Rafiki, which means ‘my friend’ in Swahili is an artificial intelligence(AI) driven, cloud-based and mobile phone-ready digital assistant technology has been made accessible to caregivers since the COVID-19 lockdown to bridge the mental gap that COVID-19 had on people’s mental wellness like loneliness, joblessness and loss.

By text (and in the future by voice) it provides first-level support on care, development, and mental health either as a replacement for individual counseling or in more serious cases as the first information before Rafiki connects the user to a human counselor.