EatWell Technologies, a Lagos-based digital health startup, has launched EatWell AI, an artificial intelligence-powered nutrition and food-tracking platform designed to help Africans make better everyday decisions about food, fitness, nutrition and long-term health.
The company is simultaneously pursuing partnerships across Nigeria’s healthcare ecosystem, including healthcare professionals, healthcare providers, Health Maintenance Organisations (HMOs), pharmacies, employers, banks and government health programmes, as it seeks to make personalised preventive healthcare more accessible beyond traditional clinical settings.
EatWell Technologies said the initiative is aimed at addressing what it described as a major gap in existing digital nutrition tools, which often rely heavily on Western food databases and provide limited insight into African diets.
According to the company, EatWell AI has been developed around foods commonly consumed in Nigeria and across Africa, including jollof rice, egusi soup, amala, moi moi and suya.
At the centre of the platform is a proprietary glycaemic index and glycaemic load database covering more than 2,000 local dishes.
The company said the database is intended to provide a more relevant foundation for understanding the relationship between African diets, blood sugar, weight management and metabolic health.
EatWell AI said it combines artificial intelligence-powered meal scanning, food and calorie tracking, personalised nutrition guidance, fitness and activity monitoring, health-goal tracking and progress monitoring within a single digital health platform.
The AI meal scanner allows users to take photographs of their meals and receive an analysis of the food on their plate.
‘The information can then be considered alongside the user’s individual objectives, including weight management, nutrition and metabolic health’, it said.
The company said the platform is designed to move beyond generic dietary recommendations by using information about users’ food choices, activity, goals and health progress to provide more personalised guidance.
‘Healthcare cannot only begin when someone becomes sick. A significant part of better health starts with what people do every day, what they eat, how active they are and whether they understand the choices they are making,’ said Jon Emerenini, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of EatWell Technologies.
Emerenini said nutrition remains one of the most under-addressed areas of preventive healthcare in Africa because of the lack of comprehensive data reflecting the way Africans eat.
‘Nutrition is the single most under-addressed lever in African preventive health, and it’s been ignored because nobody built the underlying data layer for how we actually eat.
‘EatWell AI isn’t just an app, it’s nutrition data infrastructure for Africa. Whether someone is scanning a plate of amala on a smartphone in Lagos or texting a food log to their dietician in London, they get the same clinical-grade insight’, he said.
EatWell Technologies said its strategy goes beyond positioning EatWell AI as another consumer fitness or calorie-counting application.
The startup is seeking to integrate the platform into the wider healthcare ecosystem by working with healthcare professionals, hospitals and other healthcare providers, HMOs, pharmacies, employers and government health programmes.
Through such partnerships, the company intends to provide healthcare organisations with a digital layer for nutrition, lifestyle management and preventive health, while enabling patients and individuals to continue monitoring their nutrition and lifestyle between healthcare appointments.
The company is also exploring opportunities to work with government and other healthcare stakeholders on deploying EatWell AI through Primary Healthcare Centres (PHCs).
Such integration, it said, could help extend personalised nutrition and lifestyle support to communities that may have limited access to specialist nutrition services.
The proposed approach is designed to complement, rather than replace, doctors, dietitians, nurses and other healthcare professionals.
EatWell Technologies said the platform can provide individuals with continuous information about their food and lifestyle choices, while healthcare professionals can potentially use such data to better understand and support patients outside conventional consultations.
A major component of the platform’s strategy is its emphasis on culturally relevant nutrition data.
The company said conventional food-tracking applications can be difficult to use for Africans when local dishes are absent from their databases or are represented by generic estimates that do not adequately reflect local preparation methods and eating patterns.
EatWell AI is therefore being built around the foods people already eat, rather than requiring users to significantly alter their diets to fit an application.
The objective, according to the company, is to help users make healthier decisions within their existing cultural and dietary preferences.
The platform is initially focused on African food and nutrition patterns but is also being made available to users internationally, particularly people in the African diaspora and other communities that consume African cuisine.
Beyond general nutrition and fitness tracking, EatWell AI is designed to support users working towards specific health goals and managing conditions such as diabetes, hypertension and weight-related concerns.
Its features include personalised nutrition recommendations, health-goal tracking, fitness and activity monitoring, progress monitoring, nutrition coaching and food and nutrition insights based on individual objectives.
The company said the long-term vision is to connect these consumer-facing capabilities with healthcare professionals and institutions to create a more continuous model of preventive care.
Rather than waiting for health problems to become severe before intervention, EatWell Technologies believes digital tools can help individuals monitor everyday behaviours and make incremental changes that contribute to healthier lifestyles.
Following the launch in Nigeria, EatWell Technologies said it is expanding its availability into international markets, with Africa and global communities that consume African foods among its key areas of focus.
The company said it sees opportunities for collaboration with HMOs, healthcare providers, pharmacies, gyms, employers, telecommunications companies, banks and government health programmes.
Such partnerships could provide additional channels through which individuals gain access to nutrition and preventive health tools, particularly through workplace wellness programmes and existing healthcare structures.
The company is also positioning its technology as a potential digital support layer for organisations seeking to improve preventive health outcomes among their members, employees or beneficiaries.
As healthcare systems across Africa increasingly explore technology-enabled models for delivering care, EatWell Technologies said personalised nutrition could play a greater role in helping people manage their health outside traditional clinical environments.
The startup said its objective is to contribute to a preventive healthcare model in which individuals have access to relevant nutrition intelligence while healthcare professionals and organisations have digital tools to support people continuously.