Solayo Africa, a Lagos-based health tech startup founded by Oladiipo Damilola, Theresa Oyewole, and George Odiana, has launched an AI-powered WhatsApp chatbot named Moma to support pregnant women and new mothers across Africa. The platform delivers real-time, stage-specific pregnancy and postnatal guidance through simple WhatsApp messages, eliminating the need for standalone apps or frequent hospital visits. Women initiate conversations with "Hi Moma" and receive automated responses on symptoms, nutrition, breastfeeding, and vaccination schedules, with high-risk cases escalated to medical professionals via a premium tier. The service tracks users from early pregnancy through the child's first year, aiming to reduce delays in care that contribute to Nigeria's high maternal mortality. According to United Nations data, Nigeria accounts for about 28.5 percent of global maternal deaths, with a woman facing a 1 in 19 lifetime risk of dying from pregnancy-related causes. Solayo leverages WhatsApp's widespread use to bypass data, storage, and literacy barriers, integrating a curated marketplace for maternity supplies and partnerships with hospitals and HMOs. The model mirrors South Africa's MomConnect, which has reached nearly five million women.
That Solayo Africa is delivering life-saving maternal guidance through WhatsApp reveals how deeply infrastructure gaps have reshaped innovation in Nigeria's health sector. The fact that a chatbot must compensate for a 1 in 19 maternal death risk underscores how far behind the formal system is. For Nigerian women, especially in rural areas, Moma isn't just convenient—it's a workaround for a system that often fails to respond until it's too late. This isn't a substitute for clinics or doctors, but it may be the most reliable health contact many expectant mothers ever have.
