We're Building a Software Company
From Zambia. Here's What That
Actually Looks Like.

There's a version of this article where I tell you about our tech stack, our pricing model, and our service offering.

This isn't that article.

This is the honest version of what it's actually like to start a software company from Lusaka, Zambia, with no funding, no office, and a personal rule we've held since day one: not a single kwacha of our own personal money gets spent until the business generates its own. Everything we've built so far has been built with time, skill, and tools with free tiers. The business earns before the business spends.

It Started With a Conversation

NextPhases didn't start with a business plan. It started with a few of us in the same room, talking about the same thing we always talked about: why is it so hard to find good, affordable software development in Zambia? Why do local businesses pay international rates for average work, or local rates for work that doesn't hold up?

We were already building things individually. At some point the question became: why aren't we doing this together?

So we did.

What We Actually Build

We build websites, mobile apps, SaaS products, and custom software systems. That sentence sounds simple. In practice it means conversations ranging from "I just need something people can find on Google" to "I need a system that handles exam invigilation for three hundred students simultaneously."

The range is part of what makes it interesting. The other thing we build, the one that does not show up in a service description, is proof.

The Businesses Getting Left Behind

Something we noticed early: a huge portion of Zambian and African businesses don't have a web presence at all. Not because they don't want one. Because they either don't know how accessible it can be, or every quote they've received has been out of reach.

That's a real problem. In 2026, not having a website isn't neutral. It's a competitive disadvantage. Clients search before they call. Partners verify before they commit. Investors look before they meet. A business with no digital presence is invisible to all of them before the conversation even starts.

Part of what drives us is fixing that gap. Affordable, professional web development for businesses that deserve a platform but haven't had one. We're not trying to be the cheapest option in the market. We're trying to be the option that makes the most sense for where you actually operate.

The Regional Pricing Conversation

One of the first real decisions we made was about pricing.

Software development has a global market but deeply unequal purchasing power. A website that costs a UK business GBP 1,500 represents months of revenue for a small Zambian business trying to get online for the first time. We decided not to pretend that isn't true.

So we price by region. Zambian businesses pay in Kwacha at rates that reflect the local market. South African clients pay in Rand. UK and European clients pay in GBP and EUR at freelance market rates. American clients pay USD.

The code is the same. The quality is the same. The price reflects where you operate, not where we're based.

The Thing We Built That No One Expected

Alongside client work, we build our own products.

The one that gets the most questions is Nsolo.

Nsolo is a digital adaptation of a traditional African board game, part of the mancala family, played across this continent for thousands of years before the rest of the world had chess. Games like Bao in East Africa, Oware and Ayo across West Africa, Gebeta in Ethiopia. Variants with different rules, different boards, different cultural identities, all sharing the same ancient mathematical logic underneath.

We built Nsolo because we wanted to. Because it was ours culturally. Because nobody else was building it. And the vision goes further than one game. The goal is eventually one place where every variant exists, playable, learnable, and accessible to everyone across the continent and beyond.

What Building From Africa Actually Means

It means your internet goes out during a client call sometimes and you learn to send a voice note summarising everything you just said before the connection dropped.

It means GMT+2, which is what Zambia runs on, actually overlaps with UK and European business hours better than most people expect. That's not a disadvantage. It's a selling point we lead with.

It means competing for the same international projects as developers in Eastern Europe, India, and Latin America, and learning quickly that quality and communication matter more than geography to the clients worth working with.

It also means building something with almost no local precedent. There's no template for what a Zambian software company looks like at scale. We're making it up as we go. Most days that's exciting.

Why We're Sharing This

We're early. The team is small, the portfolio is growing, and we have more to build than we've shipped so far.

But we've seen what happens when African tech companies stay quiet until they feel "ready." The international market doesn't wait. The clients who would genuinely love to work with a team like ours don't know we exist if we don't tell them.

So this is us telling you.

If you're a business looking for a development partner for a website, app, SaaS product, or custom software, we'd like to hear from you. We quote within 48 hours, communicate clearly, and build things that actually work.

If you're another developer or founder building from Africa, we'd like to know you. This continent has more technical talent than the world has figured out yet. The more of us who are visible, the better for all of us.

And if you're just curious: follow along. We're building in public.