EDEV

Problem

Clinics, schools and public institutions in the Central African Republic mostly buy software that was designed somewhere else, for places with steady power, fast networks and new devices. When it breaks, the vendor is far away. When the contract ends, the institution is often left with nothing it owns.

Solution

I founded EDEV to be the local alternative. We design and build web, mobile and AI products for clinics, schools, legal practices and public institutions, and we hand over software the client owns outright. There is no lock-in and no dependency on a platform abroad.

The opportunity

EDEV rests on two bets.

The first is client work. Organisations here want a partner they can meet in person and call when something goes wrong, and very few studios offer that. Client projects pay the bills, and they teach us what local institutions actually need.

The second is our own products. Sendou in health and Emanda in education are EDEV ventures, built by the same team. These are the two sectors where the gap is widest, and where software designed for local conditions makes the most visible difference.

Leading it

Running a studio and two products with one team means saying no a lot. I decide which projects we take on, and I set the standard every one of them is held to: it has to work on a slow connection and an older phone, and someone other than us has to be able to maintain it.

Hard calls

• Paying for constraints up front. Designing for weak networks and modest devices costs more at the start than designing for the ideal case. We accept that cost, because the alternative is software that only works in a few offices in Bangui.
• Clients or products. Client work and our own ventures compete for the same people and the same weeks. Keeping both alive is a choice I make again every month.