SHUJAAZ INC AI COMPANIONS

Shujaaz runs three connected chatbots on WhatsApp. Chapia DJ Boyie and Chapia Maria Kim are character-led — young people can talk to them about anything from relationships to money to the everyday pressure of growing up, in a voice they already trust. Sema na Me is our SRH specialist: a dedicated companion, without a character persona, built to refer young people to real, youth-friendly service providers.

The three work as one system: when a conversation with DJ Boyie or Maria Kim needs a referral to reproductive health care, they hand off to Sema na Me, which manages that step.

DJ Boyie and Maria Kim aren’t new, they’re established Shujaaz characters, recognised by 84% of 15–24 year-olds in Kenya, with a combined social following of over 2 million.

WHY WE BUILT THEM 

Across everything Shujaaz does, the same barriers keeps showing up: young people often aren’t short on information, they’re short on somewhere safe to take their questions. Clinics run office hours. Generic AI doesn’t get the nuance or the context right. And the topics that matter most — sex, relationships, money, mental health — are exactly the ones young people are least likely to raise with an adult.

A chatbot doesn’t replace a clinic, a counsellor, or a comic. It’s the bridge, reaching someone at the moment they’re ready to talk, and walking them to real help.

HOW THEY WORK 

There’s no app to download and no account to create. A young person clicks through from a Shujaaz social post, a QR code in one of our comics, a partner platform like Shuga TV, or a friend’s referral, and opens what looks like any other WhatsApp chat.

They talk to DJ Boyie or Maria Kim about whatever’s on their mind. If the conversation calls for a reproductive health referral, Sema na Me takes over that step and connects them to the nearest youth-friendly service. Every conversation is private, visible to no one but the user.

Behind that simple front end sits real infrastructure: each character runs on a precision-built “Voice DNA,” grounded in a curated knowledge base, with hard safety constraints (no medical advice, no prescribing) and a dedicated crisis classifier that escalates urgent cases to a human, instantly.

OUR REFERRAL NETWORK 

When a conversation needs more than the bot can offer, we don’t leave a young person to work out where to go next — we connect them directly to a trusted, youth-friendly service provider nearby.

Our SRH knowledge base was developed and validated with clinical partners at Kenyatta National Hospital, and referrals route to a network that includes LVCT Health, Marie Stopes, TICAH (Aunty Jane), RHNK (Nena na Binti), GVRC, and My Dawa. Every quarter, partner clinics report back on service uptake, closing a feedback loop between what a young person needed and whether they actually got it.

WHY YOUNG PEOPLE COME TO THEM 

The clearest signal of trust is when people show up. 60% of all engagements happen between 10pm and 5am, not because it’s downtime, but because it’s the only window many young people have real privacy. A conversation that isn’t possible at the family dinner table, or in a clinic waiting room, becomes possible at midnight, from a phone under the covers.

That single pattern reshaped how we think about the whole model: the bots aren’t competing with a clinic’s opening hours. They’re covering the hours a clinic can’t.

WHAT YOUNG PEOPLE ACTUALLY TALK ABOUT 

Contraception and family planning is the single largest topic, at roughly 35% of all conversations. STI and HIV testing follows at 20%, relationship concerns and consent at 15%, and sexual safety concerns at 10%, disproportionately in the late-night window.

Mental health concerns appear in around 20% of conversations, most often inside a conversation that started as something else. A question about contraception becomes a disclosure about anxiety. A question about a relationship becomes a conversation about safety. Young people don’t present their problems by category. A platform that can hold the whole conversation, and hand off smoothly to the right service when it’s needed, is doing something siloed services structurally can’t.

PROVEN, NOT JUST PROMISING 

• Chatbot Usability score of 77 — above the industry standard of 68

• 91% of users “very” or “completely satisfied” with the experience

• Safety and accuracy scores climbing to 100% and 99.3% across four rounds of testing

• Built and validated with clinical partners including Kenyatta National Hospital, LVCT Health, and Marie Stopes