The Gender & AI Innovation Collective is a network of women’s rights organizations across Africa building AI tools for their own communities. Organizations bring the problem and the community knowledge; the Collective provides structured learning, technical mentorship, seed funding, and a secure development environment — and the organizations keep what they build.
Run by the A+ Alliance, co-led by Women at the Table and Code for Africa, and supported by IDRC and FCDO. The programme runs from February 2026 to June 2027.
Fresh from Cohorts 1 and 2 of our intensive, rights-based learning programme, these teams are officially shifting from theory to action. For the next six months, we’re working side-by-side to prototype and localize their visions inside the AI Innovation Sandbox; a space designed specifically to turn shared knowledge into community-rooted tools.
The 12-Week Bootcamp Co-created by Women at the Table and Code for Africa, the GAIC learning journey didn’t just talk about AI—it dismantled and rebuilt the development process across six rigorous modules.
• Establishing the Baseline: We kicked off with Feminist AI 101 and decoloniality to build a shared, uncompromising vocabulary and purpose.
• Tracking the Lifecycle: Participants mapped the six stages of AI development through a human-rights lens, learning exactly where bias sneaks in and how community agency must shape every step.
• Getting Technical: The curriculum dove deep into data discovery, model selection, and the wildly contested definitions of algorithmic fairness across disciplines.
• Hands-On Application: Paired with technical mentors, teams tackled real-world datasets and design challenges, graduating from conceptual theory to practical execution.
Equipped with the confidence and vocabulary to go toe-to-toe with technical experts, every organization has now mapped out a powerful concept paper for their own localized AI solution.
The foundation is set. Now, it’s time to build.
Àdàbà AI by DigiCivic Initiative
Abuja, Nigeria (English)
Technology-facilitated gender-based violence operates at scale; Àdàbà AI hits back. This digital rights assistant automates the grueling, time-sensitive work of legal evidence preservation and case triage for survivors. It shifts the fight from reactive litigation to a rapid-response justice mechanism, backed by DigiCivic’s broader mission to protect digital freedom and expression across Africa.
AgriMama AI by Gweth Foundation
Homabay, Kenya (Kiswahili)
Built for low-bandwidth realities, AgriMama AI is a voice-and-text powerhouse for women farmers. Users can ask questions, upload crop photos for AI-assisted diagnosis, and track market prices to build a digital financial profile that unlocks credit. It’s spearheaded by the Gweth Foundation, a community-rooted organization dismantling digital exclusion, gender inequality, and period poverty for rural youth.
Smarthealth Communities by Women Genital and Fertility Health Foundation
Lagos, Nigeria (Pidgin English)
Medical AI usually only speaks English. Smarthealth is localizing an open-source medical LLM into Pidgin English so traditional birth attendants and local health workers can deliver critical reproductive care. Driven by grassroots advocates, this offline, voice-activated tool allows low-literacy users to safely screen for obstetric emergencies in areas with strained clinical infrastructure.
Inclusive SRHR & GBV System by Vision for the Blind
Bombali District, Sierra Leone (English)
Standard data platforms routinely ignore women and girls with disabilities. Vision for the Blind is adapting open-source systems to fix that blind spot. Their localized tool empowers community health workers to track data, improve reproductive health access, and streamline GBV referrals specifically for visually impaired and disabled survivors.
YanchiAI by SheRises & Abren for Generation
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (Amharic)
A voice-driven mobile assistant for female factory workers that leaves zero digital paper trail. By speaking in Amharic, workers can instantly calculate exact overtime pay and learn their labor rights. Co-created by the labor advocates at SheRises and the tech builders at Abren for Generation, it allows vulnerable employees to catch wage theft and advocate for themselves without risking their jobs.
N’GONI NANA by ABIC Dioïla
Dioïla, Mali (Bambara)
Entrepreneurship training designed for women with zero formal education. N’GONI NANA translates established business curriculum into Bambara via an interactive voice assistant. Users can log sales, track stock, and master business concepts through voice interactions and visual animations, engineered by ABIC to drive economic autonomy for rural women.
GBV Support & Referral Tool by Musasa & ARC
Harare, Zimbabwe (Shona)
A private, always-on first point of contact for GBV survivors. This isn’t an open-ended chatbot—it draws exclusively from the verified clinical and legal databases of Zimbabwe’s top post-rape care and advocacy organizations. The team is currently building custom guardrails so survivors can describe trauma in Shona without triggering clumsy, default AI safety blocks that silence their stories.