Fifteen years of building businesses in Zimbabwe. Told honestly. From the diamond fields of Mutare to a podium in Harare. From a rat-infested office to three industries dominated. This is the story most people were never supposed to hear.
A tribute to Paidamoyo Chimbetete — the brother I never had, the person who showed up without being called, and the man who planted something in me that is still growing.
Read →I was sitting in my bedroom in Sakubva corresponding by email about rural WiFi infrastructure costs in Zimbabwe. The only thing between that vision and reality was money I did not have.
Read →Masimba and I built Tsoka 2.0 on soya mince, campus WiFi and a shared belief that what we were making was worth the hunger. We completed 90% of the platform in one month with no money.
Read →Lionel Masimba Siduna paid for everyone's lunch without calculating whether he could afford it. He also introduced me to blockchain in Victoria Falls, got us fired by millionaires, and almost got us killed by baboons.
Read →I worked with Data Age Solutions on and off for nearly a decade. I took a 4am bus to restart a server while soldiers fired rounds in Harare streets. I stood on a podium. I was not invited to the next ceremony.
Read →In 2019 I nearly died alone in Glenview 7. Thirty minutes on the floor trying to find help, crawling to my neighbour's door with my ID card in my hand. Then Masimba called from Victoria Falls.
Read →The project was 90% done. Then Masimba and David drove to Gweru at night chasing a girl, hit a pothole at speed and drove into a tree. I called Masimba and said: this place has turned from Hawaii to Haiti.
Read →We were turned away from two clinics. A nurse mocked us in a hospital corridor. I had ten dollars. My mother in Mutare and I arrived at the same name for our daughter independently on the same night. Makatendeka. You are faithful.
Read →I doubled my uncle's revenue during a pandemic while cooking lunch and recovering debts nobody else wanted to touch. Search best spring suspension companies in Zimbabwe. Every result — I built those.
Read →A pallet manufacturer operating from a residential area in Glenview 1 outranked companies with bigger operations and more resources. I rescued a $7,000 deal with a single conference call. Then they paid me $50.
Read →Three of Zimbabwe's top trailer manufacturers got to the top because of me. Utility trailers became a thing in that garage because Madzibaba got a job nobody else had been exposed to. I put him in position to receive it.
Read →One bike. No office. A Facebook advert that cost a few dollars. Fifteen reviews on a Google profile. Number one in Zimbabwe above InDrive. The first person to give me a stake in his company changed my entire business model.
Read →This is not a story about one company. Across more than a decade — spring companies, software companies, pallet manufacturers, hotels, property firms — the pattern was identical every time. I built the stage. They took the bow.
Read →Masimba pulled me back from a rat-infested office with a drawing on a piece of paper. We got fired by millionaires over a dim video call. We built a 30-second trip planner. Then we were chased by baboons and saved by a taxi hooter.
Read →A childhood friend said this to me once. He was right about the country. He was wrong about the dreamer. This is the answer — built from everything that came before it.
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