Hannington Mambo had just finished presenting his vision to a room full of potential backers. He had laid out the technical framework, the capabilities, and the long-term roadmap for FasterDev—a platform he had built to strip away the complexities of software development. The ambition was undeniable. But the language was dense, the concepts abstract, and the investors seemed lost in the weeds of jargon.
The meeting ended without a check.
As Hannington gathered his belongings, one investor lingered, approaching him just outside the conference hall. While the rest of the room had seen a tangled web of technicalities, this one individual glimpsed something different: raw potential. That hallway encounter blossomed into a partnership that would transform FasterDev from a promising concept into a thriving software enterprise serving businesses across Africa.
A Vision Born from Frustration
Today, FasterDev stands as a testament to the proposition that African tech companies can craft solutions deeply rooted in African realities—making software development faster, more affordable, and more accessible across the continent.
Hannington Mambo’s journey into software was anything but conventional. Before writing code professionally, he had carved out a career in accounting, grants management, and humanitarian operations, including a stint at Save the Children. As a self-taught programmer, he brought a rare combination of operational pragmatism and technical savvy. He saw firsthand that software projects in Africa often derailed not because of a shortage of talent, but because the development process itself was unnecessarily convoluted.
From Internal Tool to Scalable SaaS
Together with his brother and co-founder, Lamek Mambo, Hannington set out to fix what was broken. Originally incubated within Mambo Software as an internal automation tool to eliminate repetitive and error-prone coding tasks, FasterDev gradually revealed a much larger destiny. It wasn’t just a productivity hack for one company—it was a platform that could democratize software creation for developers, tech firms, and growing enterprises across the continent.
Today, FasterDev operates as a full-fledged software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform, enabling organizations to build and deploy software with greater speed and efficiency while slashing development costs and delivery timelines.
Its applications span accounting and financial reporting systems, enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions for institutions like schools and SACCOs, and tailored business management software designed specifically for African SMEs.
By abstracting away technical complexity, FasterDev frees developers to focus on innovation—and helps businesses access locally relevant software without the prohibitive cost of imported systems.
The Bigger Picture
For Hannington, FasterDev is more than a business. It’s a conviction: that African enterprises deserve software built for their context, not a one-size-fits-all import from markets with vastly different realities. And with each deployment, the platform is proving that Africa’s tech future will be written by its own builders.
