The Kilimanjaro Clinical Research Institute (KCRI) is a young academic centre for evidence -based health interventions. They have the ambition to be an internationally distinguished Centre of Excellence in Health Research with the mission to conduct and coordinate high quality biomedical research which will provide evidence for medical interventions and global health policies development.
One of the main themes is research and innovations with the strategic objective to increase the capacity of KCRI to conduct research by 10% annually in all key priority health research thematic areas in the country. Reproductive, maternal and child health is the third national health research priority of Tanzania, product development and commercialisation the fourth and bioinformatics and information technology the seventh. All three priorities are part of the project supported by Voice.

The Maasai living in Esilalei (Monduli District, Arusha Region, Tanzania) have difficulties in feeding their children as the grazing grounds for their cattle are decreasing due to increasing urbanisation and land grabbing for wildlife areas. They wish to reduce their number of children, but access to family planning services and knowledge is limited. As the number of mobile phone users among Maasai in Esilalei is extremely high, the project Voices of Maasai in Family Planning uses mobile communication to increase their access and knowledge.  As part of the project a mobile health platform for Maasai and health care workers in Esilalei is developed. The area of Esilalei was chosen as there is a need for family planning methods in that area. Through increasing dialogue using the platform, the aim is to give voice to Maasai and as such increase their access to family planning services.

The mHealth platform aims to (1) educate Maasai on fertility and family planning methods and (2) give way for Maasai to inform health care workers about their traditions considering birthing and family planning. The platform uses interactive voice response calling and the Maa language (local Maasai language) in order to increase use of the system by Maasai. The system is developed together with Maasai and tested among 32 Maasai couples and 20 health care workers in and around Esilalei for a period of six months. The development and testing of the platform goes hand in hand with seminars for education on fertility, family planning methods, other reproductive health issues and mobile phone use.

The expectation is that the project leads to increased knowledge about family planning and use of family planning methods among Maasai in Esilalei. In addition, it may give way to increase dialogue about other relevant reproductive health issues such as female genital mutilation and traditional home delivery. Furthermore, using interactive voice response calling is a new way of mobile health communication in Tanzania, so it may increase mHealth capacity in our country, which may lead to expanded use for other conditions and people. Lastly, if the system shows to be effective among Maasai in Esilalei, it can be expanded to other (more remote) regions where Maasai are living.