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2025 Call for Applications

Gender & AI Innovation Collective

Women’s rights groups! We want you to join the Gender & AI Innovation Collective to develop your own AI Solutions through community learning, mentorship and funding.

Application Form

Who

Who: Women’s Rights Groups in Sub-Saharan Africa

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When

Application Window: Nov 10 – December 12 

Cohort One begins on January 7th.

Where

Virtual / Online

Why

Women’s Rights Organizations can use AI innovations to create measurable improvements in gender equality outcomes for their communities, and support sustainable innovation ecosystems that can be replicated across African, majority world, and global contexts.

How

  • 4 months exploration with blended course (asynchronous and live virtual) ending in concept paper for a technical solution to a community problem.

  • Selected groups will create a prototype and / or local language solution to the problem.

  • Final groups will proceed to pilot their solution.

     

*Groups that already have a clear project idea can take the course while simultaneously drafting their concept paper.

Eligibility​

Your organization must meet ALL of these requirements:

  • Be a CSO, Interdisciplinary team or activist organization (independently or in teams) located in Sub Saharan Africa,

  • Be either women-led or working primarily on women’s rights

  • Have a feminist or human rights mission.

Need

  • Online connection (This is an online engagement)

  • Weekly 4 hours commitment  

  • A designated person/s to take on the training and lead with the concept paper

Timeline

  • Applications Open: November 10th 2025 

  • Applications Close: December 12th 2025

  • Groups Notified: January 2nd- 5th 2026 

  • Cohort One begins: January 7th 2025 and runs for 4months (January to April)

  • Online Course: 9 weeks of community learning that includes an introduction to Feminist and decolonial AI, data discovery, stakeholder engagement, and more!

  • Bi-weekly Online Networking: Sessions with small group discussions guided by reflective questions, tying the feminist approach with the AI community learning. 

  • Ideation & Drafting Solution Office Hours: Available Weekly 30min 1:1 office hours with the A+ Alliance core team. 

  • Solution / Concept Paper due: April 10th, 2026

  • Prototyping Groups notified: April 25th, 2026

    Those who go through community learning, submit a concept paper, and whose papers are successful will be granted funding for the prototype and pilot phases. We have funding available for: 

    → 6 Prototype: CAD 7500 per project 

    → 6 Localization: CAD 3000 per project 

    → 3 Pilots: CAD 15000 per project 

    We will do our best to support groups to seek alternative fundings when we have more fully fledged ideas than funding capacity.

  • Prototyping phase begins: May 6th, 2026

Submit Application

Who we are

The Gender & AI Innovation Collective, an initiative of A+ Alliance supported by Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) aims to enable women’s rights organizations to use AI innovations to create measurable improvements in gender equality outcomes for their communities, supported by sustainable innovation ecosystems that can be replicated across African and majority world contexts, while generating rigorous evidence on gender-responsive AI innovation pathways.