Response to gender-based violence remains poor in DR Congo. To change the game, Didier Bacigale and Amisi Musada have designed SOS Secours, an application to alert and assist victims.

Didier Bacigale got the idea of such an application when he was still a student. He reported that his neighbor was always beaten by her husband but that no one ever helped her. He then worked on the project with Amisi Musada (pictured) and that is how SOS Secours was born.  

The two entrepreneurs created a tech startup called Yangu in 2019 thanks to the DRC Human Rights Hackathon event, organized by Internews. They won the competition with their SOS Secours solution.

Official data showed that the DRC records an average of 1,000 cases of gender-based violence every day. With Yangu’s app, victims can now easily seek help when in danger. The user just has to shake his/her phone 5 times (after the app is installed on the phone) and immediately, an alert and a geolocation are sent by message to relatives and to a network of local associations that are partners of SOS Secours.

Beyond helping victims, the solution works as a real-time data generator for all entities engaged in the fight against gender-based violence. “Many organizations say they have trouble accessing information and especially stats about gender-based violence. There are few real-time statistics. To have data, we are obliged to resort to health centers although we know that not all victims go to the hospital,” explained Amisi Musada.

In four years, the duo has managed to attract many partners, including Internews DRC, the French Institute of Bukavu, as well as associations like Femme au Fone and AFEM. Currently, the app is only operational in the province of South Kivu where the startup Yangu is based. The founders are now working on lobbying with telecom operators for SMS alerts.

Aïsha Moyouzame