AfriFit Guardian
A fitness app that watches your health while you train — built for African gym-goers, athletes, coaches and clubs.
My contribution
Deliverables
Overview
AfriFit Guardian is a mobile app that helps people train safely. It tracks vitals in real time, warns you when you are dehydrated, overheating or too tired, and gives simple tips after each workout.
I was the team lead and product manager for a 20-person team. We took 2nd place at the bootcamp hackathon.
The Problem
Across Africa, people who exercise — from athletes to everyday gym users — run into health problems that could have been avoided: dehydration, fatigue, dizziness and heat-related illness.
It gets worse because people train in hot weather, gyms are crowded and often unsupervised, and there is no real-time health tracking or alert to tell you to stop.
Most people have a phone, but they still train with zero health guidance. That leads to injuries, low motivation and quitting early.
Who It Is For
Gym-goers, athletes, trainers and coaches, gym owners, sports medics and clubs or institutions.
Launch cities we planned for: Lagos, Nairobi, Accra, Johannesburg, Cape Town and Dakar.
The People We Designed For
Chinedu, 24, amateur footballer in Lagos — wants to track hydration and heart rate while training in the heat.
Amina, 35, gym-goer in Accra — trains alone and wants to feel safe while seeing her progress.
Kwame, 38, gym owner in Nairobi — wants premium services that keep members coming back.
Coach Musa, 45, football coach in Johannesburg — wants to see team fatigue during practice.
Dr. Lindiwe, 40, sports medic — wants to watch players remotely and catch risk early.
My Thought Process
The question I started with: how do we help African users build fitness habits with tools that fit their life, not tools built for someone else's?
So I made three calls early. First, the phone comes first — the app works on a basic smartphone alone, and cheap bands, patches or straps are optional. Second, it must work offline and sync later, because data and network are not always there. Third, it speaks the user's language, with voice prompts for people who do not read long screens.
I also decided the app should feel like a partner, not a clinic. A guardian in your pocket — nudges, encouragement and plain warnings, not medical charts.
To keep the team of 20 moving in one direction, every decision went into the PRD with a date and an answer. That document became the real infrastructure of the product.
The Solution
Live vitals during a workout: heart rate, hydration, body temperature and fatigue.
Smart alerts when you are dehydrating, overheating or pushing past safe fatigue.
Offline mode with auto-sync once you are back online.
AI tips after training — when to rest, when to drink, how hard to go next time.
Six languages at launch: English, Swahili, Yoruba, Hausa, Amharic and French.
Dashboards for the person, the coach and the team, with consent-based sharing to a medic or trainer.
Hygiene reminders for shared gym spaces.
What We Left Out
Full nutrition tracking, blood pressure and other invasive data, skin or infection detection, mood scoring, and expensive medical-grade devices.
The rule was simple: stay on real-time, mobile-first, affordable safety. No heavy clinical diagnostics.
Where We Stand Out
Fitbit and Garmin are accurate but expensive, and they do not warn you about heat or dehydration in the moment. MyFitnessPal tracks food, not vitals. Local hydration apps are affordable but basic.
AfriFit Guardian is the one that puts real-time safety alerts, offline use, local languages and a low price in the same app.
How We Would Make Money
Free plan with basic vitals, safety alerts and hygiene tips.
Premium at $3–5 a month for team dashboards, clinic sync, advanced AI coaching and trends.
Bulk licences for gyms, clinics and sports teams, plus optional wearable bundles.
How We Would Know It Works
70% of installs finish onboarding in the first three months.
20% move to premium within six months.
60% still active after 30 days, with monthly churn under 10%.
30% daily-to-monthly active ratio, and an NPS above +50 in year one.
My Work
Led product discovery and user research.
Wrote the PRD and designed the user flows.
Wireframed and prototyped the screens in Figma.
Designed the pitch deck and ran the roadmap for a 20-person team.
Outcome
2nd place at the bootcamp hackathon. We shipped a PRD, personas, user flows, wireframes, a Figma prototype, mockups, a roadmap and a pitch deck.
Lessons Learned
Local context is a requirement, not a nice-to-have. Heat, crowded gyms, slow data and language all changed the product.
Cutting features made the pitch stronger. Saying no to nutrition and mood scoring kept the story clear.
With 20 people, writing decisions down is the job. If it is not in the PRD, it does not exist.