Apply for UNICEF Femtech Ventures Funding 2026, Up to $100,000 for Startups

UNICEF Femtech Ventures has opened its second call for startups, and each company picked can get up to $100,000. The deadline is Wednesday, 4 November 2026, at 11:59 PM (CET).

The money is equity-free, so UNICEF won’t take shares in your company. Nigeria is on UNICEF’s list of eligible countries, which means a registered Nigerian startup can apply if it meets the other rules below.

Apply for UNICEF Femtech Ventures Funding 2026, Up to $100,000 for Startups

Details of the UNICEF Femtech Ventures call for applications

Item	Details
Program	UNICEF Femtech Ventures, second call for applications
Funding	Up to US$100,000, equity-free
Mentorship	12 months of technical mentorship
Deadline	4 November 2026, 11:59 PM (CET)
Language	Applications must be in English
Apply here	Official application form
Official call page	UNICEF Office of Innovation

On 4 November, Nigeria time and CET are the same hour, so the cutoff is 11:59 PM Nigeria time. Still, send your application a few days early, because uploads and links can fail at the last minute.

About this UNICEF Femtech Ventures funding for startups

Femtech just means technology made for the health and wellbeing of women and girls. It can be an app, a chatbot, a screening tool or a system that health workers use.

UNICEF Femtech Ventures is a five-year program, running from 2025 to 2030, under the UNICEF Venture Fund. It puts money into startups in emerging markets that build their own solutions close to the problem. Sweden’s government and Temasek Foundation are its founding partners.

UNICEF says women’s health gets only about 6 percent of private healthcare investment worldwide. This program is one way it’s trying to close that gap.

Benefits you can get from the UNICEF Femtech Ventures funding

Up to $100,000 in funding.
UNICEF takes no equity and doesn’t look for a financial return from you.
12 months of technical mentorship from UNICEF’s team of mentors and specialists.
Access to UNICEF’s global network, including its relationships with governments, which can help your solution reach more people.
You stay the owner of your company and your other intellectual property. Only the funded solution has to be open source (more on that below).

Who is eligible to apply for the UNICEF Femtech Ventures funding

Your startup needs all of these:

A private, for-profit company that is legally registered in a UNICEF programme country. Nigeria is one, and for a Nigerian startup that means a company registered with the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC).
A working prototype with some first test results to show.
A solution that is open source already, or one you’re ready to make open source.
Newer technology at the centre of it, like AI, machine learning, data science or blockchain.
Measurable data on how your solution is performing, which UNICEF will show publicly. Not collecting it yet? Then your application needs a clear plan for setting it up.

Women-led startups and founders under 35 are encouraged to apply. It’s not compulsory.

Individuals, students, NGOs and universities can’t apply. Only a registered private company can.

Areas UNICEF wants femtech startups to work on in this call

Your solution should fit at least one of three areas. The form lets you pick more than one.

Healthcare access for women and girls: care before and after birth, newborn care, low-cost screening for problems like anaemia, and tools community health workers can use where internet is weak.
Informed, safe and accessible reproductive health, which includes AI tools that give reproductive health advice in local languages, HPV screening, ways to pay for reproductive healthcare, and tools that let women control who sees their health data.
Mental wellbeing, safety and protection. That covers mental health support for mothers and girls, reporting and response tools for gender-based violence, and tools that catch online abuse.

UNICEF also says it has a special interest in solutions that are ready to use in low-resource or emergency places. And safety by design is a condition for the funding, so you have to think about data privacy, consent and user risk from the start.

Femtech startups UNICEF already funded in the first round

The first call got more than 1,100 applications from 85 countries, and more than half came from Africa. UNICEF shortlisted 151 startups from 53 countries, and 89 percent of that shortlist was woman-led. The first group was picked from there.

Here are four of the startups it chose:

Dotoh, from Benin, does voice and video consultations for women in places with weak internet.
SafeRide is a safety app for women on public transport in Kenya, and it works offline.
A WhatsApp chatbot from Togo called HLlama gives pregnancy and maternal health advice in local languages.
In Zambia, DawaMom pairs a chatbot with community health workers who reach women at home.

The first group had 11 companies from eight countries: Benin, Burkina Faso, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Togo, Tunisia and Zambia. No Nigerian company is in yet.

How to apply for the UNICEF Femtech Ventures funding

The whole application is one online form. Get three things ready before you open it: a link to your code, a pitch video, and details of your team.

First, check that your company qualifies. The UNICEF Venture Fund apply page has a quick eligibility check where you enter your company type, registration status, country and open source status.
Your code must sit in a repository on GitHub, Bitbucket, GitLab or something similar. This is compulsory. UNICEF says applications without a valid, working repository link won’t be considered. If the repository is private, give access to @unicefinnovation on GitHub or venturefund@unicef.org on Bitbucket before you submit.
Next comes the pitch video, up to 2 minutes, in English or with English subtitles. Upload it to YouTube (unlisted is fine). It must show the real people building the solution, speaking for themselves, and the solution working as it is today, through a live demo or screen recording. AI avatars, synthetic voices and AI-generated footage will not be assessed. AI for subtitles or basic editing is fine.
Then fill in the company and contact details. Add your team too. The form has space for five people, and for each one you give a name, position, year of birth, nationality, gender and a short bio.
Answer the proposal questions. They cover the problem you’re solving, your solution, the technology you use, its current status, your test results, your targets for the next 12 months, your partners and advisors, how much you’re asking for, last year’s revenue, and any other money going into the project.
Paste the video link. Submit. Done.

Each answer box has a counter. Most show 0/150, and the solution description and the 12-month targets show 0/250. Keep your answers short and direct.

A company can send more than one application for different projects, and UNICEF judges each one on its own.

Apply here before 4 November 2026: UNICEF Femtech Ventures application form

What happens after you apply for the UNICEF femtech funding

UNICEF reviews applications in stages. Your form is the first one, called the Expression of Interest. If you’re shortlisted, you’ll be asked for a longer proposal called the Request for Proposal. Next is a 30-minute online demo interview with the Venture Fund team and its technology experts. After that, UNICEF decides and announces the winners.

UNICEF’s process page puts the whole thing at about six months. The first femtech call took longer. It closed on 8 May 2025, and the investees were announced on 19 March 2026, about ten months later. Plan for a wait.

If you win, your company signs a contract with UNICEF and registers as a vendor with UNICEF.

Open source rule you must agree to if UNICEF funds your startup

UNICEF funds open source solutions, so the solution it pays for must carry an open source license. That just means anyone can use, change and share the code.

You don’t have to open source your whole company. Only the funded solution. And you have until the sixth month of the funding year to put the license in place.

For software, UNICEF suggests licenses approved by the Open Source Initiative, like GNU GPL, BSD or MIT. For hardware, it suggests CERN, MIT or TAPR. For design or content, it’s CC-BY. A solution that is open source from end to end, server to app, gets priority when UNICEF picks.

You stay the license holder and keep your other intellectual property. UNICEF takes no equity, because it treats the open source code as its own equity.