Over the past few years, I have built a wide range of websites and applications: enterprise platforms, business software, mobile apps, internal tools, SaaS products, and personal projects. Some were relatively simple and shipped within days; others required weeks or months of intensive engineering and design.
But KUMBA holds a unique place in my journey. Not necessarily because it is the most complex technical project I’ve tackled to date, but because it synthesizes everything that fascinates me in tech today: product engineering, automation, applied artificial intelligence, data governance, content architecture, and building systems designed to scale.
Above all, it stands out because for the first time in a long while, I don't know exactly how far this project can go—and that is intentional.
The initial idea behind KUMBA was straightforward: build a modern platform centered around African news. I wanted to experiment with new methods of aggregating, processing, and presenting information.
However, a fundamental question quickly emerged: Why build just another news website?
The internet already hosts thousands of them. The core issue in Africa today isn't a lack of information—it is its extreme fragmentation:
Valuable data exists everywhere, but it remains trapped in isolated silos. This realization sparked a pivot in my vision for KUMBA: shifting from a traditional content outlet to a technological product.
News forms the first building block. Career and business opportunities form the second. The upcoming company directory will form the third. And behind these user-facing interfaces, a robust technological layer must progressively take shape—one capable of understanding, organizing, and interconnecting this data.
This is undoubtedly the aspect of the project that excites me most from an engineering standpoint. I am building automated mechanisms to ingest data from heterogeneous sources, clean it, classify it, enrich it, and distribute it seamlessly.
Artificial intelligence plays a key role at several stages of this pipeline. However, I refuse to market KUMBA as an "AI project" simply because the term is fashionable.
For me, AI is a tool serving the product:
What I aim to build in the long run is simple to conceptualize, even if it is technically challenging to execute.
Imagine a Senegalese company announces a major investment. KUMBA will naturally feature the corresponding article. But why stop there?
The platform should understand the broader context surrounding this organization:
At this point, users are no longer just reading isolated articles. They are exploring a network of connected information. This graph-based vision is far more compelling than a static media archive.
I have never been able to restrict myself to a single domain among software development, product management, UI/UX design, and digital strategy. For a long time, I wondered if this multi-disciplinary approach was a lack of focus. In hindsight, this exact combination defines how I build products today.
KUMBA applies this exact philosophy to information infrastructure: building a core platform that delivers value at scale.
Furthermore, continuing to write code daily grants an indispensable advantage: the ability to turn an idea directly into a working product. I don't have to stop at concepts. I can design the architecture, open my editor, ship a working prototype, and validate its viability within days.
Currently, I am building KUMBA as a solo founder. Writing code is only a fraction of the total workload. A project of this scope requires constant trade-offs across:
This last decision is the most critical. Developers easily fall into the trap of building features simply because they have the technical ability to do so. Adding code is often more satisfying than asking whether anyone actually needs it.
I adhere to a lean, disciplined cycle: Build → Ship → Observe → Refine → Build Next.
Modern AI tools have also transformed software development. They accelerate prototyping, research, and data processing. For a solo builder, this significantly narrows the gap between a vision and its initial functional build.
KUMBA is in its early stages. Some features will evolve, others will be retired, and the strategic direction will sharpen based on user feedback. I am not building KUMBA to prove I was right on day one; I am building it to discover what it can become.
Yet, the ambition remains explicit:
This is where AI becomes truly meaningful: not generating text for the sake of generation, but rendering vast, complex data intelligible and actionable.
Most projects I undertake begin with a strict specification and a predefined destination for a client. With KUMBA, the destination is intentionally open-ended. I know the problem I want to solve and the direction I want to move in, but the ultimate shape of the product will be discovered through building.
So I keep building—one feature, one iteration at a time. KUMBA is only at the beginning of its story, but it is easily the product whose next chapter I am most eager to write.