When Your Connection Is the Production Line
If you sell online, collect through mobile money or deliver remotely, the internet is not a utility: it is your production line. And a line that stops costs more than its subscription.
Topic
Togo
What the Togolese ground teaches, seen from Lomé: how small businesses actually use digital tools, the public figures when they exist, and the gap between what gets announced and what happens in a workshop or a shop. Field notes, not news commentary.
12 articles
Two machines in two months, what it cost me
In under two months, two machines dead and more than 1.4 million CFA francs of equipment lost. The costliest part was not the machine. Here is what I changed, line by line.
Leaving an internship with more than a certificate
Eighteen hundred immersion placements opened in Togo this September. Spots are no longer scarce. What is scarce is what you take home on the last day.
Adopt rather than build, and the word that changes everything
The World Bank advises developing countries to adopt existing AI rather than build their own. I took the sentence badly at first. Then I reread the second verb.
AI doesn't eliminate jobs, it shifts tasks
More than 1,000 layoffs at African startups in the first half of 2026, and one working-age Togolese in ten who says they have already used AI. What moves are the motions of work.
Your mobile money history has become an asset
In Togo, interoperability has made getting paid easy. The real risk has moved elsewhere: into the mess of your statements, and into what they will fail to say about you.
One in ten adults in Togo says they use AI
In the first quarter of 2026, 10.1% of people aged 15 to 64 in Togo said they had used generative AI. The handset travels widely. The use does not. The gap closes by naming a chore.
What Togo Teaches Me About Data That Serves a Purpose
The World Development Report 2026 holds up Novissi as an example. What worked was not the technology, it was the method. And it fits on one sheet of paper.
Two billion divided by fifteen Togolese start-ups
Fifteen Togolese start-ups, two billion CFA francs, one hundred jobs. I did the division, without mockery. What it shows is not a failure, but the only question that really matters.
With e-TPU, the real work is still your numbers
The OTR launched e-TPU on 17 September 2026. Filing online is sorted. The real work remains: having your numbers to hand. Four simple habits, one of which changes everything.
Becoming fundable before you even look for money
A Nigerian saver can buy a piece of Africa's largest refinery for four dollars. Here, savings exist too. What is missing are the cases that are ready.
The informal market: a strength, not a weakness
More than 80% of employment in Togo is informal. The strengths of this market — resilience, knowledge of the ground, a network of trust — are underrated.