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🚛Build05 April 2026

SafariLink CRM: Digitizing East African Logistics

A technical retrospective on building a trade-route CRM for regional logistics operators across Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda.

Logistics in East Africa is relationship-driven. WhatsApp groups, notebooks, and phone calls. SafariLink CRM was built to formalize those workflows without losing the human element.

Core Requirements

  • Offline-first: Truck drivers in remote corridors have zero connectivity. All critical data must sync opportunistically.

  • Swahili UI: The primary users are operations clerks for whom English is a second language.
  • Multi-currency: KES, TZS, UGX — with real-time conversion display.

    • Technical Decisions

    PWA with service workers — IndexedDB queues mutations locally and syncs to Supabase when online.

    Postgres Row-Level Security — Each logistics company sees only their own shipment records. No application-level tenant filtering.

    Hybrid date formats — We store UTC internally but display in DD/MM/YYYY per regional convention.

    Result

    Reduced manual data entry time by ~65% in pilot testing across 3 route operators.

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