MTN Group Foundation and the Gates Foundation have launched an AI-enabled maternal health platform in Nigeria that aims to help 500,000 women access healthcare guidance by 2030.

The four-year initiative, called the Nigeria Maternal Health Multiplier, will also equip 5,000 frontline health workers with digital tools to identify complications during pregnancy and childbirth, while supporting 500 health facilities across the country.

The partnership comes with an initial investment of approximately $25 million from MTN and the Gates Foundation between 2026 and 2030. The organisations said the funding is intended to support initial implementation in Nigeria and to help attract additional financing for future expansion.

The initiative, detailed in a joint announcement by MTN Group Foundation and the Gates Foundation, was announced on Wednesday at Semafor's Next 3 Billion event in New York, held on the sidelines of the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly.

AI tools, phones and connectivity

The Maternal Health Multiplier will combine AI-enabled, phone-based decision-support tools with access to affordable smartphones and mobile data for pregnant women.

Frontline workers will receive connected devices designed to provide real-time guidance and help them identify warning signs associated with pregnancy and childbirth complications.

The programme will also improve connectivity at participating primary healthcare facilities, which the organisations said is intended to ensure that access to digital health services is not determined by where a woman lives.

According to MTN and the Gates Foundation, the platform will connect women, frontline health workers and primary healthcare facilities through a single digital health ecosystem, offering throughout pregnancy, childbirth and the postnatal period, with a particular focus on women in underserved communities.

The programme will build on Nigeria's Maternal and Neonatal Mortality Reduction Innovation Initiative (MAMII), which is being deployed by the Federal Ministry of Health and Social Welfare under its Sector-Wide Approach.

Nigeria selected as first market

Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, has been selected as the first market for the Maternal Health Multiplier, with the organisations pointing to the country's continuing maternal health challenges. MTN and the Gates Foundation said only 59% of women in Nigeria complete four or more antenatal care visits, leaving some pregnancy warning signs undetected. The scale of the underlying problem is considerable: WHO-led United Nations estimates put Nigeria at the top of all countries for maternal deaths in 2020, accounting for more than a quarter of the global total.

The initiative is intended to complement existing government maternal and child health programmes rather than operate separately from the country's health system.

Nigeria's Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, Bosun Tijani, said the partnership demonstrates how digital transformation can be applied to healthcare.

"Partnerships like this reflect the kind of collaboration we want to see more of in Nigeria — one that puts the country's digital transformation to work for the people who need it most," Tijani said.

Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare Muhammad Ali Pate said the initiative would work with existing health systems and support frontline health workers.

The partnership brings together MTN's connectivity infrastructure, mobile financial services and device distribution networks with the Gates Foundation's experience in maternal and child health, digital health, responsible AI and scaling health interventions. MTN, one of Africa's largest mobile operators, supplies the network reach and device channels that phone-based health tools depend on, while the Gates Foundation said the AI tools are being developed for Nigerian mothers and frontline health workers, with the aim of making health information more accessible.

MTN said the programme could eventually provide a model for expansion into other African markets after its initial implementation in Nigeria. Whether the platform draws the additional financing its backers said the initial funding is meant to unlock, and how closely its rollout tracks with MAMII's deployment under the ministry's Sector-Wide Approach, will be markers to watch as implementation begins in 2026.