A women-led safety technology company, WanderSafe, has launched a free personal safety application in Nigeria, offering emergency response tools to individuals as concerns over femicide and gender-based violence (GBV) continue to grow.

The application, which is available on Android and iOS platforms, provides users with features including one-touch SOS alerts, trusted Safety Circles, community-verified safety mapping, journey monitoring and real-time location sharing.
Announcing the launch, WanderSafe Founder, Stephenie Rodriguez, said the initiative was aimed at making life-saving technology accessible to Nigerians at no cost amid increasing reports of violence against women and girls.

According to the company, figures from the DOHS Cares Foundation, which operates a femicide dashboard, showed that 197 women and girls were killed in suspected gender-related circumstances in 2025, up from 149 deaths recorded in 135 incidents in 2024.
The company also cited data from the National Human Rights Commission indicating that more than 33,000 sexual and gender-based violence complaints were recorded in the first five months of 2025.

It further referenced estimates by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) that about 20 million people in Nigeria are survivors of gender-based violence.
Rodriguez said the figures underscored the need for practical safety solutions rather than increased awareness.

“Every one of these numbers was a woman with a name, a family and a future. Nigeria does not have an awareness problem; Nigerians are painfully aware. It has an access problem. The tools and information that reduce risk have been priced, siloed or simply absent. That is the problem we exist to solve,” she said.
The company said users of the application can send emergency alerts with their live location to trusted contacts, access community-generated safety information, receive journey monitoring services and contribute local safety intelligence by identifying safe and unsafe locations.

It added that the platform is built on a model that keeps its core safety features free for individuals while enterprise users fund the service through duty-of-care solutions for employees and organisations.
The launch comes as advocacy groups continue to call for stronger legal protections against femicide.

Last week, the DOHS Cares Foundation and the House of Representatives’ Gender Unit renewed calls for explicit provisions on femicide in the ongoing review of the Violence Against Persons (Prohibition) Act.
WanderSafe also noted that it recently entered into a partnership with humanitarian organisation SmartAID to provide the platform free of charge to aid workers and displaced communities in disaster zones.

The company’s Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder, Fiona O’Donnell, said the platform was designed to ensure that access to personal safety tools is not determined by gender, income or location, while also helping employers, universities and non-governmental organisations strengthen their duty of care to staff and vulnerable groups.