The Gate Foundation is giving out grants to qualified candidates studying AI-enabled consumer engagement to advance family planning.
Despite significant investment in family planning programs across sub-Saharan Africa, unmet need for contraception remains high. Women and girls face persistent barriers to accessing accurate, personalized information about family planning – barriers that clinic-based counseling alone cannot overcome at the scale and cost required to meaningfully shift contraceptive prevalence. Applicants must be able to measure the quality and characteristics of the AI-enabled interaction, scale and usage, and the user outcomes that occur after the interaction.
Applications are open from July 21, 2026, and will close on August 25, 2026. Successful proposals should demonstrate a credible pathway between AI-enabled engagement and family planning outcomes, while also contributing to learning that can inform the broader field. Applicants should be prepared to assess not only whether the intervention changed behavior, but how and why.
“This initiative is open globally to nonprofit organizations, for-profit companies, international organizations, government agencies and academic institutions. Multi stakeholder collaborations are encouraged. Individuals and organizations classified as individuals for U.S. tax purposes are not eligible to receive an award from the foundation as part of this initiative.”
The Foundation has a long list of acceptable proposals. Few among them are:
- Applicants should have existing women’s/ consumer health intervention cohorts in Nigeria, Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania, Senegal, Niger, Kenya, South Africa, Zambia or Côte d’Ivoire.
- Applicants should have an existing consumer engagement approach – in family planning, women’s health, or consumer health more broadly – and an established user base or distribution relationship – characterized by engagement (e.g., monthly active users), not size alone – ideally in at least one target geography at the time of application
- The AI-enabled engagement approach itself can be new and innovative, but the grant period should be spent on deployment, learning, and evaluation, not on acquiring users or negotiating platform access
- Propose a credible evaluation design that measures the quality, safety, and confidentiality of the AI-enabled interaction and downstream user outcomes, including contraceptive uptake, method continuation, or informed method choice
You can check the other accepted proposals on this link: https://gcgh.grandchallenges.org/challenge/ai-enabled-consumer-engagement-advance-family-planning.
Gate Foundation is considering proposals for awards of up to $500,000 USD for each project, with a grant term of up to 12 months. Application budgets should be commensurate with the scope of work proposed. Indirect costs may be included in the budget, up to a maximum of 15% of the total budget (subject to the Gates Foundation’s indirect cost policy).
https://submit.gatesfoundation.org/prog/ai-
