Women's Health and Femtech in Rwanda with Luna Health | Blush & Bloom Podcast | Ep. 28

Femtech is growing fast across Africa, yet in many places women still struggle to name their own pain, let alone find someone who takes it seriously. Period poverty, PCOS, endometriosis, and postpartum realities often sit under a heavy blanket of silence, shame, and limited options.

In this episode of Blush & Bloom, host Gigi Kenneth talks with Berabose Aline Joyce, who goes by Bose, a femtech entrepreneur and wellness practitioner and the founder of Luna Health in Kigali, Rwanda. Luna Health helps women access sexual and reproductive health products and services across their whole journey, from a first period to menopause, and also runs a healing and wellness center offering mental health support to the post genocide generation.

Together they talk about why women's health has to be culture aware and community led, what it feels like to finally be told your pain is not normal, and how young African innovators are building solutions rooted in real context instead of borrowed assumptions.

In This Episode, We Cover:

• Why period poverty, PCOS, and endometriosis stay hidden behind stigma and silence
• The scarcity of female gynecologists in Rwanda and why representation in care matters
• Supporting women across every life stage, from first period to menopause and beyond
• Bridging reproductive health and mental health as one connected journey
• Postpartum realities and pregnancy truths that no one explains
• Building femtech that integrates culture instead of ignoring it
• Grassroots, locally built solutions and the future of African femtech

💗 Why do so many women grow up thinking severe period pain is normal?

Because the silence starts early. Bose describes moving from one painkiller to the next through her teens and into her twenties, with heavy periods and severe cramps that were treated as ordinary by friends, family, and even herself. That normalization keeps women from seeking help and delays diagnosis for conditions like PCOS and endometriosis.

For Bose, this is personal. Even as a trained peer sex educator and an advocate for women's health, she was quietly living with symptoms she had learned to accept.

"I moved from one painkiller to the other painkiller to the other painkiller until I was almost hitting my 20s."

👩🏽‍⚕️ The Moment That Changed Everything

The turning point came when Bose was finally advised to find a female gynecologist, which turned out to be surprisingly hard in Rwanda. She explains that among roughly 130 gynecologists in the country, only a handful are women, and years ago it was even rarer.

When she found one, the doctor told her the level of pain and heaviness she had lived with for so long was not normal and pointed to possible underlying issues.

"That's the first time, literally the first time in my life as a woman, as a girl, that I was told that the amount of pain that I was going through was not normal."

She cried. That moment, feeling seen and believed, became the reason Luna Health exists.

🌸 Why does Luna Health support women from first period to menopause?

Because women's health is not a single event. Bose points out that people often imagine it as one line, first period, pregnancy, birth, then aging, when in reality every cycle is different and every stage brings new questions. Women are left to reinvent themselves and figure everything out from scratch, with too little information and too few people to ask.

Luna Health is built to honor that whole arc, what Bose calls the rites of passage of women, and to weave mental health into it rather than treating it as separate.

"Being a woman is exactly multilayered and multifaceted. And that's how we need to address it."

🧠 Bridging Reproductive Health and Mental Health

One of the strongest threads in the conversation is how tightly the cycle and the mind are linked. Stress, under eating, and other pressures can change a cycle completely, and hormones shift mood in ways that are easy to dismiss as women just being moody or weak.

Bose argues that the jokes and stereotypes come from a lack of honest conversation about what being a woman actually involves. Luna Health folds mental health directly into its reproductive care, because for many women the two cannot be pulled apart. She also runs a wellness center in Kigali focused on breaking the silence and stigma around mental health, especially for a generation carrying the weight of post genocide trauma.

🤰🏽 The Postpartum and Pregnancy Truths No One Explains

Motherhood is often treated as something that will just happen naturally, which quietly stops people from learning what pregnancy and postpartum really involve. The result is women who go through it and end up in shock, and communities that do not know how to recognize or support postpartum depression.

Bose and Gigi note how social media has started to fill that gap, with women opening up in comment sections about symptoms that were never talked about openly before. The takeaway is simple: every pregnancy is different, and women deserve honest information ahead of time, in as many languages as possible.

🌍 Why does femtech in Africa need to be built locally?

Because a solution designed elsewhere does not always fit the reality on the ground. Bose says too many innovations still follow European trends and then get retrofitted for African markets, when the flow should be reversed, building from local needs first. Technology can bridge huge gaps in reach and information, but only if it meets people where they actually are.

She points to grassroots work that already exists, people distributing affordable reusable pads and helping women in villages track their cycles without an app, and to an innovator in Kenya building a home device that sends a pregnant woman's checkup data straight to a clinic so she does not have to travel long distances. Bose is most excited about young Gen Z women innovating around women's health, and about seeing more female gynecologists and doctors.

"When an innovation is done by an African person, African women, in the context of African problems, it makes so much sense."

🤝 Meeting Women Where They Are

Bose is candid that her idea of a unique proposition has changed over three years of building Luna Health. She started out pitching an AI powered, personalized platform for women to assess their symptoms and get tailored care. Over time she realized that the women she serves cared less about the technology and more about one thing: can you help me with the problem I have right now?

So Luna Health became a frontline supporter, guiding a woman who needs contraception information, or someone asking where to safely turn for care, toward real, practical next steps. Culture is not something to strip away in that work, it is something to integrate, whether the audience is students, workplaces, married couples, or church communities.

FAQ

Who is Berabose Aline Joyce (Bose)? Bose is a femtech entrepreneur and wellness practitioner and the founder of Luna Health, a femtech platform in Kigali, Rwanda. She has advocated for women's health for years, running focus groups, teaching sex education, and leading period poverty campaigns.

What is Luna Health? Luna Health is a Rwandan femtech platform helping women access sexual and reproductive health products and services from first period to menopause. It also runs a healing and wellness center in Kigali offering mental health support, with a focus on the post genocide generation.

Why are female gynecologists scarce in Rwanda? Bose explains that of roughly 130 gynecologists in the country, only a handful are women, and it was even rarer in the past. This scarcity reflects how long women's health has been underserved and under researched, and why representation in care matters so much.

How can femtech help African women where the health system falls short? By bridging gaps in reach, accessibility, and information faster than traditional systems can. Bose stresses that this works best when solutions are built locally, in the context of African realities, rather than imported and retrofitted.

Why does Luna Health include mental health alongside reproductive health? Because the cycle and mental health are deeply connected, from how stress affects periods to postpartum depression. Treating them as one journey, rather than separate issues, reflects how women actually experience their health.

💬 Final Thoughts

This conversation is a reminder that better women's health is not only about smarter apps. It is about believing women when they name their pain, building care that fits the culture it serves, and letting local innovators lead. When women feel safe to speak, and when the people building for them actually listen, care starts to look a lot more like what women have needed all along.

👥 Connect with the Guest

Berabose Aline Joyce (Bose): https://www.linkedin.com/in/berabose/

Gigi Kenneth (Host): https://www.linkedin.com/in/gigikenneth

💕 Explore More from Asele

Visit: https://www.asele.tech

Try the Asele app: https://asele.health

Join our WhatsApp community: https://chat.whatsapp.com/F8GY4RV7Bm2CtCfq6TONsV

LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/company/asele

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6NEsMfkG3dvl0pYXU40Efi