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Partnership and funding

Support an assignment, a region, or a lasting capacity.

Idea Academy is looking for funders, foundations, businesses and institutions. The work packages cover TranonAI, FOREG and the four platform projects (IA-ANATRA, IA-ANTOKA, IA-AVOTRA, I-TOMADY) — the same entities presented as projects on the Programme page.

Why this structure

Digital exclusion is not a technical problem. It is a budget one.

Funded in silos, each project has to pay the fixed cost of the universal channel alone — operator agreements, registry, language corpora. That cost is judged out of reach, so each project falls back on the 20% already connected, and the exclusion of the other 80% is reproduced by the funding architecture itself. Sharing that foundation once changes the equation: the next service becomes almost free to deliver.

What a partner funds

A signal leaves a basic handset. A decision comes back.

The beneficiary raises an alert by SMS or a free call. The community agent travels out, verifies, and completes the case with photos and readings. The expert — doctor, agronomist, officer — receives a pre-qualified case and decides in thirty seconds instead of twenty minutes. The decision goes back by SMS. That chain, not the AI model, is what produces measurable inclusion.

1

FOREG — bringing data and AI within reach of every region

Priority
What you are funding
Travelling data and AI sessions across the regions: trainers, materials, logistics, certification, talent selection, and consolidation of the cohorts already reached.
Expected outcome
Data and AI skills stop being a privilege of the capital. FOREG is the human foundation of IA-ANATRA: it trains the local relays who will keep the education platform alive in their own region.
Partners sought
Universities, foundations, businesses, youth programmes
Full details
2

TranonAI — regional autonomy in data and AI

What you are funding
Premises, connectivity, a resilient local server, a solar charging station, a training and conference room, staffing, maintenance and mentoring in a regional capital.
Expected outcome
A region that no longer waits on the capital: a third place holding three roles at once — a welcoming space for digital literacy, a technical node that keeps regional services running when the national backbone fails, and a charging point for agents returning from the bush.
Partners sought
Funders, tech companies, telecom operators, local authorities, foundations
Full details
3

IA-ANATRA

What you are funding
Learning paths, entry and return to employment, civic education, mentoring, content and certification.
Expected outcome
Young people, teachers, professionals and citizens better trained and more able to act.
Partners sought
Education and employment partners, civic tech, public institutions
Full details
4

IA-ANTOKA

What you are funding
Data governance, dashboards, indicators, geographic information systems, reporting and support for decision-makers.
Expected outcome
Public and private decisions that are better informed and more accountable.
Partners sought
Institutions, local authorities, NGOs, research centres
Full details
5

IA-AVOTRA / IA-HARY

What you are funding
Consolidating the features, testing usage in the field and adapting to the supply chains' real needs.
Expected outcome
Services that are genuinely useful to producers, livestock farming, fisheries and the environment.
Partners sought
Government, producers, exporters, national and international bodies
Full details
6

I-TOMADY

What you are funding
Consolidating the MVP, health partnerships, validation in the field and data protocols.
Expected outcome
Community health properly equipped, as close as possible to the people it serves.
Partners sought
Health bodies, hospitals, health centres, research centres
Full details
7

IA-ARO

What you are funding
Building the protection system on the shared foundation: village-level reporting, satellite fire detection, a qualification cockpit for the gendarmerie and the disaster management office, and a tamper-proof audit log.
Expected outcome
Equipped protection of people, property and forests, under strict judicial control. It is also the research validation case: built on the shared foundation, IA-ARO measures the engineering costs avoided compared with siloed development.
Partners sought
Gendarmerie nationale, BNGRC, Eaux et Forêts, bailleurs climat et sécurité, programmes de conservation
Full details
8

Shared foundation — the universal channel for the 80%

What you are funding
SMS, USSD and voice gateway, agreed with the operators and the regulator at zero cost to the citizen (reverse billing), a unified registry of people and places, Malagasy language and voice corpora, an X-Road interoperability adapter, and the governance body that holds these shared building blocks.
Expected outcome
The channel that reaches the 80% offline population is built once, for all five systems. The next service no longer pays that fixed cost again — and inclusion stops being out of reach for each project taken alone.
Partners sought
Bailleurs multilatéraux, coopération numérique, opérateurs télécoms, État (Unité de Gouvernance Digitale, ARTEC, Ministère du Développement Numérique)
Full details
9

Community agents — last-mile human mediation

What you are funding
Field agent equipment and offline application, initial and ongoing training in the TranonAI centres, and a hybrid pay model: fixed institutional recognition plus a small Mobile Money payment per act validated by the expert.
Expected outcome
Value depends on the density of human mediation, not on model power. Agents who are equipped, recognised and paid stay in post — where purely variable incentives collapse as soon as subsidies stop.
Partners sought
Ministères sectoriels, collectivités, fondations, opérateurs Mobile Money, programmes de santé et de développement rural
Full details

What makes the model sustainable

  • A self-reinforcing loop: beneficiaries become ambassadors and improve the platforms, which in turn attract users and partners.
  • Self-supporting TranonAI services in each region: rooms, local cloud services, coworking, digital advisory.
  • Institutional contracts for IA-ANTOKA with local authorities, ministries and partner NGOs.
  • Ambassadors who are employable on the market: the training itself becomes an asset with real value.

Let's discuss the package that fits you

Tell us which component interests you and in which region: we will prepare a useful conversation rather than a generic pitch.