My name is Morenike Fajemisin; I am a female social entrepreneur from Nigeria and the founder of WHISPA.

WHISPA is a mobile app that allows everyone especially young people to conveniently and privately access Sexual Health Information, Products, and Services. WHISPA seeks to use mobile technology to address the problems of bias and inconvenient access to sexual health information and care by young people. My innovation aims to help reduce the high rates of unintended pregnancy, high rates of STD transmission and poor diagnosis and treatment as well as other sexual health indices.

WHISPA was selected as one of the top 30 innovations for Africa and invited to have an exhibition at the WHO Africa region forum in Cape Verde from Tuesday 26^th March to Thursday 28^th March 2019.  

The exhibition kicked off bright and early Tuesday morning with each innovator at our attractive stands provided by the event planners. It is worthy of note that the event was well organized and not overcrowded showing that attendees were indeed carefully selected.  To support each innovator, we were introduced to a Cape Verdean medical student who would be volunteering with us throughout the days of the forum.

After the opening event, different forum participants who were enthused to visit our stands, having learned about the innovators during the opening event soon surrounded us.  

Also on the opening day, his Excellency, the President of Cape Verde himself graciously visited our exhibitions and made conscious effort to give each innovator a warm welcome which was complete with an amazing group photo. 

The Africa innovation challenge has been a game-changer for many innovators. It has created for each innovator, access to a unique platform (the WHO Africa forum) where we were able to get more publicity for our work across different parts of Africa. This Africa innovation challenge has also inspired many of the local medical students who volunteered at our exhibition stands to dream big and become innovators themselves. In addition, the WHO Africa team used this forum to present innovators with a unique opportunity to network with potential funders and investors, partners and interestingly with each other. These new networks are poised to help to take our ideas to the next level.

In addition, the media coverage around this event has helped to create fantastic online publicity for my innovation- WHISPA and particularly the WHO Africa Facebook live video interview, which has been shared by different people and organizations working in the sexual and reproductive health space from my country-Nigeria.