Startup Safiri Salama has entered a new technology sector for Africa with its latest e-services platform, which offers digital death notices, memorials and a directory of funeral service providers.
Safiri Salama, kiSwahili for “go in peace” or “travel well”, is a farewell term commonly used at East African funerals.
This startup is taking an unexplored route in Africa, seeking to fill the space between the growing funeral industry and the lack of a connecting thread for grieving families.
“African communities usually avoid discussing death and the end of life, making them vulnerable to exploitation because they are unprepared and easily emotional when loved ones die,” said Safiri Salama, founder and chief executive, John Nyongesa.
Nyongesa said that the funeral industry in Africa has undergone significant evolution, with demographic changes, urbanisation, the growth of free market economies and mobile phones bringing about major changes in the traditional image of roadside coffin and hearse providers with new and evolving . industry.
The end-of-life platform was set up in 2018 as a personal memorial website in response to questions from Nyongesa’s son about his late grandfather.
Since its inception, the platform has been refined through research, testing and donations from grieving families and funeral service providers. In 2021, Nyongesa welcomed actuarial scientist Steve Lelei and project manager Edith Orwako as co-founders of the platform.
To facilitate the development of the platform, the deathcare startup received an infusion of $100 000 from American investors. For the past four years, the company has been designing, developing and testing its products in the real world.
The beta version of Safiri Salama was launched in Kenya in August, with the ecosystem already making a significant impact.
The prohibitive cost of mainstream media obituaries, which less than 15% of Kenyans currently use, is one of the issues Safiri Salama tackles. With digital notifications that are easy to create, the platform provides funeral details and arrangements that can be shared across multiple social media platforms.
The lack of a local storage platform for memorials, which can include images, tributes and stories, is another problem that Safiri Salama is dealing with.
Memorials Online products are a one-stop shop for organizing your loved one’s funeral arrangements, providing notice boards, galleries, wiki-style repositories, tributes and birthday notices.
The desperate need for an efficient and easy-to-navigate directory focused on death care is the third issue Safiri Salama tackles with The Redbook. The directory connects thousands of users and service providers, making it easy to plan a funeral and ensure that everything is taken care of.
A directory of B2B and B2C products and services, Redbook includes more than 50 categories of direct, indirect and accessory suppliers. This is a place where vendors can subscribe to display their products, prices and stock availability and be picked up by search engines.
Nyongesa stressed that bereaved families face difficulties in doing proper research and are often “pressured to buy” because of the low prices published in the funeral industry, especially when grief and important decision-making are combined.
Bereaved families are often at a disadvantage in this “flux” without a clear and user-friendly system for bereaved people, which leads to problems like inconsistent pricing, unclear industry standards and difficulty distinguishing between competitors.
Despite Kenya’s high levels of internet penetration, smartphone access and e-commerce growth, the end-of-life industry remains untouched by technological advances. — bird story agency
The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect official policy or position Mail & Guardians.