Entertainment industry and marketing wiz Joy Martins is working to build something new but highly needed for travelers in Africa and the Caribbean.
The BRDRS app bills itself as a one-stop resource for travelers — whether they’re visiting back home or exploring a new destination for the first time. The purpose of the app is to reduce “friction points” that travelers often face in Africa and the Caribbean. Also, its goal is to foster community and help visitors “experience authentically” at their destinations. Upon its full rollout, the app will offer access to culturally relevant information and destination recommendations, such as for off-the-radar local spots, events, small businesses, and more. It will also provide users with a virtual wallet to safely conduct transactions abroad, an eSIM, and visa assistance for their destinations.
With the insight and assistance of co-founder Kenny Oseni, a finance and tech professional, the pre-revenue startup is strategically growing and pursuing user acquisition. Currently, in its “Phase 1,” the BRDRS app is active in Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, Kenya, Rwanda, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, St. Lucia, Anguilla, and Jamaica.
Martins says building the app has been a two-year process. She confirmed with Travel Noire that the product is now officially available on the App Store and Google Play, with all of the app’s features to roll out by the end of the year.
“What keeps us going? Every message from a diaspora traveler who says ‘I finally feel seen.’ Every local vendor who gets their first international customer through our platform. Every young woman who lands in Lagos and feels just a little bit safer because of what we built,” said Martins. “We’re not just building an app. We’re building what home should feel like: accessible, safe, seamless, and unapologetically ours.”
What Makes The App Unique?
The BRDRS app has three pillars: Detty (Africa), Mash Up (Caribbean), and BRDRS World. Via Detty and Mash Up, travelers can view event information and soon purchase tickets for both third-party-hosted and BRDRS-branded events. What the app presents will span everything from concerts and festivals to Caribbean carnival season staples, cultural workshops, local gatherings, and more. BRDRS World is meant to ground a traveler’s experience within their destinations. A pillar encompassing several features, it offers the BRDRS eSIM, a virtual wallet, a way to safely make tap-to-pay transactions, and a way to see culturally-informed travel recommendations.
Martins also explained how and why the AI incorporated into the BRDRS app is different. The co-founder shared that in addition to providing information with cultural context, BRDRS AI aids in hyper-local discovery. She said it provides safety-informed recommendations and “real-time intelligence,” integrating “with live event calendars, weather patterns, local holidays, and safety updates.”
“Our AI isn’t a generic chatbot. It’s a culturally intelligent travel companion built specifically for these markets,” she explained.
“When you ask Google ‘Where should I eat in Lagos?’ you get tourist-facing results. When you ask BRDRS AI, you get what the locals actually eat: the buka spots that don’t have websites, the suya joints that only operate on certain nights, the beach clubs that require knowing someone. We’ve built our AI on a foundation of community-sourced, locally verified data that generic platforms simply don’t have,” she continued.
Moreover, the BRDRS app has its own city and cultural guides curated by local ambassador networks in each of its markets. The guides are there to provide insider information on everything from a destination’s “unspoken rules,” to dress codes for major local events. Utilizing their “community intelligence,” the app layers that with its teams’ research. The latter includes “constantly aggregating data across destinations, mapping neighborhoods, documenting cultural context, tracking seasonal events, and identifying experiences that never make mainstream travel publications.”
How Else Are The App’s Users Protected And Supported?
Martins says a personally relevant feature of the BRDRS app that is another big element is its “built protection for female solo travelers.” Via the community safety feature “Snitch It,” travelers can simultaneously send instant distress signals and their real-time GPS location to their personal safety network — “designate trusted emergency contacts” — and nearby BRDRS users.
“As a woman who travels solo to these markets regularly, I know the specific anxiety that comes with navigating unfamiliar cities, and I know how insufficient the existing solutions are,” said the co-founder. “Our BRDRS user community includes a significant female traveler demographic who share real-time safety insights, recommendations, and alerts with each other. There’s something powerful about a community of women looking out for each other in real-time across Lagos, Accra, Nairobi, and Bridgetown. Because safety shouldn’t be a luxury, it should be infrastructure.”
Additionally, Martins says BRDRS is in the process of partnering with Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), as well as other institutions of higher learning, which she feels incorporate naturally into the app’s community.
“HBCUs are a natural BRDRS community,” Martins said, adding, “Students and alumni deeply connected to African and Caribbean heritage – increasingly traveling to those destinations for homecoming trips, study abroad, volunteerism, and cultural immersion.”
“But they often travel without adequate infrastructure, safety tools, or local knowledge,” she further noted, adding, “Any young person traveling to Africa or the Caribbean deserves proper safety infrastructure, financial access, and cultural programming before they land, not as an optional resource, but as standard practice.”
What Else Is There To Know About The BRDRS App?
Martins says BRDRS users can rest assured that their financial and personal information on the app will be safe. She described the app’s protection framework as one operating “on multiple levels.” As she noted, financial transactions are “encrypted end-to-end.” Also, user accounts “are protected through multi-factor authentication,” and BRDRS only collects information “necessary to deliver your experience.” Among several other safeguards, the app also employs “AI-powered fraud detection that flags unusual activity instantly.”
Additionally, the vendors listed on the BRDRS app undergo a “multi-stage and intentional” verification process. Martins said those businesses must submit “proof of business registration, operating licenses, and ownership.” BRDRS local team members conduct in-person visits, and the brand also does a quality standards review and ongoing monitoring. Moreover, BRDRS analyzes “community validation” that a business receives, including “local ambassador feedback, existing market reputation, and peer recommendations from our verified user network.”
“We don’t want BRDRS to become another platform where travelers book based on fake reviews and arrive to disappointment. These are our communities. We take that responsibility seriously,” says Martins. “For businesses that don’t complete the verification form directly, our dedicated data and research analysts conduct their own thorough vetting process before any listing goes live. No vendor bypasses our process regardless of how they enter our system. Currently, we have 2,500+ verified vendors across our Phase 1 markets. Every single one has gone through this process. Quality over quantity, always.”
