The narrative around African tech often focuses on the frontier — mobile money, AI startups, cross-border platforms. That’s exciting, and it deserves the attention. But under all of it sits a quieter question:
Does the infrastructure hold up?
In my 17 years of running hosting and operations in Kenya, the answer was often “barely.” Power cycles, last-mile connectivity, payment failures, undocumented APIs that change without warning — these aren’t edge cases. They are the operating environment.
Reliability compounds
A platform that works 95% of the time isn’t 5% worse than one that works 100% of the time. It’s structurally different. Customers don’t trust it. Teams build workarounds. Costs creep up everywhere you can’t see them.
The businesses that win long-term in African markets are the ones that take reliability seriously, even when nobody is rewarding them for it in the short term.
Full article coming soon. This is a working draft.
If reliability is on your mind, get in touch.