Why we ended up building it

There is a message everyone in the diaspora has already written, or read: "is anyone flying to Abidjan this week?". Yadony was born from that message.

It happens in a WhatsApp group of two hundred people. Someone answers, you swap numbers, you meet on a Saturday in a car park. You hand a box to a stranger vouched for by a cousin, you pay in cash, and you wait. Most of the time, it works. It works remarkably well, in fact: that is how clothes, school supplies, spare parts and presents have been moving for thirty years.

The problem only shows up the day it does not work. The parcel does not arrive. The number stops answering. There is no record, no proof of handover, no receipt, nobody to call. You cannot even say what happened: lost, forgotten, kept. And because the person was doing you a favour, you do not dare push. You lose the parcel, and often you lose the relationship as well.

On the other side, there are the carriers. They are reliable, they are considerably more expensive, and they do not deliver everywhere. To get five kilos to someone you know, that is not a solution, it is giving up.

Yadony is not trying to replace the traveller with a lorry. The traveller already exists, is already leaving, and their suitcase is already half empty. What was missing was not transport: it was a record. Knowing who carries what, when, and being able to prove it. Hence identity checks, scans at every step, time-stamped photos, the delivery code, and a payment that only reaches the traveller once the parcel is in the recipient's hands.

We started from the trips the diaspora already makes, between Paris, Lyon, Marseille and Abidjan, Dakar, Bamako or Douala, and the app now accepts any departure and arrival city. We have no numbers to show off: we are just starting, and the app is still in beta. If you use it and something feels off, write to us. At this stage, it is the most useful feedback we could get.