Some people come to remanufacturing from manufacturing, engineering, or industrial policy. Gaby Lobban arrives from a different direction: from healthcare, from medical technology, from a concrete understanding of what it means to guarantee access to quality products in contexts where global supply chains do not reach, or reach too late, or arrive at prices that exclude.
Zumbudda (Pty) Ltd is a company based in Johannesburg, South Africa, founded in 2014 as a platform for digital health technology solutions. Lobban has led the company since its inception, as Business Director, building it at the intersection of health innovation, communications, and technology access. The trajectory of Zumbudda leads directly to the heart of one of the most urgent themes in African remanufacturing: medical devices and healthcare equipment. On a continent where access to healthcare equipment remains deeply unequal, remanufacturing is not a matter of industrial efficiency, it is a matter of justice. A device restored to certified standards, at a lower cost than new, can be the difference between a hospital that functions and one that does not.
The perspective Lobban brings to EuAReman 2026 is that of southern Africa, a context with technical and infrastructural capacities distinct from those of West or East Africa, with its own industrial chains and innovation ecosystem anchored in cities like Johannesburg and Cape Town, and a history of relationships with Europe that has left traces both in available skills and in dependencies yet to be resolved. It is not a single perspective for an entire continent. But it is a real, specific one, rooted in the experience of someone who has spent more than a decade building at the boundary between healthcare need and technological possibility.
In Palermo, her voice is one of the African voices around the table. Not the only one, and that is precisely the point.
Gaby Lobban · Business Director, Zumbudda (Pty) Ltd, Johannesburg, South Africa
African Perspective
EuAReman 2026, Palermo - October 2026
“In Africa, a remanufactured device certified to standard is not a secondary option. It is often the only option available.”