I recently returned from my 6th trip to Africa in the past 2.5 years. When I visit, I usually alternate between visiting field sites — where organizations like WHO, CDC, and others are using our platform to gather, analyze, and share information. The other half of the time, I’m in a conference room, planning for this thing or that thing. While both types of trips have their pros and cons, the former are definitely my preference. Visiting real people who are really using our software for some real benefit has a way of inspiring me that hanging out in a conference room doesn’t always do. I also really like the idea of taking a car, or boat, as far off the beaten path as possible.

This trip was going to be a conference room trip and at first, I was a little disappointed. I wasn’t going to get any $10 / night hotel rooms or questionable roadside food this trip!

However, the visit turned out to be the best of both worlds. It was a continent wide meeting that brought together a collection of partners, clients, friends, and real users from over 40 countries. It was easily one of the busiest stretches of work I’ve had in a long time — days beginning at 730am over breakfast, continuing throughout the day with a variety of sessions, and into the evening with working dinners (ok ok, some dinners we worked more than others).

Now that I’m home and (mostly) caught up on sleep, I can reflect on some of the things I’ve learned about deploying software platforms to Africa. As a career-long startup guy, Africa has posed some of the richest, most interesting challenges I’ve ever faced. Some technical; others not so much. Here’s my quick list on a few things I’ve learned in that time:

1. The mobile revolution has even more importance in the developing world. The majority of our software runs on commodity android phones. Ranging in price from $100 — $300 / phone, these are durable, powerful, accessible computing devices that let’s not only collect complex data points, but plot where the data is collected. In global health, you need to know the what and the where. And while we’re all thankful that the mobile revolution has been powered by instagram, facebook, and twitter, the rest of thew world has seen far more tangible benefits than being able to share photos.

(configuring new samsung galaxies with a version of Secure Data Kit. These will be used by countries for a variety of tasks ranging from surveys to helping remote data labs store and share data)

2. Being there matters. Standard Co is a remote first company meaning being there…doesn’t really matter. We have a full range of tools accessible to us that makes it easy fo runs to connect, share, and collaborate remotely. However, when you’re user base is half a world away you have to go visit them. It’s the most well known concept in software but nothing replaces actually watching someone use your platform. When you consider the cultural and language differences that exist between our two continents, you can see how visiting makes that much more of an impact. And this extends to visiting partners / clients too. It’s easy (well most of the time) to communicate via Skype or Zoom or whatever. But actually sitting in a room with partners can make all the difference in the world. It doesn’t hurt when those people are some of the most interesting, and fun, folks you know.

3. Find a unique audience. Hey I love North America but let’s be honest. So many of the problems we’re solving here are….um….not that interesting? Unless you’re doing crypto currency or biomedical stuff, so much of the software here is retreads of the same ol thing. Working predominantly in Africa has three real draws to the Standard Code team:

• We get to watch an entire continent come to life in the digital era. The opportunity to see this up close and personal has been so enlightening. It’s helped me understand what we take for granted with technology. And I think it’s helped our team build more compelling platforms.
• We get to build software that actually helps. That makes such a huge difference. It drives and motivates us and helps keep our curiosity piqued. “Stay Curious, Stay Humble” are two of our core values and you can definitely see that in the work we do.
• The technology is far our! Launching a platform that’s predominantly used outside of your home country places such interesting challenges at you feet. How do things work when there’s little access to power? Can the phone / tablet stay powered long enough? What happens when internet access is not ubiquitous? These questions push us to think outside the box in ways we’d never previously contemplated.

What have I missed? What else is different about working across continents.