since. With the acquisition, the two companies set a target of covering more than one million people across Africa by 2030.
Alan estimates the health insurance market in Senegal and Côte d'Ivoire at nearly €600 million (about $700 million), growing by about 10% a year. The plan is to deepen the business in those two countries first and then expand into English-speaking markets in West and East Africa.
Alan chief executive and co-founder Jean-Charles Samuelian-Werve said technology can deliver care at scale only when it is paired with teams that understand their local markets, which is how Alan framed keeping Tanel's management in charge.
Alan says it has more than 1.2 million members in France, Spain, Belgium and Canada, works with more than 37,000 companies as well as self-employed workers and retirees, and employs more than 850 people. It reports more than €800 million (about $930 million) in annual recurring revenue for 2026 and a valuation of €5.5 billion (about $6.4 billion).
Alan, which is regulated by France's insurance supervisor, the ACPR, has until now operated only in Europe and Canada. Buying a company it already part-owned gave it a licensed local operator, an existing book of corporate clients and a provider network in two West African countries, instead of building those from scratch.
The timing of the transaction is not entirely clear from public reports. Financial Afrik reported that Alan had acquired Tanel in June, while Alan announced the completed deal on 2 September.
What happens to members and partners
Alan said Tanel's members and healthcare partners will see no change in who they deal with, and will gain access to new services over time, including telehealth and preventive health support.
The first priorities after the deal are integrating the two companies' products, improving the digital journey for patients and bringing Alan's preventive health services onto Tanel's platform.
Ndoye and Diop will be supported by Alan's international teams as they push into new markets. The companies did not give a timetable for the move into English-speaking countries beyond the 2030 target of one million covered lives.
The founders and the funding
Tanel did not disclose how much it raised before the sale. Alan said its own investment came in the 2024 seed round. Besides Alan, Tanel's backers included Ventures Platform, AAIC Investment and angel investors Dr Mussaad M. Al-Razouki, Alyune-Blondin Diop and Charles "Chuck" Slaughter, all of whom exit through the deal.
Ndoye and Diop said Alan had backed them since 2024 and understood both the problem they were solving and the size of the opportunity. Dotun Olowoporoku, managing partner at Ventures Platform, said African tech still sees too few exits, especially in Francophone Africa, and called the sale an important milestone for the ecosystem.
