The Mjanga Meetup
Connect · Learn · Innovate
Monthly conversations where technologists, builders, and changemakers across Africa discuss the ideas shaping our digital future. Free, open, and online.
Zero-Friction UX: Building Enterprise Tech for WhatsApp & USSD
Making powerful software accessible to everyone
Most people don't download new apps every day, but they open WhatsApp constantly or use simple shortcodes on basic phones. This meetup explores how we build complex enterprise tools that live right inside the channels people already open every day. We'll dive deep into WhatsApp for Business automation, USSD menu trees for offline-first services, and designing for every user — regardless of literacy or connectivity. Join us as practitioners share real implementations, challenges, and breakthroughs from the field.
Register Your SpotBuilding Enterprise Tech
for WhatsApp & USSD
Engineering for IoT Connectivity
Connecting People, Powering Communities. We explored the Internet of Things and its transformative potential for communities across Africa. Our discussion covered how IoT technologies can bridge connectivity gaps, enable real-time data collection, and empower individuals and organizations to make smarter decisions. Practical implementations, challenges in African contexts, and opportunities ahead for builders and entrepreneurs.
From Prompt to Production
Building Safe, AI-Augmented Apps. Our previous episode, Who Owns the Prompt?, was about the risk: people quietly feeding sensitive data into AI tools with no guardrails. This one was about the fix — how engineering and product teams actually build AI features that are safe to ship, without slowing down or leaking a single patient or user record. We explored a grounded panel with practitioners, a live walkthrough of catching and masking sensitive data before it ever reaches an AI model, and how to run smaller, private AI models in-house instead of sending everything to the cloud.
Who Owns the Prompt?
The hidden risk of everyday AI inside African institutions. A nurse typing patient symptoms into ChatGPT. A teacher sharing student records with an AI tool to write reports faster. A government officer pasting citizen data into a summarisation tool to clear a backlog. Nobody is being reckless — they are trying to do their jobs in under-resourced environments with whatever works. But nobody told them what happened to that data after they hit send. This episode asks what responsibility looks like when the people most exposed are also the least informed.
Build with Us, Not for Us
What does it really mean to build technology for African communities? Our inaugural meetup opened the conversation — exploring co-creation, community ownership, and what it takes to ship products people actually want.
Honest Conversations About Technology in Africa
Africa's tech ecosystem is growing fast — but the conversations that shape it don't always include the people building inside it. The Mjanga Meetup is our commitment to changing that: one practical, grounded conversation every month.
No gatekeeping. No jargon for jargon's sake. Just people who care about what technology actually does for communities, showing up and talking about it.