MamaAfya(meaning mother's health)

We integrate technology and healthcare to empower women and government to improve health and lives of women and children in Tanzania, but also entire African continent.

NFC Technology+M-pesa=MamaAfya.

MamaAfya helps to provide affordable, high quality health services to mothers and adolescent women by incorporating the use of NFC (Near Field Communication) technology, the Internet of Things (IoT) and mobile money service, where users pay through their mobile money 5000*tsh (Equivalent to $2 USD) per month. The amount is then created to a virtual wallet linked to an NFC smart card or wristband which women use to then access MamaAfya. Also, we digitize medical records at the spot to give us concise data on which areas and community are in critical needs of medical attention.  By managing medical expense savings and micro loans, users can set aside money in increments which can then be used to pay medical bills, this program will help women and mothers in rural areas,  to have access to affordable, quality maternal and antenatal services by calculating expected cost of transport to a clinic, antenatal visits, birth kits and delivery and generate a savings plan tailored to the stage of pregnancy. we want to avert the problem of maternal death in my country Tanzania and the whole Africa continent. 

*price to be validated but to not exceed $2usd

According to the latest UN global report estimates 303,000 women a year die in childbirth, or as result of complications arising from pregnancy. This equates to about 830 women dying each day-roughly one every two-minute, majority of this death are from conditions that could have been prevented had women received the right medical care throughout their pregnancies and during birth. Among many countries my country Tanzania is also among the countries with highest rate of maternal mortality which represents 18 percent of women death age 15-49. 

There are numbers of reasons, and they are both rooted in poverty, inequality and sexism. The majority of women die in poorer, rural areas, where healthcare services are often inadequate or in-accessible, and where there is a severe shortage of trained medical staffs. and we continue to see the crisis deepening and it has now filtered down to our children, it has increased the mortality risk for children, but also decreased nutrition and schooling for children. this problem need us all and if we don't tackle the issue now we are destroying the future of many young people yet to come.

Covid-19 has unearthed massive inequalities within our societies and brought to glaring light the unique burdens which women carry the world over, my target population are women, adolescents mothers and infants, refugees and displaced people from war countries who are in constant movement finding place to shelter their families, our effort is to ensure universal health coverage and the effort to eliminate the problem that comes with fleeing from their home countries especially that come with maternity. By using NFC technology together with mobile money we want to introduce a wearable band to be worn on hand or neck that collect and hold health data, and be accessed by authorized people. This helps governments and health sectors to collect precise data and information to know which areas are in need of immediate medical attention and at the same time providing quality affordable health services to refugees who could not afford antenatal and maternal health services. I believe that behind every woman there are 10 family members who depend on her, giving them power and control over their own future  we are empowering generation of young people, we will be able to control malnourishment early on before it worsen and other controllable diseases. Also, providing low cost quality health services removing thousands of women  from poverty with their families and help use the money that could have been used in health related issues to improve the status the families.

 I have seen how families which loose one parent live, the family are forced to undertake more responsibility in taking care of the young baby who then many times are not able to survive the early months and end up dying. Also, from activities undertaken during our study years in Edmund Rice we went to different orphanage centers and witness many of the children who their parent died during birth, the upbringing of this children's is really hard and they face many challenges to grow like any other normal children. I have taken all of this into account and working with the survivors will help us advance our solution.

Securing funds for many organizations is very difficult especially to startups and solution like ours, and also bringing ideas into life is very hard as there are many challenges encountered such as lack of enough resources to establish a business, technological hardships and lack of mentors who would provide us with the tools to develop our ideas into solution that help improves peoples life. I have chosen the idea phase because although I already know how my solution would work but I'm still struggling to find technological supports, mentors and funding that will boost my idea from the ground. I know exactly what my people needs to excel and avert the problems mentioned above. The idea phase is a crucial step to me in developing a successful business as I have the time, persistency and opportunity to leverage the effort of exploring sub-ideas and possibilities that can be used to implement and be incorporated to the bigger and the main idea. I have attended  innovation labs like Twende Innovation labs in Arusha, the innovation week in my university and national young scientist in the country which gave me feedback to question I had.

Our solution uses an existing technology to a new way of application in my community never seen before. we integrate NFC(Near Field Communication) technology together with mobile money to empower women and mothers access quality affordable healthcare., we also take the advantage of the Internet of Things(IoT) to enable our health workers and health professional to collect big data's to enable the analysis and processing of the medical records, active users and number of women we are to impact, customer bases and our solution reach in terms of impact and outcomes. Together with hardware part of our solution-the wrist band or NFC smart card we are to provide health service limitless of how many people we serve or impact. we are planning to develop an application that would be able to work offline without the internet connection to enable our operation in remote areas and rural areas where internet connection is always a problem, this will enable us to to impact more people and reach as many women and mothers by 2025 regardless of where they are or whoever they might be. 

in many African household, women are now the heads of their family, they have been working and are still working to keep most of us here even through the pandemic we have seen women holding us and the generation from frontline doctors, to mothers, to bread earner, to our protectors and a shoulder to lean on when we face hard time, but still they are undervalued and their effort and vital voices are not heard or even put into accounts. it is my belief that behind 1 woman there are 10 family member who rely on a woman to provide for the family and give out decision, we are looking forward to impact 10,000 women which equate that we are impacting more than 100,000 people in African families indirectly, but focusing on directly we want to go beyond our borders and reach out to countries that have the most and high rate of maternal death and high rate of mortality like South Sudan, Chad, Somali and sierra Leone by opening up our own health centers to give women and children the health services once denied because they couldn't afford. by 2025 we want to have impact more than 1 million African women and girls together with their babies and families. when we succeed launching our solution to this countries and fully ensure health to African women in sub-Saharan Africa, this will be an unprecedented achievement in sub-Saharan African.

To register my business and company to legally operate limitless and have our own physical working spaces. Fostering good business practice and creating an organization that operates consistently. 

Decrease the number of birth related death in the sub-Saharan Africa and areas  we serve.

To impact more than 1 million women, children and families in Africa by 2030 and end completely maternal death in Africa. Until now the conversation has been to reduce the death by 70 per 100,000 population but we want to end the problem.

To achieve sustainable goals of reducing all forms of inequality to women, youth and children, to enable women with their families achieve financial stability and eliminate poverty completely through quality and more inclusive health care. but also, to prove to the government and world leaders that affordable and quality health services to all people is possible and we are to accomplish it.

 I know it is hard to achieve all of this by myself but I am passionately ready to work tirelessly to ensure I achieve all of this by working and cooperating with the people I am to impact as I believe we cannot work for women when they are not included in the discussions or are excluded from giving their opinions and ideas.

In measuring impacts we are planning and want to include things like Critical Success Factors (CSF’s) which will be our cause of success in attaining our goals, these will set out what we need to succeed and one of this is to look at our employees engagement and users together with establishing a great and strong financial stability. We are also planning on using other impacts or progress indicators like the Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) in our plan of actions to know exactly the progress of our solutions and impacts. Effects of our actions will be measured whether we succeed in attaining our goals or not, and one among many of this are percentage increase in users (women and children), number of people reached by our solution, percentage increase in revenue and number of people enrolled to our program. But mostly we want to focus the number of people we impact and the number of users and percentage we reach through our solution. Example in my application I said I want to impact and reach out to more than 10000 women and children by the end of 2025, the indicators will determine whether we have succeeded, surpassed our planned goals or we have failed to meet our goals by the end of our planned period.

Obtaining funding to most of startups and solutions like ours is difficult many organizations are not ready to invest money to social startups which would likely help our community than the ones which yield success faster but have no long run  impacts in peoples lives. Second thing is mentors that I would rely upon to receive advice that would help me in my entrepreneurial journey, and lastly technological barriers to implement my solution and develop my prototypes. But I’m excited to have find organization like MIT which I know would be very helpfully to me and my team in developing our solution.

 most of my team members have experience and expertise ranging from computer and software engineering, ICT, biomedical engineering and business and accounting which are a core part in our solution, and as a computer engineer student it would be much easier to communicate my vision and issues concerning the project as needed. Among few are Christopher Barnett  a software engineer from Australia who has been and still to date is a potential partner, Meleck who holds an MBA in business management and Accounting and many other who I am excited to continue working with them.

To date I do not have any relationship with other companies but I’m really excited to start and form new partnerships with other organization which their works are dedicated to improve people’s lives especially women and girls, removing thousands of women with their families from poverty. Among many organizations is Vodacom Tanzania which is the largest telecom company in Tanzania, partnership with the company will gives us direct access to over 49.7 million potential customers and M-pesa active users as all Vodacom accounts will be set up to automatically include a MamaAfya wallet. Other key partners I want to forge relationships with women’s associations, doctors, clinics and insurance companies

Most African household are now being looked over by women, our solutions address and empower women and girls to meet their full potentials, also, to give power over their bodies, health and future by ensuring that they receive the right health services in an affordable cost mostly maternal and antenatal care to reduce gender disparities and economic inequality to women. The HP Girls Prize will help us and people we are impacting, it will help us achieve our long-term goals of impacting 1 million women and adolescents’ mothers by 2025 to have access to quality and affordable health services in Tanzania. I want to impact 10,000 mothers and children in the next year.  Together we want to celebrate to a world where women and girls needs and vital voices are celebrated, and this prize will absolutely be the difference maker when it comes to saving women lives and their babies. 

Our solution aims to improve directly the health and lives of many women and girls around my community, the Pozen social innovation will give us the right platform and it would recognize all the hard work and effort we’ve been putting in to ensure that we are working towards the vision of every woman healthy. we will use the prize money towards the Tanzania operations, right now, we are working on developing the prototype, we want to set our working spaces and the MamaAfya Cloud that would be used to collect data and payment. The money will go directly to the field to help save lives and improve both mothers lives with their children. Also, this prize gives us the power to gain greater visibility for our work and be heard by world renowned experts and leaders, tap into a global network of potential collaborators from both the Pozen social innovation staffs, mentors and potentials business owners to partner with.