UNICEF Femtech Ventures Launches First Cohort, With Six African Startups Among Eleven Selected Globally

Eleven technology startups from Africa and Asia have been selected as the inaugural cohort of UNICEF Femtech Ventures, a five-year investment platform running through 2030 that channels equity-free funding into early-stage companies addressing gaps in women’s health, safety, and economic inclusion. Six of the selected companies are African.

The cohort assembled in Pretoria last week, hosted by the Swedish Embassy in South Africa, marking the formal activation of a programme backed by Sweden’s International Development Cooperation Agency, Sida, and Singapore’s Temasek Foundation.

What the Programme Offers

Each selected startup receives up to $100,000 in equity-free capital along with a year of structured technical assistance. The support is designed to help founders test assumptions, refine their products, and build toward commercial and operational scale — without surrendering equity at the earliest and most vulnerable stage of growth.

The Pretoria gathering brought cohort founders into contact with investors, regulators, researchers, and UNICEF technical leads. Sessions focused on responsible AI, safety-by-design product development, and pathways to scale.

Since 2014, the UNICEF Venture Fund has invested in 92 early-stage startups across emerging markets, reaching over 114 million people. Those ventures have gone on to raise 12.4 times the initial capital invested, with close to half of the portfolio woman-led. Femtech Ventures builds on that track record with a sharper sectoral focus.

The Selection and What It Signals

The shortlist of 151 startups across 53 countries was 89% woman-led, with more than half of all applications coming from Africa — a figure that reflects both the depth of unmet need on the continent and the growing density of locally built solutions addressing it.

Globally, only 3% of digital health funding is currently invested in femtech, and just $10 million in tracked venture capital reached femtech companies on the African continent in 2023. Against that backdrop, the programme’s structure — equity-free, technically supported, and continent-aware — addresses a gap that commercial capital has largely bypassed.

Thomas Davin, Global Director of the UNICEF Office of Innovation, said in a statement that the entrepreneurs closest to the challenge are already building the most important solutions for women and girls, and that Femtech Ventures exists to provide those founders with the capital, technical backing, and partnerships to convert local proof into access at scale.

The African Cohort

The six African companies selected span West and North Africa, working across maternal health, sexual and reproductive health, safe mobility, and online safety. They are: Dotoh, an e-health platform from Benin; SafeRide by Esheria, a Kenyan safe-mobility service; HLlama by Umbaji, a Togolese maternal health chatbot; Feel by Luna, a Tunisian e-health service; DawaMom by Dawa Health, a maternal health chatbot; and YouthShield by Kairos, based in Burkina Faso, which monitors and responds to harmful social media content targeting young people.

The technologies in use across the cohort — AI, data science, and blockchain — are being applied in conditions where connectivity is constrained, health infrastructure is stretched, and formal systems have historically underserved women and adolescents.

Anna-Karin Eneström, Sweden’s Ambassador to South Africa, noted in a statement that investing in local founders solving local problems is an efficient use of public funding, and that it is the mechanism through which African- and Asian-built innovations can grow to address some of the most persistent challenges in reproductive and sexual health.

Expectations

UNICEF Femtech Ventures has indicated it will publish cohort updates ahead of a second call for applications, expected to open in the fourth quarter of 2026. The broader programme runs through 2030, with successive calls targeting the three priority areas the fund has defined: reproductive and maternal health, women’s financial inclusion, and safety and economic participation in digital and physical spaces.

The UNICEF Office of Innovation has also signalled it is actively seeking additional partners willing to invest in frontier tech founders working on women’s access gaps across emerging markets.