Building Nigeria’s first workforce risk intelligence platform: Lessons from the ground

By OBI IGBOKWE 
When we set out to build WellNewMe, the temptation was to call it a “wellness platform” and leave it there. Wellness is an easy sell. Everyone nods along to the idea that healthier employees are more productive employees. But somewhere in the early build, we made a decision that has shaped everything since: WellNewMe would not be a wellness app. It would be a workforce health-risk intelligence platform, closer in spirit to a credit reference agency than to a fitness tracker.
That distinction matters more than it might sound. A wellness app tells an individual how many steps they took. A risk-intelligence platform tells an employer, a broker, or an insurer something the...