Story Time: Meet Nigerian teens who developed laudable dementia app

Spurred by the death of their mentor’s mum due to dementia, Rachel, Margaret and Joy were worried about how people with dementia were coping during the COVI-19-induced lockdown.

This led the Nigerian-Irish girls to decide to design and code Memory Haven, an app that helps people with dementia to make it through routine tasks in a day as well as commit relevant necessities to memory.

For clarity, Dementia is a deterioration in memory, thinking, behaviour, and the ability to perform everyday activities. Although the syndrome mainly affects older people, it is not a normal part of ageing.

Mentored by Evelyn Nomayo, Rachel Akano, Margaret Akano, and Joy Njekwe won a prize at the prestigious technology competition, Technovation, after their app aced 1,500 other entries from across 62 countries worldwide.

While speaking to the BBC, Joy said that the app has six main features spanning a health check, a photo wallet, a music playlist, reminder alerts, a reach-out feature, and a memory game to strengthen cognition, whilst also expressing the girls’ hope that the app reaches many parts of the globe to help as many people as possible.

“Our aim is to help as many people as possible. We hope our app can go global one day and reach millions of people who are affected by dementia and just help make their lives somewhat easier.”

Joy Njekwe

Watch the girls tell their story here: