What we learned building Soma Portal for African schools

When we set out to build Soma Portal, we knew schools in Africa faced challenges that most edtech platforms weren't designed to solve. Unreliable internet, diverse fee structures, and a need for systems that work on both high-end tablets and budget smartphones.

Over the past year, we've deployed Soma Portal across a growing number of schools in Tanzania. Here is what we learned.

Offline is not a edge case — it's the baseline

The first lesson was the hardest. Many schools have internet that works some of the time. Cloud-only architecture was not an option. We rebuilt key parts of the platform to support offline-first data entry, local storage, and background sync when connectivity returns.

This fundamentally changed how we thought about the product. Instead of building for always-on connectivity and layering on offline support, we built for intermittent connectivity and layered on real-time features.

Fee structures are more complex than you think

Western school management systems assume standardised term fees. Many African schools operate with highly variable fee structures — payments by term, by month, by subject, by activity, with partial payments and dynamic discounts. Our financial module had to be rebuilt from scratch to handle this complexity.

Mobile-first is not enough

We learned that mobile-first — designing for smaller screens — is not the same as designing for mobile networks. Soma Portal needed to be frugal with data, load quickly on 3G, and function without constant server communication.

These constraints made the product better. It forced us to optimise everything — database queries, API payloads, asset loading, and client-side caching.

What's next

We're continuing to invest in Soma Portal's infrastructure and adding new features informed by direct feedback from the teachers and administrators who use the platform daily. The goal remains the same: build a school management system that actually works for African schools.