Three African organisations have been selected to join the latest cohort of 100x, a global impact initiative that backs organisations with evidence-based solutions capable of reaching millions more people. The recognition will provide the selected ventures with funding, strategic guidance and partnerships to help expand their work across public systems, markets and communities.
The selected organisations, Zimbabwe’s Friendship Bench, Morocco’s DeepLeaf and Ghana’s Lively Minds, are among 12 high-impact ventures chosen for the 2026/27 cohort. They were recognised for developing solutions that have already demonstrated measurable results in mental healthcare, agriculture and early childhood development, and are now ready to scale their impact.
Based at the London School of Economics (LSE), 100x works with organisations that have moved beyond proving their ideas and are focused on embedding successful models into government systems, supply chains, community infrastructure and markets. Rather than supporting early-stage concepts, the initiative helps organisations strengthen the partnerships, capabilities and institutional support needed to reach far more people.
The 12 organisations selected this year operate across sectors including health, education, economic empowerment, nutrition, conservation, artificial intelligence, mental health and disaster response. Together, they reflect 100x’s focus on helping proven innovations become lasting solutions that can be adopted at the scale of the challenges they were created to address.
African organisations positioned to scale proven solutions
Zimbabwe’s Friendship Bench joins the cohort after building one of Africa’s most recognised community mental health programmes. Founded in 2006 by Zimbabwean psychiatrist Dixon Chibanda, the organisation was created to address the country’s significant mental health treatment gap by training community-based lay health workers, known as “Grandmothers”, to provide structured talk therapy in safe and accessible spaces.
The programme has grown into an important part of Zimbabwe’s public healthcare system. Today, trained community health workers provide evidence-based mental health support across 339 primary healthcare facilities, representing about 21 percent of the country’s primary care facilities. Friendship Bench is now working towards a full transition to ownership by Zimbabwe’s Ministry of Health by 2028.
Its impact has also extended beyond Zimbabwe through pilot programmes in Kenya, Malawi, the United Kingdom, Germany and the United States. These projects are exploring how an African-developed community mental health model can be adapted to different healthcare systems, particularly in underserved communities.
Morocco’s DeepLeaf was also selected for its work using artificial intelligence to improve agriculture. Founded in 2023 by El Mahdi Aboulmanadel, the agri-tech company has developed AI-powered tools that help farmers detect crop diseases early, reduce dependence on pesticides and improve productivity while lowering environmental impact.
Its platform combines image and video diagnostics with drone and mobile technology, supported by an open API ecosystem designed to make advanced agricultural technology more accessible. The company believes AI can help farmers make better decisions before diseases spread and damage harvests.
Aboulmanadel said joining the programme will help expand those benefits to millions more farmers.
“This opportunity allows us to put real agronomic intelligence in the hands of millions of farmers, in the languages they speak and through the channels they already use,” he said, adding that the technology is now capable of operating at scale to help farmers protect more of their harvests, increase incomes and reduce pressure on forests and biodiversity.
Ghana’s Lively Minds was selected for its work helping governments improve early childhood development by empowering parents and local communities. The organisation works with local governments in Ghana and Uganda to improve the lives of children living in rural communities affected by poverty.
Its programmes focus on developing children’s learning skills while equipping parents with practical knowledge that allows them to become active partners in their children’s development. The model has been designed to be sustainable and easily replicated, enabling governments to introduce it in more communities and reach thousands of additional children.
Founder and Chief Executive Officer Alison Naftalin said the organisation sees the programme as an opportunity to expand its work beyond its current markets.
“We’re honoured to join the 100x Impact Accelerator at such an important point in Lively Minds’ journey,” she said. After years of working with governments in Ghana and Uganda to develop a model that activates parents as partners in early childhood development, the organisation is now taking that approach to new countries. She said the opportunity would help accelerate its vision of making parent-powered early childhood development the norm so that millions more children receive the best possible start in life.
Supporting adoption at scale
According to 100x, the world already has many social innovations that have been proven to work. The greater challenge is ensuring these solutions become embedded within government systems, supply chains, markets and communities so they can reach far more people.
The initiative was created to support organisations at this stage by providing the partnerships, capabilities and institutional support needed to move successful models into wider use.
Kieron Boyle, Chief Executive Officer of 100x Impact and Professor of the Impact Economy at LSE, said the selected organisations have already demonstrated that their models work.
“These are organisations whose models have already shown they work for millions of people around the world,” Boyle said. “The question now is how those approaches take root and spread, picked up by governments, sustained by markets, embedded in communities and replicated by others.”
He added that this is where innovations begin addressing challenges at the scale they were designed for.
“100x exists for that change,” Boyle said. “We back these ventures with capital and hands-on support, and we turn what we learn about adoption into knowledge others can use.”
During the programme, all selected ventures will receive tailored support, including catalytic funding, strategic guidance, peer learning and connections to partners that can help accelerate their next stage of growth. Previous organisations supported by 100x have gone on to raise 16 times the capital invested by the initiative while reaching three times as many people, demonstrating the value of supporting organisations with proven solutions that are ready to scale.
