A new app, developed by a company based in Bloemfontein, allows its users to send SMSes and e-mails to family and friends when they pass away.

The Mangifa app — the developers say Mangifa is Zulu for “when I die” — went live on the Google Play Store at the end of November. Users sign up with their South African ID, which is checked against the home affairs database at a frequency set by the user — daily, weekly or monthly — to determine whether they are alive or deceased.

Senzo Malinga, MD of Quixotek Development Studio, the company that created the app, says that in the event of a Mangifa user’s death, all SMSes and e-mail messages they’ve specified will be despatched automatically.

The free version of Mangifa allows for up to three contacts to receive notifications. There’s also no social media support and it’s supported through display advertising.

A paid-for, ad-free version will be available at a future date at a cost of R10 and will bring features such as the ability to send messages (with video and voice attachments) to an unlimited number of contacts, and to send posts to social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.

Malinga says he saw the need for an app like this after witnessing someone’s death in a car accident. “I didn’t want my family to struggle to get access to my account or have a difficult time accessing information. As a software developer, I thought of inexpensive ways I could try to go about doing this and decided to create an app that would inform my family of what I wanted to tell them if I died.”

Malinga is in discussions with companies in the life insurance and funeral cover sector regarding advertising on the app. It currently displays ads through Google’s ad platform. — (c) 2013 NewsCentral Media