MamaOpe Medicals is proud to announce a strategic partnership with the Science for Africa Foundation (SFA) — a collaboration that will accelerate the development of AI-enabled tools to improve the diagnosis and management of respiratory illnesses in low-resource settings across the continent.
The partnership, announced as part of SFA's Grand Challenges Africa programme, supports MamaOpe's work on an AI-powered platform built around the MamaOpe screening tool — designed to help frontline clinicians make faster, more accurate diagnostic decisions, particularly for children under five.
Why this matters
Pneumonia remains the leading infectious cause of death in children under five worldwide. Roughly 2,000 children die from pneumonia every day, and a disproportionate share of those deaths are in sub-Saharan Africa. The problem is rarely a lack of treatment — it's a lack of accurate, timely diagnosis at the bedside.
Observational studies in primary care across Burundi, the DRC and Nigeria found that compliance with childhood-illness guidelines can be as low as 51% — even when clinicians are aware of those guidelines. The result: missed pneumonia diagnoses, delayed treatment, and an over-reliance on broad-spectrum antibiotics that accelerates antimicrobial resistance.
"We're not just building a device. We're building decision support for the clinician who has 30 patients waiting and three minutes per consultation. That's where lives are saved."
What the partnership delivers
Under the SFA collaboration, MamaOpe's team — led by co-founder and chief data scientist Brian Turyabagye — will train and deploy an AI model on the MamaOpe dataset to:
- Guide differential diagnosis by highlighting the most critical clinical indicators
- Suggest supplementary tests where they meaningfully change the diagnostic outcome
- Enable remote consultations in settings with limited direct access to specialists
- Continuously learn from anonymised clinical outcomes to improve over time
Scaling responsibly
A central commitment of the partnership is to scale this technology responsibly. That means rigorous clinical validation in the settings where the tool will be used; clear data-governance standards aligned with national health-data regulations; and a deployment model that respects the autonomy and expertise of the clinicians it serves.
The Science for Africa Foundation's support also unlocks access to a continent-wide network of research institutions, regulators and health-system leaders — accelerating the path from pilot to policy.
What's next
Over the coming months, MamaOpe will:
- Expand pilot deployments across Uganda
- Publish results of the HealthNavi Clinical Decision Support System study
- Begin technical integration of the new AI model with the existing MamaOpe device and HealthNavi platform
We're deeply grateful to the Science for Africa Foundation for their belief in African-led innovation, and to every clinician, partner and investor walking this journey with us.
For media enquiries, please contact hello@mamaope.com.