01Live
Africa Chess League
A pan-African online chess league, with its own ratings, puzzles and open data.
Founder & builder
- Registered players
- 300+
- Countries with registered players
- 17
afcl.africa
Bulawayo, Zimbabwe CAT
Founder · Researcher · Systems Builder
I build and study systems that turn complex problems in Africa into practical tools, combining research, data and technology to understand problems before designing solutions.
Available for freelance · Replies within a day or two
Independent researcher · Builder · Problem solver
Building → Africa Chess League — players from 17 countries
(01)Introduction
AFCL
Chess players registered in the league
AFCL
Countries those players come from
AFCL
League games played since August 2026
ZiMINDEX
Price observations collected and sourced
GROW
Of crop and climate records analysed, 2000–2023
Figshare
Research preprints, each with a DOI
Sources: AFCL — data.afcl.africa, 23 Sep 2026 · ZiMINDEX — project database, Sep 2026 · GROW — working paper · Preprints — Figshare.
(02)Selected work
Three case studies — the problem, my role, the approach and what happened. Every screenshot is from the live site.
02Live
GROW
Crop decisions for Zimbabwean farmers, ranked against their own land and water.
Founder & builder
- Provinces with drought exposure mapped
- 10
- Of crop & climate records, 2000–2023
- 24 yrs
grow.co.zw
(03)Research & publications
Three preprints with DOIs and open data. Each one answers a question one of the products depends on.
Preprint · 2026Figshare
Assembling continental competition without co-location
Tests, with production data, whether an online league really assembles cross-border competition — and shows that reach and depth of participation have to be designed for separately.
Entrants per AFCL arena
Key finding
14
Countries competed in the league’s first 28 days
Preprint · 2026Figshare
Design, architecture and deployment of AFCL
Documents a reusable pattern: let an established platform run the games, and keep the competition itself — scoring, standings, ladders — in your own system, checked against the source.
Key finding
4 mo
Of closed-beta testing before the public launch
Preprint · 2026Figshare
From agricultural support to climate resilience
A framework that matches the kind of climate risk each province faces to the kind of investment that addresses it — and the evidence needed before choosing one.
Seasons with agricultural drought stress
Key finding
p = 0.96
No significant trend in seasonal rainfall, 2000–2023 (+0.18 mm a year)
(04)Tech stack
Chosen for the constraint in front of me: a cheap phone, an expensive gigabyte, a free-tier budget, or data that must be traceable to its source.
Next.jsReactTypeScriptJavaScriptTailwind CSSAstroSvelteFramer MotionLottieD3VitePWANode.jsExpressFastifyZodJWTMongoDBMongoosePostgreSQLSupabaseSQLiteTursoDrizzle ORMFirebasePythonpandasNumPySciPyJupyterHugging FaceWeb scrapingVercelRenderCloudflare WorkersGitHub ActionsDockerGitVitestESLintLichess APITelegram Bot APICloudinaryGoogle IdentityLeaflet
Interfaces
12Fast, accessible front ends that work on a cheap phone as well as a desktop.
- Next.js
- React
- TypeScript
- JavaScript
- Tailwind CSS
- Astro
- Svelte
- Framer Motion
- Lottie
- D3
- Vite
- PWA
Services & APIs
08APIs that validate at the edge, refuse to boot on bad config and keep secrets server-side.
- Node.js
- Express
- Fastify
- Zod
- JWT
- REREST APIs
- WeWeb Push
- CrCron workers
Data stores
08The right store for the shape of the data — documents, relations or a single SQLite file.
- MongoDB
- Mongoose
- PostgreSQL
- Supabase
- SQLite
- Turso
- Drizzle ORM
- Firebase
Research & AI
10Reproducible analysis, and AI that is grounded in data and tested against refusal and injection.
- Python
- pandas
- NumPy
- SciPy
- ststatsmodels
- mamatplotlib
- Jupyter
- Hugging Face
- LLLLM integration
- Web scraping
Ship & verify
10Free-tier-first infrastructure, automated jobs, and tests that run before anything ships.
- Vercel
- Render
- Cloudflare Workers
- GitHub Actions
- Docker
- Git
- Vitest
- PlPlaywright
- ESLint
- axaxe-core
Integrations
06Third-party platforms wired in carefully — rate limits, caching and fallbacks included.
- Lichess API
- Telegram Bot API
- Cloudinary
- Google Identity
- OpOpen-Meteo
- Leaflet
Free-tier first
GROW, ZiMINDEX and Mbele are engineered to run on free infrastructure — without cutting corners on tests, security or accessibility.
Vercel, Render, Cloudflare Workers, MongoDB Atlas, Turso and Supabase — with byte budgets and contrast audits built into the tooling.
(05)Freelance
Available for freelance
Taking on a small number of freelance builds and research collaborations. Replies within a day or two.
I take on a small number of projects at a time — platforms, data work and decision tools — for founders, NGOs, researchers and businesses who need someone to own the whole thing, from the question to the deployed product.
(06)Contact
Tell me about the project or the question. Replies within a day or two — or flip the card for a QR code that saves my details.