{"id":22842,"date":"2014-06-05T13:39:12","date_gmt":"2014-06-05T13:39:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/?p=22842"},"modified":"2014-06-05T14:22:23","modified_gmt":"2014-06-05T14:22:23","slug":"nigerian-firm-creates-app-that-calculate-bride-price","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/2014\/06\/nigerian-firm-creates-app-that-calculate-bride-price\/","title":{"rendered":"Nigerian firm creates app that calculates bride price"},"content":{"rendered":"
A Nigerian advertising company has sparked worldwide criticism after the creation of Bride Price, a social media app<\/a>\u00a0described as objectifying women by critics. It calculates users’ value as potential brides, analysing criteria such as physical appearance, education and cooking skills.<\/p>\n Anakle, the Nigerian advertising company that designed the app, said it was created as a joke “that might be misunderstood by people outside Africa”.<\/p>\n Bride Price users are asked to answer simple questions about themselves or people they would like to evaluate as potential brides.<\/p>\n Questions range from; height, “facial beauty”, skin colour: light skin is worth 40,000Naira ( \u00a3146), while dark skin 20,000Naira (\u00a373) to education, nationality and accent (English attracting the highest value of 45,000Naira (\u00a3165).<\/p>\n After the questionnaire is completed, the following phrase pops us: “Please wait, the elders are consulting.”<\/p>\n Then the price is revealed.<\/p>\n The app is causing outcry as it is seen by many as a grave violation of women’s rights.<\/p>\n “I want to start by saying it’s a joke and secondly, it’s an inside joke that might be misunderstood by people outside the country and Africa,” Editi Effiong, CEO of Anakle, told CNBC Africa<\/a>. “[We wanted] to create something that gets attention, [from] which we can record data.<\/p>\n “The real inspiration came when we saw a picture that was a bride price list and we just upgraded that.<\/p>\n “We want to write about relationships and marriage which was the second most popular topic on social media in Nigeria, so we decided to do this,” Effiong continued.<\/p>\n The app had received hits from 56 countries in three days.<\/p>\n “The elders have done roughly 100 billion naira in bride price transactions as we speak,” Effiong said.<\/p>\n