Grant opportunity
AI-Enabled Consumer Engagement to Advance Family Planning
The Gates Foundation seeks operational, AI-enabled consumer-engagement approaches that can improve contraceptive uptake, continuation and informed choice while generating rigorous shared evidence for the family-planning field.
- Funder
- Gates Foundation Grand Challenges
- Applications close 25 August 2026 at 11:30am US Pacific Time
- Applications close 25 August 2026 at 11:30am US Pacific Time: Aug 25, 2026
- Award
- Up to USD 500,000 per project for up to 12 months
- Applicant
- Nonprofit organisations, companies, international organisations, government agencies and academic institutions with an existing women's-health or consumer-health user base or distribution relationship in a target African country. Individuals are not eligible.
- Discipline
- Health and Biomedical Sciences
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Posted
- Aug 3, 2026
Call summary
Overview
The challenge focuses on real-world platforms capable of personalized, multi-turn engagement in local contexts and asks teams to measure both interaction quality and downstream family-planning outcomes.
Who can apply
Applicants must already operate a relevant engagement platform or distribution relationship in a target geography and be able to deploy and evaluate it at meaningful scale. Priority countries include Nigeria, Ethiopia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania, Senegal, Niger and Cote d'Ivoire, with additional eligibility in Kenya, South Africa and Zambia.
What it supports
- Contraceptive uptake, continuation and informed method choice.
- Personalization, conversation quality, safety, confidentiality and guardrails.
- Cost, feasibility, operational requirements and shared evaluation tools for AI-enabled engagement.
Funding and duration
- Awards may be up to USD 500,000 for a grant term of up to twelve months.
- Indirect costs may be included up to 15% of the total budget, subject to foundation policy.
Applications close 25 August 2026 at 11:30am US Pacific Time
Applications close 25 August 2026 at 11:30am US Pacific Time: Aug 25, 2026
How to apply
Review the rules, application instructions, FAQ and budget template on the official challenge page, then submit through the Gates Foundation portal by the deadline.
Call details
Source-based overview
The challenge is designed to test whether AI-assisted direct-to-consumer engagement can improve family-planning outcomes at scale and to identify which interaction features work for particular users. Strong proposals combine a credible operational intervention, rigorous outcome measurement and a commitment to produce reusable evidence and analytic tools.
Eligibility
Applicants must already operate a relevant engagement platform or distribution relationship in a target geography and be able to deploy and evaluate it at meaningful scale. Priority countries include Nigeria, Ethiopia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania, Senegal, Niger and Cote d'Ivoire, with additional eligibility in Kenya, South Africa and Zambia.
Funding and benefits
Awards may be up to USD 500,000 for a grant term of up to twelve months.
Indirect costs may be included up to 15% of the total budget, subject to foundation policy.
Themes and supported activities
Contraceptive uptake, continuation and informed method choice.
Personalization, conversation quality, safety, confidentiality and guardrails.
Cost, feasibility, operational requirements and shared evaluation tools for AI-enabled engagement.
Deadline and timeline
Applications close 25 August 2026 at 11:30am US Pacific Time: Applications close 25 August 2026 at 11:30am US Pacific Time: Aug 25, 2026.
Applicants should confirm the exact deadline time, time zone, required documents, portal steps and any institutional approvals on the official call page before submitting.
How to apply
Review the rules, application instructions, FAQ and budget template on the official challenge page, then submit through the Gates Foundation portal by the deadline.
Before applying, check eligibility rules, budgets, attachments, page limits, partner requirements, cost-share conditions and whether the opportunity uses an expression of interest, full proposal, registration or nomination stage.