Afrigather Femtech apps are fashionable with younger ladies in Africa however the options they supply exclude a few of those that want them essentially the most.
Twenty-year-old *Salamatu has a small jotter in her bed room the place she retains monitor of her menstrual cycle. Whereas she has a interval monitoring app put in on her telephone, she doesn’t at all times have knowledge to entry it. Her month-to-month knowledge finances is ₦2,000 ($2) and he or she spends the majority of it on WhatsApp bundles to maintain up together with her college division’s group chat. *Salamatu is sexually energetic, and it is extremely vital that the handbook calculation she does is right because it’s usually the one type of contraception that she makes use of.
Because the 2010s, a number of femtech apps and platforms have launched, serving to thousands and thousands of ladies the world over study their sexual and reproductive well being. Sadly, it excludes a few of those that want it essentially the most. For girls outdoors the western world, particularly in rural communities who aren’t literate and can’t afford web subscriptions, the options that femtechs like Flo present are out of attain. This calls for funding into extra inclusive options which can be tailor-made to marginalised ladies.
African femtechs are offering options for his or her communities
G4G, which was based by a bunch of well being schooling college students, is a small, on-line sexual well being group that’s working to succeed in ladies by WhatsApp and SMS for these with out web entry. One of many conveners, Hafsat Usman, shared that they’ve WhatsApp teams and an SMS record the place they share details about sexual well being with younger ladies like *Salamatu together with the best way to correctly monitor your menstrual cycles and the best way to correctly use totally different types of contraception, amongst different issues. The speed of unintended pregnancies in sub-Saharan Africa is the highest in the world, with one of many main causes being a scarcity of ample data about contraceptives.
“For lots of those ladies, we’re the one place they get sexual well being info from. They’re not digitally literate sufficient to seek for solutions on-line and may’t afford to pay for [medical] consultations. We’ve got lots of ladies reaching out to ask questions or for assist relating to sure conditions both on WhatsApp or through SMS, and we do our greatest to reply or join them with different well being professionals in some instances,” Usman shared.
Past offering info, the G4G group leverages their on-line group to lift cash for younger ladies who can’t afford sanitary merchandise, contraception, or therapy for sexual and reproductive well being points.
In lots of African nations, instructing younger ladies about their sexual and reproductive well being is taken into account taboo, making the accessibility of female-centred well being tech options vital. The data that it supplies empowers ladies to make selections about their well being and our bodies, one thing that has been traditionally denied them.
In accordance with Usman, they generally converse with ladies in native Nigerian languages and through audio to make sure that they attain the ladies in methods and languages they most perceive.
“Generally, even once they have apps like Flo, they will’t learn clearly or totally perceive as a result of it’s too sophisticated. We break it down for them within the vocabulary they comprehend higher as a result of we at all times perceive issues higher once we use our language,” she mentioned.
Anosele Kotu is the founding father of Femconnect, a South African femtech firm that gives on-line details about sexual and reproductive well being to younger ladies. In accordance with Kotu, one of many the explanation why she began Femconnect was as a result of she felt just like the providers the American or European apps offered have been restricted and never focused at her as a lady dwelling in South Africa.
“Generally they used terminologies that I didn’t even perceive or might relate to, and whereas it sounds inconsequential, it makes quite a lot of a distinction in how younger ladies strategy studying about sexual well being. Details about your physique and the way it works turns into one thing you simply scan by and hope to recollect, relatively than one thing you’re enthusiastic about or fascinated with, simply because it sounds too advanced and never relatable,” she shared.
Past simplifying info, femtechs have to be tailor-made in direction of offering options to essentially the most urgent want of its goal demographic and Femconnect does that. There are about seven million ladies in South Africa who miss college each month as a consequence of interval poverty. Femconnect collects knowledge on ladies who need assistance with sanitary merchandise and matches them with donors: people who find themselves prepared to pay for his or her sanitary product wants long-term.
The problem of constructing an African femtech
If healthtech founders expertise difficulties with accessing funding, African femtech founders have it even worse. In accordance with Kemi Olawoye, the founding father of Nigerian femtech Babymigo, only a few buyers are enthusiastic about placing their cash into femtech as a result of it’s a distinct segment market.
“Buyers wish to understand how you’ll usher in greater numbers for them and they also favour bigger markets. As an African femtech founder, this actually impacts what you are able to do and what number of ladies you’ll be able to attain, which will be disheartening as a result of ladies actually need these options and the femtech market does have the potential to generate revenue within the long-term,” she shared.
The worldwide femtech house is projected to be price $1 trillion by 2027 and Africa has the potential to contribute immensely to that if native founders are supported and funded. Not solely will funding into the African femtech house yield revenue for buyers, however it can additionally enhance the situations for extra sustainable progress and innovation on the continent. Ladies make up over 50% of the population and bettering well being outcomes for them means improved outcomes for the remainder of society.
*Names have been modified to protect anonymity.
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