EBIWAWA

About Ebiwawa

Ebiwawa is where African families and the diaspora keep their story — the names, the photos, the lineage — the way we've always kept it: by telling it.

We're building it because most platforms that try to do this start from genealogy: parish records, census archives, DNA databases. Those are useful, but they're not how African families actually keep their history. We keep it in stories. The grandmother who tells you about her father's village every Christmas. The uncle who remembers the year the river flooded and the family had to walk three days to a new town. The aunt who knows where every cousin lives because she's the one everyone calls. That's the archive — it just doesn't have a website yet.

The name

Ebiwawa draws on West African storytelling tradition — the practice of gathering, of telling family history aloud, of passing it forward through the people who care to remember. It's not a translation; it's a posture.

What we're building

A family graph that's collaborative — anyone in the family can add a person, suggest a relationship, post a photo, write a story.

A trust layer (we call it Trust Score) so the family can vouch for the details together — your grandfather's birthplace is more credible when three of his nieces have verified it than when one cousin guessed.

A messaging surface so the conversations between family members happen inside the family tree, near the people they're about, not scattered across WhatsApp threads.

And a heritage-aware approach to identity: our avatars look like our families, our place fields know that "Yoruba" or "Akan" or "Hausa" matter, and our language is the warm, layered way diaspora families actually talk to each other.

Where we are

We're in invite-only beta. That means real families are using this and we're learning what works and what needs to change before opening more widely. If you're here, you were invited by someone in your family — and they trusted you with one of the earliest spots. Welcome home.

Who's behind this

Ebiwawa started with questions I never got to ask. My father passed before I sat down with him to ask about his family — the names, the places, the stories only he carried. This is the place I wish had existed while he was here.

A solo founder for now, with occasional help. The product, the code, the legal, the operations — one set of hands. That means decisions get made faster, but it also means we move at the pace one person can sustainably move. We'd rather ship one well-considered feature than five half-thought-through ones.

How to reach us

We're a small team, so we don't have a forms-and-tickets support stack. Just email:

If you want to follow along but aren't ready to sign up, that's fine — write to us at info@ebiwawa.com and we'll keep you in the loop.

— Olu, and the Ebiwawa family