The tassel was worth the hassle.

Three Years Out

Three years since that September 2023 graduation. My calendar reminded me, because apparently that’s the kind of thing I need now. BSc Computer Science, Second Class Upper Division. I’m just glad I made it out with both a degree and my sanity intact.

If you’d told eighteen year old me, fresh off the bus from home and wide eyed on that September 2019 day I arrived at Murang’a University, that in three years I’d be writing code deployed across six African central banks and staying in five star hotels because of a Python project, I would’ve thought you were playing. But here we are.

I came in with big dreams and even bigger uncertainty about what those dreams actually were. Campus has this way of exposing you to everything and nothing simultaneously. You’re surrounded by possibilities but drowning in confusion about which one is yours.

Then came the GDSC sessions. I still remember sitting in one of those talks thinking “okay, so this is what real tech looks like.” There was this techie speaking – sharp guy, decent car, refreshingly unbothered by dressing like a professional – and something just clicked. I thought, “Yeah, I want that life.” At the time, I was all in on data. The numbers, the insights, the big picture data stuff. It felt like the future.

But funny how things work. As I got deeper into actual project work, I realized I was falling in love with something else entirely: the building. The designing, the coding, testing, maintaining. The whole cycle of taking an idea and crafting it into something that actually works. There’s a creativity to it that data science, as cool as it is, just didn’t quite offer me. Plus, I got to solve problems with my hands, not just my spreadsheets.

I joined the team as an attachee in June 2022, at a time when the project was still in its initial stages and development work had not yet begun. My first assignment was to work on an internal tool that pulled data from the Analytics Core System and transformed it into useful visualizations.

After working on the internal tool, I transitioned into a real-time project where the software was being developed for actual users and operational use. This was where my experience moved beyond experimentation and internal tooling into building and contributing to a system with real-world requirements and impact.

A client needed something done in Python. Literally few members in the team had touched Python at scale. So I got the gig. My HoD reached out if I could manage working while still in school, and honestly, that one conversation changed everything. I said yes, and I never really looked back.

That project became something special. It ended up serving MEFMI – the Macroeconomic and Financial Management Institute of Eastern and Southern Africa – and here’s the thing that still feels unreal: it’s actively being used by six countries. Not “we built it and hoped,” but actually deployed, actually running.

That work got me a whole blog post. Seriously, if you haven’t read it, check out “Code That Travels: Stories from the Field” because the story of how that code ended up mattering deserves more than a paragraph. The kicker? That code also got me to Rwanda for a week. Five star hotel, per diems, the works – all because some logic I’d written needed defending and refinement on the ground. Not a bad return.

Working in a .NET environment, I knew I couldn’t just stay in Python lane forever. Most of the real infrastructure around me was built on C#, ASP.NET Core, all the Microsoft stack goodness. So early on, I started teaching myself. Why wait until you’re forced into it?

The transition wasn’t as brutal as some people make it sound. I wrote about that too – check “Transitioning from Python to C#: Key Takeaways” if you’re curious about the practical side of switching stacks. Once I was competent in .NET, the work started coming. Real work. Production work. The kind of work that serves ABSA, Stanbic, and other institutions that actually matter in the African financial space. Not “we built a prototype,” but “this is running on production servers handling real transactions.”

Let me be real though: luck played a role. My supervisor back then, the one who guided me through those early projects – we basically traveled the same path. Started as an attachee, progressed to a permanent role, and now leads a team. That continuity mattered. The timing mattered. The fact that I’d already been working while still in school meant I didn’t have that awkward gap between graduation and relevance.

One of our directors, the Head of the Engineering Department and my supervisor, welcomed me properly after graduation. We had a small celebration, a meal, some goodies, a proper welcome to the working world from people who understood what we’d built together. That felt good. And honestly, it mattered more than I realized at the time.

Here’s the thing about luck though: it only gets you in the room. Everything after that was effort, curiosity, and refusing to get comfortable with “this is how we’ve always done it.”

Three years later and I’m still here. Still building. Still learning. The company has been around for fifteen years, and it’s moving strong. Everything I touch seems to find a way into production, which is equal parts thrilling and terrifying. There’s momentum here that doesn’t feel like a sprint – it feels sustainable.

The journey from “which career should I pick” to “shipped code serving millions across the continent” doesn’t feel like it took three years. Feels like it happened in bursts – stretches of grinding, then sudden moments where you look up and realize how far you’ve come.

To anyone coming up, especially here where the opportunities are real but the road isn’t always clear: stay curious. Work hard. Say yes to the weird projects. Travel for your code if you get the chance. And don’t underestimate the power of learning while you’re supposed to be studying. Your HoD might just ask you to do both, and it might just change your trajectory.

All the best out there.

Cheers!