Gates Foundation, MTN Launch AI Maternal Health Platform in Nigeria

The Gates Foundation and MTN Group Foundation have announced a partnership to launch an AI-enabled maternal health platform in Nigeria. The initiative aims to improve access to maternal healthcare for 500,000 women by 2030.

Known as the Nigeria Maternal Health Multiplier, the program will provide 5,000 frontline health workers with digital tools to identify pregnancy and childbirth complications at an earlier stage. It will also connect 500 health facilities to more consistent maternal care standards.

Nigeria accounts for nearly 30% of maternal deaths globally, despite making progress in reducing maternal mortality over the past decade. According to the initiative, only 59% of Nigerian women complete at least four antenatal care visits, highlighting gaps in early detection and access to maternal healthcare.

Key Highlights:

• Gates Foundation and MTN will invest $25 million to improve maternal healthcare in Nigeria
• The AI platform will support 500,000 women, 5,000 health workers and 500 health facilities
• The initiative aims to strengthen healthcare systems and expand across Africa

The platform has three parts: AI- and phone-based decision support for both health workers and mothers; affordable smartphones and mobile data; and upgraded connectivity at health facilities. It builds on Nigeria’s existing Maternal and Neonatal Mortality Reduction Innovation Initiative, run by the Federal Ministry of Health under its Sector-Wide Approach.

“AI has enormous potential to improve health, but only if its benefits reach the people who stand to gain the most,” said Mark Suzman, CEO of the Gates Foundation. “Left to the market alone, potential tends to benefit those who can already afford it, not the people who need it most. That’s where philanthropy has a role to play: not as a substitute for investment, but as a catalyst for it.”

MTN Group President and CEO Ralph Mupita said the goal is to make maternal health more personalized, predictive and accessible as AI develops. “We can put trusted, locally relevant health insights directly into the hands of mothers and healthcare professionals, tailored to their unique needs and languages,” he said. “Starting in Nigeria, our ambition is to demonstrate a scalable model for improving maternal and child health outcomes across Africa.”

The deal was presented as a solution to a systems problem, and not a technology gap. The greatest challenge that has plagued service delivery in Nigeria, be it in health, agriculture or any field of endeavour, is often that new tools are not being introduced, but that the traditional systems that enable people to use the tools are lacking.

Dr. Muhammad Ali Pate, Nigeria’s coordinating minister of health and social welfare, said strengthening primary health care and the frontline workers who deliver it is central to the country’s health reforms. “Strengthening primary healthcare and empowering the frontline health workers who deliver it are core to our health sector reforms,” he said, adding that partnerships that work with existing health systems, rather than around them, are what’s needed to reach mothers “still falling through the cracks.”

The four-year partnership will begin with approximately $25 million in direct and in-kind support from the Gates Foundation and MTN over the four years, 2026 to 2030. The two groups stated that they hope the first investment will bring in more investment and expand to other African markets in the future.

MTN is bringing its connectivity infrastructure, device distribution networks, mobile financial services and local market execution experience. The Gates Foundation has turned its attention to three areas — maternal and child health, digital health innovation, and “responsible AI” — and is dedicating its resources to them.

This launch is the Gates Foundation's second major effort to bring AI to Africa around health this year. The foundation and AI firm OpenAI announced a partnership in January to bring AI tools to primary health clinics in Rwanda and eventually other nations, under the name “Horizon1000” for a $50 million investment. The effort too was geared towards bridging the gaps in areas where there are insufficient health workers and declining budgets for foreign aid.