Use this app to calculate her value before paying bride price

Anyone weighing up whether to ask for a woman’s hand can enter her stats into 26-year-old Kopo Robert Matsaneng’s Lobola Calculator and it churns out her value in the currency, the rand, and tells you how many cows that would equate to. The price can also be converted into shillings, pounds, euros and dollars on the app.

The Johannesburg-based software developer has taken the time-honoured African tradition of paying a bride price into the tech age and his app can calculate the woman’s value. The app considers the person’s age, height, weight, waist size, and how attractive they are: ranging from “not at all” to “really hot.”

The prospective groom must also enter what qualifications the woman has, whether she has a job, whether she’s been married before and whether she’s got children. “This is a fun app to calculate how much lobola you’re worth,” Matsaneng says in the app’s introduction.“It’s simple, fun and meant to be playful, so enjoy.”

Lobola, known outside South Africa by other names, is a tradition practised in many parts of Africa, where a man’s family approaches a woman’s relatives to propose marriage and to negotiate a bride price. The custom symbolizes a coming together of the two families. Lobola was historically paid in livestock, a symbol of wealth, but now it often includes other goods and money.

Cooking Skills

While most users liked the app, some objected that it was not in tune with the true value of lobola, Matsaneng said on the app’s site. “Some people are already too angry about the concept,” he responded to queries requesting more valuation criteria such as cooking and alcohol intake.

The app also maps out the average lobola values in South Africa’s different provinces as well as in Lesotho and Swaziland, small neighboring countries. The highest is 100,000 rand ($8,757), or 12 cows, in Lesotho and Swaziland. The lowest is 35,000 rand, or 5 cows, in the South Africa’s arid Northern Cape province.

 Bloomberg