Lab tech builds Jamaican dating app

With many Jamaicans turning to foreign dating apps to find love, Ashantia Clarke believes local singles deserve a platform that understands not just where they live, but how they connect.

That belief has led her to create 876-My Match, a dating app designed specifically for Jamaicans and built around culture, identity and safety. Clarke said the idea came from noticing that while dating apps such as Tinder are widely used, many of them are created for a global audience. But none of them truly represent Jamaican culture.

“Most of these platforms are designed for a global audience, but I wanted to build something that feels like home and has our community involved. So that is where 876-My Match started,” she said.

For Clarke, the app is not simply about matching persons who are looking for romance. She sees it as a home-grown technology solution that could help Jamaicans connect in a space that feels familiar and authentic.

“This isn’t just about people finding relationships. It is about using technology to bring Jamaicans together in a way that no existing platform has done before,” she said.

One of the issues Clarke said she wanted to avoid was having local users sign up and immediately being shown persons from several other countries with no real connection to Jamaica. She explained that 876-My Match was designed to better reflect Jamaican identity and movement across parishes. For example, a user may have been born in Kingston but now lives in Portland, and the app would show that information to other users.

Safety, she said, was also central to the platform’s design. Clarke said users are required to upload identification, which she reviews before approving their accounts. The app also uses phone-number verification to limit persons from creating multiple accounts with the same number.

“I don’t want people to feel as if they are not safe. That is why I made them use their phone numbers. Once they create the profile with the number, they can’t use the number for anything else,” Clarke added.

She said the platform also uses some artificial intelligence (AI) features to detect duplicate or suspicious activity.

“It has a little bit of AI help. It will catch redundancy if you are creating multiple dating profiles. It will actually block you, delete you and hinder you from recreating existing profiles,” she said.

Clarke’s route into technology was not born out of childhood ambition, but necessity. After leaving school, she wanted to pursue architecture, construction and building logistics. She applied to Excelsior Community College for architecture and construction technology, but financial difficulties forced her to switch over to information technology (IT).

"Looking back, that wasn’t a bad decision,” she said. Since then, Clarke has earned both an associate and bachelor’s degree in IT. She is also certified in project management and currently works at Excelsior Community College as a computer laboratory technician.

“I am a person who enjoys problem-solving, whether it is repairing devices, graphic designing or just working in the IT aspect,” she said. “I like creating solutions that improve people’s lives.”

But building the app, Clarke admitted, was not easy. She said there were several obstacles throughout the development process, with some aspects taking months of research and adjustment.

“It is a lot. If you don’t know what you are doing, and even what you think you know, you have to research it again.”

For Clarke, the project has become bigger than online dating.

“With this project, it motivates me even more to bring across to young girls across Jamaica that innovation doesn’t happen overseas alone. We can do it ourselves, and the talent is right here in Jamaica,” she said.

“I want people to think of it as somewhere Jamaicans can connect. Innovation doesn’t have to come from Silicon Valley,” Clarke added.