Religious applications in Africa
An interesting article was recently published on the BBC website – with the title ‘Tech Inspired by faith booms in Africa’ – such a title obviously grabbed the attention of the staff here at Masjid Tech. You can read the full article here but in summary these Churches use management software that enables them to keep in touch with their congregations via mobile apps and text messages, and, monitor and collect digital donations and tithes.</p>
<p>Not to mention, they can also send tailored content to members of that Church, i.e. if a member was to miss a hymn session, they could immediately be caught up. While such software is obviously more potent in places of worship in countries like Ghana that stereotypically lack organization, financial tracking, attendance monitoring and engagement – the benefits such software would bring to religious institutions here in the UK cannot be overlooked.
Application benefits in a place of worship
The benefits of this app in the churches that have used it has been profound – as they are looking to expand to other African countries. The web platform currently gets around 5,000 hits a month and is continuing to grow. So what about the UK? Is there an App your local place of worship can use? Well according to a study conducted by a cybersecurity firm Proof Point – in 2015 many of the apps available on the public domain contained malicious code – thus putting your personal data at risk. On the basis of this and the fact there is no real leader in this industry – MasjidTech has been contemplating building a comprehensive religious app that your local place of worship can use.
Perhaps a website is better than an application
Apps are great but they aren’t essential, especially considering that the market in the UK for religious based applications is rather low and dangerous with the malicious code flying around. On the basis of that, we suggest using a website, as essentially it does the same job. The websites we build provides you with the same essential services that Nigerian App does, whether it is showing prayer times, uploading and listening to sermons, connecting with other members of the place of worship through a chat based or forum based system, reading the latest news / event publishing’s and so on. If this is something you are interested in – perhaps consider a website instead of an application – at least until we have one up and running!