African Leadership Network Ventures (ALN Ventures), a start-up development centre based in Johannesburg in South Africa, will soon launch a fundraising operation, to attempt to raise a global amount of USD 500,000, thus about FCfa 300 million, the Pan African magazine Jeune Afrique reveals on its website.

These funds, we learned, will help in financing the African expansion of Cameroon start-up GiftedMom, of which ALN Ventures is a financial partner. Indeed, after rolling out its activities in five regions of Cameroon, GiftedMom, which is already operating in Nigeria and Mali, and is in pilot stage in Haiti, thanks in part to the support of the IFC, the subsidiary of the World Bank dedicated to the private sector; this Cameroonian start-up now has views on Kenya, South Africa, Burkina Faso, Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire.

This expansion in Africa, according to the managers of the organisation, will finally enable to charge for the GiftedMom services, which were until now free, through partnerships with NGOs and other social entrepreneurs. Winner of the Total Cameroun Startupper 2016 prize, and the Commonwealth prize for best e-health application about a month ago, GiftedMom set up an application of the same name, which contributes to the improvement in mother and child health.

In practical terms, the 20,000 women currently registered in the programme in 34 health centres in Cameroon receive, via text message, practical advice and messages reminding them of their appointment dates at the hospital for antenatal checks, vaccinations, etc. the beneficiaries of the GiftedMom service, still via SMS, can directly seek advice from doctors.

Through this service, we officially learned, the number of death following delivery was considerably lowered in areas where the project is implemented, and partner health centres saw their antenatal consultation rate increase by 35% in 2 years.