Sabi Woman

Inspiration

In 2018, I gave birth to my baby at 33 weeks at a public hospital in Nigeria. Although I was college-educated and had traveled outside of Nigeria at that time, I had limited knowledge about maternal mental health problems. Unfortunately, my birthing experience was traumatic with devastating mental health consequences. Sadly, this experience is not unique to me as maternal mental health awareness and treatment in Africa is painfully low, increasing maternal mortality and morbidity.

What it does

Sabi Woman is a mobile application for preventing perinatal depression among urban and semi-urban women in Africa. The app provides free culturally relevant psychoeducational mental health services, psychological screening, connects users with mental health treatment, and provides a safe, anonymized space to share real-life experiences and support.

How we built it

We are currently in the ideation stage and are working to develop an MVP by Q2, 2021.

Challenges we ran into

One potential challenge to our product involves how to attract key stakeholder buy-in. Also, mental health awareness in Africa is still low and stigmatized. As such, we may encounter some challenges with attracting customers to scale our product.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud that we are meeting women where they are at a critical time in their life. Our services bring mental health care in their purses. Importantly, we are proud to provide culturally relevant mental health services that are localized to meet the specific needs of women in the perinatal period.

What we learned

We learned that the importance of teamwork. Despite our diverseness, we were able to communicate and work efficiently to bring our ideas to fruition.

What's next for Sabi Woman

The next stage for Sabi Woman is to build a team of backend coders, clinical advisors, and investors to move from an ideation stage to an MVP by Q4, 2021.

Built With

• english