Njarabi: building a safe dating app for West Africa
Verified profiles, location-based matching, encrypted messaging and local payments: the choices behind Njarabi, available on the App Store and Google Play.
The big international dating apps are designed for other markets: unavailable payment methods, different cultural codes, remote moderation. Njarabi is our answer: a dating app built for around ten West African countries, available on the App Store and Google Play.
What Njarabi offers
- Verified profiles.
- Location-based matching, with likes and super-likes.
- Encrypted private messaging.
- Posts to keep the community active.
- A premium subscription payable with Wave, Orange Money or Moov.
Safety first
On a dating app, trust is the product. Moderation combines automatic photo analysis with a human team. On the privacy side, messages are encrypted, screenshots are blocked and the app can be locked with a fingerprint or face unlock.
Finding nearby profiles, fast
Distance-based matching relies on a MongoDB geospatial index (2dsphere), which stays fast even with many profiles in the same city.
Real time that scales
Conversations use Parse LiveQuery, shared across several server instances through Redis. Notifications go through a BullMQ queue so they never slow the app down.
Industrialising quality
Every change goes through a CI/CD pipeline with k6 load tests, OWASP ZAP security scans, secret detection (gitleaks), Docker image scanning (Trivy) and SonarQube quality checks.
The tech in short
Flutter and Riverpod on mobile; Node.js with TypeScript, Parse Server, MongoDB, Redis and BullMQ on the server, alongside Laravel.
Building a consumer app with real time features and local payments? We have already solved a good share of the problems.