5 countries, 6 solutions: UNICEF backs start-ups building digital trust
Equipping young people with the tools and digital literacy to identify misinformation and source accurate data will help build an equitable, trustworthy future for all children
Pioneering initiatives combatting misinformation, creating ethical data systems and building trustworthy digital environments in emerging economies are poised for accelerated growth as part of the UNICEF Venture Fund’s new data and trust cohort of investees.
The seven start-ups come from six countries in Africa and South America and were chosen out of nearly 1,000 frontier tech applicants from 87 countries responding to the Venture Fund’s open call for solutions focused on misinformation and disinformation; data generation and analysis; and digital trust.
The response to our data and trust call was incredible and we are excited to fund and work with these seven start-ups.
The selected companies – four of which are female founded or led – will each receive up to $100,000 in equity-free funding and a year’s mentorship from technical experts at the UNICEF Office of Innovation (OOI) to test, develop and scale their open-source prototypes.
The need is urgent, with a leading World Economic Forum survey ranking misinformation and disinformation as the top short-term global risk.
“In a world awash with data, the greatest challenge is no longer scarcity but trust. These solutions hold enormous potential to help people navigate a more trustworthy and equitable digital world,” said Hanna Burkhardt, Venture Fund Innovation Manager, UNICEF Office of Innovation.
The selected start-ups and their solutions are:
AgentsIA, Mali: CHECK-IA is an AI-powered misinformation verification tool designed for the Sahel region, enabling users to validate text and images in local languages such as Bambara and Fulani.
Dabbal, Ethiopia: Horizon Truth is a gamified solution designed to help users recognize misinformation in Amharic and Oromo languages, featuring a crowdsourced reporting system.
Datasketch, Colombia: an AI-powered platform to centralize verified migration information for children and young migrants, countering harmful misinformation.
Guane, Colombia: an interoperable platform to securely manage and share migrant children’s medical records using Near Field Communication (NFC) tags for portable record access.
Signvrse, Kenya: a sign language solution leveraging AI, motion capture and 3D avatars for real-time interpretation, improving accessibility for deaf communities.
Soynade Research, Senegal: open source AI toolkit – including large language models, translation and speech systems – for underserved African languages including Bambara, Fula, Moore, Soninke and Soso.
Together, these initiatives create a guard rail for trustworthy data ecosystems, equipping young people with the digital literacy to identify and defuse misinformation and disinformation.
With the support of founding partner Finland, as well as Ethereum Foundation, GSR Foundation and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), the Venture Fund closely monitors digital trends worldwide and is investing in tools, platforms and games that help youth identify misinformation, access accurate data and build digital trust.
While digital technology has opened unprecedented opportunities for children and young people – providing access to information, culture, communication and entertainment – it also presents new risks, especially around data integrity and misinformation.
As technology evolves, so must digital trust, which is why UNICEF is committed to investing in solutions that empower young people to navigate the digital world safely.
“The race is no longer just to build faster AI or more data pipelines; it is to guard the integrity of what flows through them,” said Burkhardt. The seven solutions in the data and trust cohort are helping deliver that vision.