Across the continent, there's a growing awareness that technology is critical to Africa's future. Governments are investing in digital infrastructure. Startups are multiplying. Tech education programs are launching every month. But we're making a fundamental mistake in how we think about the problem.
We're training developers when what we desperately need are systems architects.
The Feature Trap
Here's what I see happening over and over: A startup or institution identifies a problem, builds an app to solve it, and launches. The app works. Users sign up. Then comes scale. And suddenly, the elegant MVP that solved a problem for 100 users becomes a maintenance nightmare for 10,000.
This isn't a failure of execution. It's a failure of architecture. The team built features when they needed to build systems.
Features solve today's problems. Systems solve problems that haven't emerged yet. Features handle the happy path. Systems handle every path. Features work in demos. Systems work in production.
What Systems Thinking Means
A systems architect doesn't just ask "How do we build this feature?" They ask:
- What happens when this feature breaks at 3 AM?
- What happens when we have 100x the current load?
- How does this integrate with the three systems we'll build next year?
- What data will we need in 5 years that we're not capturing now?
- Who will maintain this when I'm gone?
These questions aren't just technical. They're strategic. They're about building institutions, not just applications.
The African Context
This matters more in Africa than anywhere else. Here's why:
We're building foundational infrastructure. When Silicon Valley builds another social app, failure costs some investors money. When we build education management systems or payment infrastructure, failure costs institutions their ability to function. The stakes are different.
We have connectivity constraints. Systems built for always-on, high-bandwidth environments fail when connectivity is intermittent. Architecture that assumes the happy path will never survive African realities.
Maintenance capacity is limited. When a system breaks in a major tech hub, there's a deep bench of engineers to fix it. In most African contexts, the team that built it is the team that maintains it — if they're still around. Systems need to be self-healing, well-documented, and designed for long-term operability.
We can't afford to rebuild. The luxury of "move fast and break things" assumes infinite resources for rebuilding. We don't have that luxury. We need to get it right — or at least make it evolvable — the first time.
Building the Talent
So how do we develop systems architects? A few thoughts from two decades of building:
Exposure to operational reality. Architects need to see what happens when systems fail. They need to be on the receiving end of 3 AM incident calls. They need to inherit codebases written by people who left. Theory alone doesn't build this muscle.
Long-term mentorship. Architecture is learned through practice, reflection, and guidance. Bootcamps don't produce architects — they produce developers who might become architects in 10 years if they have the right guidance.
Cross-functional experience. The best architects understand business, operations, finance, and user behavior. They can translate between technical and non-technical stakeholders. This takes time to develop.
Exposure to scale. You can't design for scale if you've never operated at scale. Architects need to work on systems that serve thousands or millions of users, even if just as observers.
The Path Forward
I don't want to discourage developer training — we need more developers too. But we need to recognize that coding skills alone won't build the digital infrastructure Africa needs.
We need people who think in systems. Who design for durability. Who understand that every line of code is a commitment to future maintenance. Who build institutions, not just apps.
That's the kind of thinking that will build Africa's digital future.
If this resonates, I'd love to hear from you. Let's connect.