Our flagship solution for youth and adolescents, Wobsongo, monitors content on social media platforms such as TikTok, Facebook and Instagram, including in local African languages like Mooré and Dioula.
In many of our communities, sexual and reproductive health and rights remain taboo, making it difficult for young people – especially girls and young women – to openly ask questions or access trusted guidance. As a result, the majority of them turn to the internet and social media for answers.
Unfortunately, false or misleading content related to sexual and reproductive health can expose young people to harmful decisions, fear, stigma, unsafe practices and discrimination. As such, 90 percent of the top-performing videos on birth control are not from medical experts, and 53 percent of creators reject hormonal birth control. Many of them also express distrust of healthcare providers.
Wobsongo is a protective digital shield: a tool that helps young people develop critical thinking, question what they see online. By combining AI, local-language analysis and digital literacy education, we help families and communities build safer digital environments where young people can learn, grow and make informed decisions with confidence and dignity.
For decision-makers, institutions and public health actors, Wobsongo provides an early-warning and monitoring system through a real-time dashboard capable of detecting emerging misinformation trends, harmful narratives and potential threats affecting the sexual and reproductive health and rights of girls and women. This allows stakeholders to anticipate risks, better understand evolving online dynamics, and respond at the right moment with targeted awareness, prevention and protection actions.
Extending AI to underserved languages
The scale and speed of online misinformation make it impossible to respond manually. AI allows Wobsongo to monitor large amounts of online content in real time and identify harmful narratives before they spread widely, and analyse trends, languages and patterns that would otherwise remain invisible. Blockchain technology strengthens transparency and traceability in how information and alerts are handled, helping improve trust and accountability.
Most existing misinformation monitoring systems focus primarily on high-resource languages, and very few specifically address sexual and reproductive health misinformation in culturally sensitive and low-resource settings.
Wobsongo helps break these barriers, prioritising the local African languages in which a large proportion of harmful content circulates.
Open source as a catalyst
Open source helps make innovation more transparent, collaborative and scalable. By sharing components of our work openly, we encourage collaboration with researchers, developers, educators and public health actors working on similar challenges around the world. Open approaches are especially important for underserved languages because building quality datasets and tools requires collective effort and continuous improvement.
Our pilot has two parts: community and youth-centred testing in Burkina Faso, targeting adolescents and youth aged 15–24 (at least 50 percent girls and young women, including displaced youth, adolescent mothers and survivors of gender-based violence); and institutional dashboard testing with at least four ministries and UN partners including UNICEF Burkina Faso.
A major focus is on expanding datasets and improving detection models for local African languages, such as Mooré and Dioula. We are also strengthening our infrastructure, improving real-time monitoring systems, and deepenimg youth-centered testing and engagement.
UNICEF’s support is also catalytic for our long-term sustainability. It helps validate our approach, strengthen partnerships in our ecosystem and position Wobsongo for future investment and regional scaling opportunities in West Africa.
