A New Food Delivery App Empowers Women

Fatima Nasser, born in Sabha, Libya, has created a food delivery app called Yummy that delivers homemade meals cooked by women in their own kitchens.

In 2017, Tatweer Research, a government-funded company dedicated to creating Libya's knowledge economy, teamed up with MIT Enterprise Forum Pan Arab to launch Libya's first-ever Enjazi Startup Competition. Yummy was one of its three winners. At its core is the desire to encourage entrepreneurial development and help diversify the Libyan economy away from oil. With Yummy, women are able to work from home, anonymously, without having to interact with male customers. This makes it both liberating and socially acceptable, says Nasser. 

She adds that home catering has become a trend since the war, as security problems have made it more dangerous for women to leave their homes and there is an increased economic need for women to work. 

She launched Yummy in her hometown and told CNN that 300 cooks are ready to start work when the app launches this month in Libya's second-largest city, Benghazi, and then the capital Tripoli. 

One major threat is delivering food in unsafe areas with high carjacking rates. To solve this, Yummy has set up neutral meeting points within the city, so that the order can be delivered as close to the customer as possible without endangering the driver. 

Second is the fragile internet service in that country, but in case of a blackout, Yummy provides a phone number so that the delivery can be handled manually. 

Her success, she says, is that she has listed all of the things that could go wrong while delivering food and created a solution for each one.