Jacaranda Health, a healthcare startup empowering mothers to seek care at the right place and time, has received a $1.4 million grant from Google.org to advance PROMPTS, its AI-enabled support tool which provides personalized SMS advice to new and expecting mothers across Kenya.
Jacaranda Health, based in Kenya with operations across Africa including Nigeria and Ghana, was part of organizations that received support from Google.org’s $5.8M in funding for organizations across Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa. The support was announced globally last year September and in March this year in Africa.
Earlier, Google had announced it would be distributing $20 million in grants to organizations using artificial intelligence to help achieve United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals through its philanthropy arm, Google.org as part of its Global Goals Impact Challenge. Jacaranda Health, a maternal and child health care firm received $1.4 million for Prompts, an AI SMS digital health service connecting mothers to clinically trained agents for assistance. Since the first announcement, Prompts has been launched in Kenya, Ghana and Nigeria.
Jacaranda Health envisions a world where all mothers experience pregnancy and childbirth safely and with respect, and all newborns get a safe start in life. The platform partners with governments to deploy affordable and scalable solutions through government hospitals to sustainably improve quality of care and maternal and newborn outcomes.
Jacaranda Health offers a diverse set of skills to build, deploy and scale maternal health solutions in government health systems: frontline clinical expertise, public and private partnerships, product design, data science, research and analytics, and cutting-edge technology.
Google also announced $5.8 million further funding towards equipping workers and students with foundational AI and cybersecurity skills, teaching teens how to use AI safely, and supporting nonprofit leaders and the public sector with foundational AI skills, in addition to the $20 million already awarded by Google.org to nonprofits helping Africans develop their digital skills.
Through another Google initiative, Grow with Google, the company trained over 6.5 million individuals in 2023 alone.
Other organizations announced today include Data Scientists Network Foundation which will be provided with a $1.5 million grant, Nelson Mandela University and other universities will participate in the Google.org Cybersecurity Seminars program and Raspberry Pi Foundation.
The announcement came as part of the visit of Matt Brittin, the President of Google in EMEA, to Kenya and Nigeria. Speaking from Nairobi, he said: “AI could contribute $30 billion to the economy of sub-saharan Africa. But for this to be a meaningful change, everyone needs to be included. The $5.8 million announced today will help bring people, businesses and nonprofits along to take part in harnessing technology for good.”
Meanwhile, Jen Carter, Head of Tech & Volunteering at Google.org, who was also in Nairobi, said: “We’ve seen how AI can help social impact organizations accelerate and scale their work. The $5.8 million funding announced today will help organizations to create AI tools that will benefit not only communities across Africa, but across the globe.”