Savanna — Africa's Digital Publishing Platform

The first platform where Rwandan authors can publish, sell, and earn — all without a bank account.

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The Problem No One Built For

Amazon KDP does not accept Rwandan bank accounts. Gumroad blocks mobile money. Local print shops pay authors months after a sale — if at all.

Rwanda has a 73% literacy rate, one of the fastest-growing youth populations in Africa, and a government that has invested heavily in digital infrastructure. And yet, if a Rwandan author writes a book today, they have no digital platform to sell it.

That gap is what Savanna was built to close.

What Savanna Does

Savanna is a full-stack digital publishing and reading platform built specifically for Rwanda and the African market. It has two sides:

For Authors: Upload a manuscript → set a price in RWF → publish in minutes → receive royalties directly to MTN Mobile Money or Airtel Money. No bank account required. No middleman. No waiting.

For Readers: Browse Rwandan books → preview a chapter → pay with one tap via MoMo → read instantly inside the platform. No shipping. No Amazon account. No barriers.

The moment an author publishes, their book is live. The moment a reader pays, the author earns. That loop — creation to income in real time — has never existed for Rwandan writers before.

Inspiration

I am a student at the University of Rwanda. I watched classmates write research papers, poetry, and novels with nowhere to share them beyond a WhatsApp group. I watched professors sell books from their office desks because no platform understood their financial reality.

The problem was never talent. Rwanda has extraordinary writers. The gap was access to digital financial rails and a platform that understood African publishing.

Savanna started as a frustration. It became a product.

How It Was Built

Layer Technology
Frontend React 18 + Vite + TypeScript + Tailwind CSS
Authentication Clerk (role-based: author vs reader)
Backend Convex (real-time database + serverless functions)
Payments Paypack API — MTN MoMo + Airtel Money (cashin + cashout)
File Storage Convex Storage (manuscripts + book covers)
Deployment Vercel

The platform handles the complete publishing lifecycle: manuscript upload → cover → pricing → publication → discovery → purchase → in-platform reading → royalty payout. End to end.

The hardest technical challenge was the payment verification flow — ensuring book access is only granted after confirmed MoMo payment, with no race conditions and proper handling of failed or pending transactions.

What Was Built During This Hackathon

During the HackPulse event window, the following features were added and significantly improved:

  • ✅ Full Clerk authentication overhaul — fixed persistent 404 errors on refresh and login race conditions
  • ✅ In-platform book reader using PDF.js — readers no longer download files, they read inside Savanna
  • ✅ Author earnings dashboard with real-time royalty tracking
  • ✅ Professional landing page rebuilt from scratch with problem statement, how-it-works, and feature sections
  • ✅ Production deployment hardened — SPA routing fixed on Vercel, environment variables validated
  • ✅ Complete repository documentation — README, CONTRIBUTING, SECURITY, architecture docs

Theme Alignment

Savanna operates across multiple HackPulse themes simultaneously:

  • FinTech — Mobile money payments, author royalty cashouts, RWF pricing, financial inclusion for unbanked creators
  • SaaS / Platform Infrastructure — Multi-role platform serving authors and readers at scale via Convex backend
  • Web Development — Production-grade React + TypeScript application deployed on Vercel
  • Product Management & Strategy — Designed for a specific underserved market with clear user personas, pricing model, and go-to-market focus

Impact

Rwanda's creative economy has no digital infrastructure. Savanna is that infrastructure. Every feature — from MoMo payments to Kinyarwanda-ready UI — was designed with one question: does this work for a first-time user in Kigali who has never bought a digital product before?

The answer is now yes.

What's Next

  • Kinyarwanda language support — full UI localisation
  • Audiobook uploads — serving Rwanda's oral storytelling tradition
  • Institutional partnerships — University of Rwanda, REB (Rwanda Education Board)
  • East Africa expansion — Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania using the same mobile money rails

Savanna is not just a publishing platform. It is the infrastructure Rwanda's creative economy never had.

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