- Tonee Ndungu of Kytabu Company said they will develop a comprehensive AI-powered mobile application, Somanasi (learn together) to provide personalised education to students in Kenya.
- One recipient, Daphne Ngunjiri of Access Afya, will integrate ChatGPT into a virtual clinic application, mDaktari, to support clinicians to better respond to patient inquiries.
Image: WILLIAM WANYOIKE
Kenyans planning to use ChatGPT to improve education and healthcare in the country have won up to Sh71 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to roll out their plans.
Five Kenyan start-ups will each receive up to Sh14.4 million ($100,000), the foundation said in a statement.
The start-ups responded to the recent Grand Challenges request for proposals, and are part of nearly 50 grant recipients from developing countries, who will be awarded.
The foundation said the responsible and safe use of AI-driven large language model technology, can help solve some of the world’s toughest health and development challenges.
However, for these models to be useful in lower and middle-income countries, researchers from those countries need to participate in the design, application, and testing of this technology as it rapidly evolves, the foundation said.
“Too often, advances in technology deliver uneven benefits in many parts of the world due to existing patterns of discrimination, inequality, and bias,” said Juliana Rotich, co-founder of iHub, an incubator for Nairobi’s young technology entrepreneurs, and who agreed to serve on the foundation's new AI Ethics and Safety Advisory committee.
“AI is no different, with most of the tools being developed in the Global North using data from lower-resourced regions that is often incomplete or inaccurate. To realise the full potential of AI, it must be developed responsibly and ethically, with the needs of the end user in mind. Solutions can be transformative when they are locally inspired,” she added.
One recipient, Daphne Ngunjiri of Access Afya, will integrate ChatGPT into a virtual clinic application, mDaktari, to support clinicians to better respond to patient inquiries.
Access Afya proposed to increase the scope, speed, and quality of responses to patients' queries in their preferred language. It will also support clinicians to provide accurate diagnoses and treatments.
Another recipient, Robert Korom of Penda Health Limited, will integrate ChatGPT-4 into a patient communication system to increase consultation efficiency and the speed of delivering accurate health information.
Penda will create a hybrid model where clinical call centre agents work hand-in-hand with AI.
Tonee Ndungu of Kytabu Company said they will develop a comprehensive AI-powered mobile application, Somanasi (learn together), to provide personalised education to students in Kenya.
The application will harness ChatGPT-4 and act as an intelligent virtual tutor that delivers tailored content, adaptive learning experiences, and interactive guidance.
Another recipient, Martin Mwangi of Intellisoft Consulting, said they will build an application-supported language model to improve knowledge, attitudes, and practices surrounding the risk factors for non-communicable diseases for young people in Kenya.
Intellisoft will recruit Kenyans aged 18–34 from community-based sites, such as universities and malls. They will evaluate the application's ability to improve knowledge, attitudes, and practices surrounding NCD risk factors.
Christophe Bocquet of Dalberg Global Development Advisors will develop Vida Plus, a chatbot accessible via WhatsApp, that delivers public health information by live interaction to health officials, particularly in rural areas, to support their decision-making. Initially in Guinea, they will integrate GPT-3.5-Turbo into the Kenya health management information system.
The Gates Foundation said it received more than 1,300 proposals for the Grand Challenges programme, more than 80 per cent of which were from low and middle-income countries, within two weeks of posting its request for proposals.
The findings of these projects will be shared at the Grand Challenges Annual Meeting in Dakar, Senegal, this October.
“The vibrant energy, boundless creativity, and unwavering commitment from innovators to tackle the most vexing challenges has sparked a wave of interest and excitement in the positive impact AI can have in the lives of the vulnerable,” said Zameer Brey, interim deputy director for Technology Diffusion at the Gates Foundation.
“These local innovators are harnessing the seismic power of AI and LLMs (large language models) in ways that can be paradigm-shifting for their local communities and beyond. We believe the most impactful technological advancements include those that begin and end with the people they affect most.”
The foundation has sought and seeded innovation to solve the world’s hardest problems for 20 years.
“We believe that accelerating progress in health and development requires collaboration among innovators from as many disciplines and as many countries as possible,” said Kedest Tesfagiorgis, deputy director of Global Partnerships & Grand Challenges at the Foundation.
“Maximising the potential of AI requires a global community of creative thinkers bringing their unique perspectives and learning from each other.”