The question we always get

Every client who discovers we're based in East London asks some version of the same question: wouldn't it be easier in Johannesburg? Or Cape Town? Or London?

The honest answer is: in some ways, yes. The tech ecosystem is denser in Johannesburg. The international connections are stronger in Cape Town. The capital is more available in London. These are real advantages we have chosen to operate without.

Here is why we made that choice — and why we think it matters beyond us.

The infrastructure assumption problem

Most African tech companies build for the infrastructure conditions that exist in their headquarters city. In Johannesburg, that means relatively stable electricity, fast fibre, and a tech-literate client base. What gets built there often doesn't survive its first deployment in Limpopo, or the Eastern Cape, or rural KwaZulu-Natal — where load shedding runs six to eight hours a day, LTE is the primary connection, and "check the dashboard" is not a realistic instruction to give a team member.

Building from East London means our clients include businesses operating in these conditions. Our systems are designed for them from the start. Offline-first, low-bandwidth-tolerant, WhatsApp-native because that's the communication layer everyone actually uses. Not as a feature. As a baseline.

The cost-of-living differential as a structural advantage

A senior software engineer in Cape Town commands R70,000 to R100,000 per month. The same engineer in East London earns significantly less — not because they're less skilled, but because the cost of living is different. That differential passes through to our clients in the form of lower project costs for equivalent quality.

This is not a race to the bottom. It is a structural advantage of distributed work that most African tech companies haven't leaned into because they're optimising for talent density rather than talent value.

What the Eastern Cape teaches about resilience

The Eastern Cape has one of the highest unemployment rates in South Africa and some of the most constrained municipal infrastructure in the country. It is also home to some of the most resilient, creative, and determined business operators we have ever worked with.

Operating here has shaped how we think about what "works" in business systems. A system that works in ideal conditions is a prototype. A system that works when the power goes out, when the internet drops, when the team is two people instead of seven because it's month-end — that is a system.

We build systems. Not prototypes.

The point of it

African tech doesn't have to be built from the continent's largest cities to serve the continent's largest challenges. The distributed model — building where you are, for the conditions that actually exist, with the constraints that are actually real — produces better work for more of the continent.

We chose East London. We'd make the same choice again.