After university I was lost. Not academically — I had finished strong. But the world after graduation is a different kind of examination and nobody gives you a syllabus for it.

I had been following Jack Ma closely. One thing he said kept coming back to me: when you complain, you stop seeing opportunities. I believed that. I just had not yet found the thing worth stopping the complaining for.

Then one evening in a friend's kitchen something shifted. I looked around and asked: what can we actually do? Not complain about. Do. That night Mabvazuva Trust was born.

The Name and the First Meeting

Brandon had a friend named Billy Masara whose family owned service stations in Mutare. We met him in town and decided what to call what we were building. We landed on Mabvazuva Trust. We wanted it to be an NGO — something that served communities without profit as the primary motive.

Our plan was specific — teach skilled individuals like footballers and musicians how to use digital tools to market themselves and reach audiences beyond their immediate geography. Tendai's boss, a woman named Marilyn Baxter, offered to help. Her nephew provided free hosting. I built the site. They began helping us register the trust formally.

The Bedroom in Sakubva and the WiFi Quote

I had read about Mawingu Networks in Kenya — a company delivering WiFi connectivity to remote rural areas. I had read about a cafe in rural Kenya where farmers were googling crop diseases and finding solutions in real time. I saw exactly what that could mean for Zimbabwe.

I found a company that could set up the infrastructure. I contacted them. They sent me a quote by email. The cost was feasible. The technology existed. The vision was clear.

"The only thing standing between that vision and reality was money I did not have. Not intelligence. Not work ethic. Not boldness or vision. Money."

A kid in Sakubva, corresponding by email about rural WiFi infrastructure costs, with nothing in his account to make it real.

Mr Fleming's Office

I found a company in Harare partnering with Econet to collect electronic waste. I set up a meeting with a man named Mr Fleming. When I arrived at his offices in Belgravia the guards at the gate looked me up and down. I was in my best clothes. No suit.

I cleaned my shoes at the gate. The premises were immaculate. I told Mr Fleming his office was beautiful. He said: it is expensive. Then I told him my vision and he listened carefully and he was impressed. He said the next time they had a meeting with Econet he would invite me.

He never called. But I walked out of that expensive office having held my own without a suit, without a company car, without anything except the vision and the nerve to ask.

Litfy Africa

Litfy Africa Private Limited was formally registered on 9 May 2019. Its mission: to enhance the livelihood of people regardless of their circumstances through financial and digital literacy education.

We wrote partnership proposals to POTRAZ and ZimPost. We connected tutors and students in Mutare, Rusape and Kadoma. A photograph from that period shows a young woman sitting outside a building, hunched over a screen, learning. That desk was borrowed from a friend. That laptop was the only one we had. That woman was learning anyway.

Then the money ran out. And when the money ran out the project stopped. Not the vision. Not the belief. The project.

"The vision was correct. The vision was ahead of its time. The problem was that in Zimbabwe, vision without capital is just a dream that exhausts the dreamer."

Litfy Africa still exists. The registration is real. The vision is still on paper and still in my head and still worth building. It is just waiting — the way good things sometimes have to wait — for the resources to catch up with the imagination.