Algonquin Students Work on App that Connects Black Canadians with Hairstylists

Posted on Friday, December 10th, 2021

Algonquin College grad Ronald Ekambi and his partner Genna Peters have created an online app that helps connect Black Canadians with qualified hair stylists.

Ekambi said Peters came up with the idea to develop an Uber-style app after becoming frustrated with how difficult it was to find a qualified stylist.

“She’s always had problems finding a hairstylist for her,” explains Exambi. It takes a long time to find one, and if they move or are busy, you are stranded again,” he says.

So Ekambi, who has a degree in Computer Engineering Technology from Algonquin and works as a software engineer for a company in the United States, and Peters, who has the ideas and the passion, began to develop Afroguide.

Users can go to Afroguide.ca, type in the service they are looking for (hair cut, braids, cornrows, etc.) and their location (the app is nationwide), and a list of nearby hairstylists who specialize in that service will pop up.

Roughly 200 stylists in over 40 towns and cities across Canada have signed up and are featured on the app so far. Ekambi and Peters attracted the stylists by reaching out on social media, through word of mouth, and on Kijiji.

“I went on Kijiji and I saw hair stylist posts saying this is the type of hair I do and so on, so I contacted them and said, if you want more visibility, you can try this.”

Peters and Ekambi currently have a short screening process before stylists can sign on.

He says the feedback from the beginning was that this was a much-needed service.

“People would sign up and get their friends to sign up,” remarks Ekambi. “It was cool to know that this was helpful.”

While some of the stylists on Afroguide work at salons, many are independent and work form their homes, which Ekambi says is common.

Ontario college programs are lacking when it comes to a focus on curly and textured hair.

The province’s standards for the Hair Stylist Apprenticeship Training program curriculum are set by the Ontario College of Trades, which also acts as a guide for curriculum set by the Ministry of Colleges and Universities for the Hairstyling Diploma. These standards include very little training on textured and curly hair. In provincial programs, mandates are that everyone must learn how to work with and style straight hair, while the only mandated techniques for curly or textured hair is learning how to chemically relax or straighten it.

In 2018, Algonquin College changed its curriculum to include more focus on textured and curly hair. Deanna Douglas, Coordinator of the Hairstyling Program at Algonquin, says that while the program standard from the Ministry is still heavily weighted on relaxing the hair, the College decided to revise the curriculum to teach about curl typing and how to choose products and techniques for cutting, styling and relaxing it based on curl type and desired result.

In reaction to the change, she says students have told her they would like to spend more time on—and gain more knowledge of—working with textured and curly hair types.

While the Ontario College of Trades faced pressure to changes its standards in 2017, it failed to do so. Douglas hopes it will make the change in 2022.

Ekambi and Peters initially launched Afroguide in December 2019, but they put it on hold until recently due to COVID-19. Ekambi had built a rough website for the app, but he decided to approach Algonquin and offer the opportunity to work on it as a final year project for students in Computer Engineering Technology. He knew he could use the help, and, having been through the program himself, he knew the value of working on a final year project for an external client.

“For me it was more about providing the experience for [students at Algonquin] doing their final project,” he says.

“The project I worked on [in final year]—I never got to see where it went.”

Afroguide, in contrast, would be a project the team could watch grow for years.

Ekambi says working with the students was a great experience.

“It was pretty cool to see them trying to figure out, okay, what is your need and how can we help you with that,“ he says. “It was cool to see them go through how the program works and contribute to that.”

For their part, the group of Algonquin students who worked on Afroguide—Owen Crawford, Mohammed Elseify, Aria Gomes and Andrii Kozlov—say they really enjoyed the challenge.

The team says Ekambi came to them with a rough version of the app and asked them to work on its design and user interface, giving them free reign over where to take it. He indicated he would implement what he liked from the team, and leave the rest.
“Ronald didn’t really give us any requirements,” explains Crawford, who acted as the team lead on the project. “He just kind of said, ‘Here’s a website, play with it.’ So we had to think of things to add and implement to really get the project done and do the work. But that was also the most fun part because we got to experiment and mess around in a way we wouldn’t normally be able to in school.”

As for the future of Afroguide, Ekambi says he and Peters already have a rough mobile app developed, and they want to work to implement more features on both the online and mobile applications next year. In particular, they want people to be able to book with hair stylists through the platform.

“We want to certify hair stylists,” he says, “maybe implement a chat feature. We want to keep people within the app.”
Most of the people using the app to date are located in small cities and towns, Ekambi says— that seems to be where the most need is. “It gives me the idea that maybe I shouldn’t focus too much on Ottawa, but focus on the [small] cities that need it more.”

To visit Afroguide, click on the link here.

You can also learn about Afroguide by visiting the online catalogue of applied research projects from December’s RE/ACTION: Virtual Applied Research Showcase, which will be available Friday afternoon on the ARIE website.

To attend the RE/ACTION: Applied Research Showcase, click on the link here.


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