July 9, 2026 · Manifesto
A sovereign software factory
How a feature described in a plain GitHub issue becomes a product running in production — and why we build this factory in Africa, for Africa.
At bantou, an idea never sleeps for long in a document. It starts life as a GitHub issue: a business need, a few regulatory constraints, a success criterion. From there, our engine takes over — it generates the code, validates it, opens a pull request, has it reviewed, then deploys the result to a live subdomain.
Products that run, not concepts.
We repeat this line like a discipline. Speed is only worth it if it sacrifices nothing: the engine is bounded by an uncompromising validation barrier, and no pull request is merged without human review. The machine accelerates; humans decide.
A constellation, not a product
Behind bantou there isn't one app but a small constellation of platforms, each born from a concrete need met on African ground: verify an identity, see clearly before signing, speak people's language, prepare, get organized. The following articles tell each of these stories.
Our compass
- Sovereignty — data, models and infrastructure stay in Africa.
- Compliance — BCEAO, UEMOA, CEMAC, GDPR: a starting point, not a constraint.
- Speed — from issue to live subdomain in record time.
Everything we describe here is online, and clickable. Maybe that's the best part: these aren't promises, they're addresses.