Recent Developments

Another year has passed, and despite a fragile global health landscape, Jacaranda’s north star remains unwavering: to ensure every mother delivers safely and every newborn receives a safe start in life. In 2024, Jacaranda redoubled its efforts to strengthen the foundations of this vision—empowering mothers, training frontline healthcare providers, and supporting governments in improving the essential systems they depend on.

Jacaranda's Highlights and Milestones report explores these achievements and more and they extend deep gratitude to its trusted network of funding, government, and implementing partners, whose support has enabled the continued prioritisation of maternal and newborn health, the testing of new innovations, and the advancement of technologies that reach underserved communities across Sub-Saharan Africa.  

We are proud to have been among Jacaranda Health's early grant funders and to witness its remarkable journey under the visionary leadership of both Nick Pearson and Sathy Rajasekharan. Over eight years, they transformed a local maternity hospital model into a far-reaching digital health solution now serving approximately 2,000 government hospitals across four countries, impacting over 3 million mothers and babies. Their ability to recognize and scale "the magic" of quality maternal care to those most in need has been truly inspirational.

At EfD, we've particularly valued their collaborative approach, innovative thinking, and unwavering commitment to improving maternal health outcomes, demonstrated through rigorous research including two randomized controlled trials. As Sathy transitions to new adventures, we celebrate his tremendous contribution and look forward to seeing Jacaranda Health continue to flourish under Nick's ongoing leadership alongside Cynthia Kahumbura Co-Exec Director, and its strong Nairobi based management team, Job Makoyo, Country Director, Rachael Alldian Head of Global Programs, Jay Patel Technology Director and Laura Down Director of Global Communications & Development.

In December of 1999, 77 people gathered for a seminar in Mpwapwa, Tanzania. The TIST family has grown from those 77 people to more than 250,000 farmers in four countries - Uganda, Kenya, and India as well. Tanzania started 40 Small Groups and now there are over 40,000 in TIST. From those first seedlings the farmers planted, there are now over 27 million trees alive and growing. The trees have sequestered over 6.9 million tonnes of CO2. The TIST in-country Leadership Teams are growing. They are organizing TIST activities on the ground and continue to serve the farmers. 70% Profit Share payments are going to the Small Groups.

In Q3, Jacaranda continued to grow their network of mothers and frontline maternity nurses in Kenya, while making a first foray into two new countries - Nigeria and Nepal.  

The Impact Report dives into these scale milestones, alongside recent innovations around real-time data tools, low-resource language models, digital EmONC learning tools, a 6 month collaboration with Google, completing the Prompts study in Ghana (results to follow) and presenting at a series of AT collaboration events. 

EfD Trustees are delighted to announce that their Chairman, Keith Palmer, has received a Knighthood in His Majesty's The King's Birthday Honours.

Keith was awarded the KCMG for his exceptional service to the UK abroad and internationally in the field of international development.  Keith was recognised for his longstanding and sustained leadership, innovation and impact in international development. Throughout his career he has demonstrated effectively how to collaborate with the private sector to achieve development goals and bring about lasting change to the lives of millions of people in some of the poorest countries in Africa and Asia. Consequently, helping to establish the UK as a global leader in this sector.​