{"id":651514,"date":"2026-06-06T13:00:23","date_gmt":"2026-06-06T11:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=651514"},"modified":"2026-06-06T13:04:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-06T11:04:14","slug":"top-south-african-safety-app-adds-family-finder-feature-and-major-upgrades","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/gadgets\/651514-top-south-african-safety-app-adds-family-finder-feature-and-major-upgrades.html","title":{"rendered":"Top South African safety app adds family finder feature and major upgrades"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Community Wolf, the owners of the popular Namola personal safety app, revealed a slate of major upgrades to the platform, including a feature to track loved ones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Upgrades included an integration with the company’s new Safety Intelligence API, which provides users with new features, such as an alert that notifies users when loved ones enter a high-risk area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With over 700,000 downloads, Namola offers free and subscription-based personal safety features, including an emergency panic button and safety alert notifications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Namola was an offshoot of the StellieSafe platform, an early community safety app piloted in Stellenbosch by a team led by telecoms entrepreneur Alan Knott-Craig Jr.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After a development period, the Namola app was piloted in Tshwane in 2016 and launched nationally in 2017.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Broadcasting giant MultiChoice acquired Namola in 2022 as part of a later abandoned strategy to expand its ecosystem beyond entertainment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In February 2025, the DStv owner sold Namola to South African digital safety infrastructure providers Aura for an undisclosed amount<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Formally known as Aura Services, the company aimed to make security and medical response services more accessible in South Africa and is behind several free mobile safety apps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This included the Gauteng e-Panic Button App, launched by the Gauteng Department of e-Government in May 2023. It also integrates with Uber South Africa’s mobile app.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After just under a year with Namola, Aura sold the app to Community Wolf<\/a>, a company whose platform allows South Africans to report suspicious activity using AI and WhatsApp.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Community Wolf has acquired Namola, a platform many South Africans rely on in moments that matter, and Aura will continue powering Namola’s emergency-response network,” said Aura co-founder Warren Myers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Community Wolf’s AI capabilities, combined with Namola’s national reach powered by Aura, will make the service even more effective for users.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Community Wolf buys Namola, launches SIA<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Ryan Green, Adam Pantanowitz and Warren Myers, founders of Aura.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As of December 2025, Namola was under the Community Wolf banner, alongside its co-founders, Nick Mills and Michael Houghton, who recently spoke to MyBroadband.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The pair said that new features had already been rolled out and were live on Namola, stemming from Community Wolf’s new Safety Intelligence API (SIA).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SIA is a newly developed distribution layer that aggregates data from multiple active sources to build a database of safety and crime activity information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Houghton explained that it sourced data from the South African Police Service (SAPS) and other providers, as well as incident reports generated by Community Wolf and Namola itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The database also included sentiment data collected from various surveys in order to gauge how safe people feel in specific areas across the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With the data, the API can provide an underlying layer for other industries to use to drive digital safety technologies and platforms with live, on-the-ground risk ratings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Namola users, the API is integrated directly into the platform via a grid-like overlay on its map interface, which uses the database to highlight areas’ safety ratings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Anyone who has Namola will see this on the map in South Africa. They can toggle on a safety overlay, and that will basically put a grid over the whole of the country,” said Houghton.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Each one of those grids has an associated risk score with it.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The API also accounts for the built environment, including infrastructure such as streetlights, intersections, ATMs, and businesses like bars or taverns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

New features on South Africa’s most popular safety app<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Namola app features. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Mills and Houghton remarked that it was the only safety intelligence API in South Africa, to their knowledge. They explained that the API also benefits from Namola’s “contribution flywheel.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As people use the app and report on incidents, such as spotting suspicious activity, the data from these reports feeds back into the SIA, adding to the dataset daily.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the coming weeks, Namola will also roll out a new feature that can send notifications to users when their loved ones enter areas tagged as high risk by the API.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This will be accompanied by a “Find My” feature where users can track the live locations of their loved ones directly on the app.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“That will allow you as a user to set a threshold for, for example, your wife, and if she moves into a particular region, you will get an alert,” said Houghton.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“And from there, through Namola, you can obviously request help.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All these features are available with Namola’s Essential subscription tier, which costs R30 per month. Free users can access limited features, but still gain access to the area risk grid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, the Namola Plus tier, which costs R60 per month for an individual, R100 for a couple and R130 for a family of five, includes all tracking and safety features.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It also provides access to a network of private emergency response services, powered by Aura’s infrastructure, which can be alerted via the app’s panic button.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Namola safety app, with over 700,00 downloads, is getting major upgrades in the coming weeks, including a Find My Family feature<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341213,"featured_media":651521,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[27887,105673,39212,98754,85,96806,105675,475,73950,105676,105672,105674,102440],"class_list":["post-651514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gadgets","tag-ai","tag-alan-knott-craig-jr","tag-aura","tag-community-wolf","tag-dstv","tag-gauteng-e-panic-button","tag-happimo","tag-multichoice","tag-namola","tag-nick-millsmichael-houghton","tag-safety-intelligence-api","tag-stellesafe","tag-warren-myers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651514"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341213"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=651514"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651514\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":651850,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651514\/revisions\/651850"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/651521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=651514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=651514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=651514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}