TikTok expands mental health education fund by $2.3M, Mentally Aware Nigeria among beneficiaries

TikTok has announced a $2.3 million expansion of its 2025 Mental Health Education Fund. The social media platform announced this during its Digital Wellbeing Summit, held on Thursday in Johannesburg, South Africa.

The expansion means three Africa-based mental awareness organisations will be beneficiaries of the mental health education fund. The organisations include the South African Depression and Anxiety Group (SADAG), Kenya’s Mental 360, and Nigeria’s Mentally Aware Nigeria Initiative (MANI).

Speaking about the mental education fund, the Director of Public Policy and Government Relations for TikTok Sub-Saharan Africa, Fortune Mgwili-Sibanda, told Technext that it is a fund that the company is rolling out to selected organisations within Sub-Saharan Africa to help them better reach out to people in need of counselling and other forms of aid.

“We are going to be giving them resources to enable them produce content that can reach out to people who may need counselling or advice around mental health. These people are experts, while we are just a platform. So what we are doing with these investments is making sure that our platform and our resources are available for them to use to reach wider constituencies,” he said.

With this expansion, the TikTok Mental Health Education Fund has now reached 31 mental health organisations across 22 countries spread across Africa, Europe, the Americas, Asia and the Middle East.

See also: Nigeria’s Doctor Wales, 3 others become first TikTok Digital Well-being Ambassadors for SSA

Mentally Aware Nigeria emerges TikTok Mental Health Education beneficiary

Among the three new beneficiaries of the TikTok Mental Health Education Fund is the Nigerian mental health awareness organisation Mentally Aware Nigeria Initiative (MANI). The organisation was founded in 2015 by Dr Victor Ugo, a medical practitioner who was once diagnosed with depression.

Sadly, during his ordeal, getting help proved to be very difficult, prompting him to ponder the possibility of other regular people getting help when he, who was a medical practitioner, found it difficult to. This prompted him to establish the organisation to help everyday people access the mental health care they need.

Speaking to Technext about what this means for the organisation, the Operations Manager at Mentally Aware Nigeria Initiative, Motunrayo Balogun, while expressing their gratefulness at being selected as one of the recipients of the mental health education fund, described it as really huge.

“What this means to us is we get more opportunities now to reach more people. Because one thing is, we are an NGO, which means most of our projects are largely self-funded. So, once in a while, when we get donors. We are really, really happy about it. It means our mission and our vision are being pushed, and we are being recognised,” said Motunrayo Balogun, Operations Manager at Mentally Aware Nigeria Initiative

She said the fund will go a long way to achieving their mission of ensuring that everybody gets informed about mental health and why it is important. She said the fund is going to help them reach more people on TikTok, because with a significant portion of its billion users accessing accurate information on mental health, it means the organisation is making huge progress.

“So it is going to help us to reach more people, advocate more, train people and make mental health a conversation that people are 100 per cent comfortable having now. It is not just about using buzzwords like ‘gaslighting’ and ‘narcissism’ without actually knowing the meaning. So, having us keep creating awareness and educating people on that and reaching more people is going to really make a huge impact. We are looking forward to doing amazing things with these funds,” she said.

Mentally Aware is an organisation that offers free mental awareness counselling for people in need of it. It prides itself on providing psychological first aid for people in need, creating awareness of mental health, and bridging the gap between facts and myths within the realm of mental health.