Peter Kakoma

The Story

I started writing code as an intern at Helika Limited, a web development company in Kampala. The project was a WordPress website. I spent most of that internship asking what the difference between a blog and a website was, and the rest of it trying to figure out how EasyPHP worked.

That was the beginning.

From there: MTN Uganda, where I ended up as Principal Engineer building systems for 10 million+ customers — including a loyalty platform that grew to 4 million users, largely as a one-man engineering effort before I started hiring. Then Andela, leading technical teams and mentoring developers across Africa. Then out fully on my own with Kanzu Code, where we were part of the team that built the insurance engine that Pula now uses to serve farmers across 12 countries. It’s a continuous journey of founding ventures, building products, figuring out what it means to build technology with purpose rather than just with skill.

Going out on my own was a conviction. There was a prevailing sentiment that world-class software had to come from outside the continent — I wanted to help debunk that. And alongside building, I wanted to create a space to pass the craft on.

That conviction is what Kanzu Code, Kanzu Finance, Kanzu Code Foundation, Vapify, and StoreVoiceAI are all expressions of.