Skip to content
LastWave Africa

Powering Africa's next wave of software

Technology built for the real Africa.

We are LastWave Africa, the team behind xlambda and LastWaveEdu. Tell us your idea in plain words; our teams make the technical decisions, ship the first version in days and run it for you.

Tell us your idea Explore xlambda
  • Registered technology company
  • Projects live in days
  • Rust, kernel, networking & AI research

What our teams run

In production
  • xlambda Media
  • xlambda Live streaming
  • xlambda PostgreSQL
  • xlambda Redis
  • xlambda Email

LastWaveEdu

edu.lastwave.africa

KFE Consortium

kfeconsortium.co.ke

Gloha Family Welfare

glohafamilywelfare.com

xlambda

xlambda.tech

Developers building on xlambda
1,000+
Users served across our platforms
100,000+
Managed cloud services in production
5
Open SDKs on npm and PyPI
10
Next.jsRustGoC++TypeScriptPythonPostgreSQLRedisFFmpegWebRTCSRTHLSM-Pesa DarajaUSSDSMSWhatsAppLLM agentsRAGeBPFLinuxDockerTraefikCloudflareVercel

Live in production

Platforms Africans use every day.

Two products we own and run, and two platforms we power for our clients. All live, all on real users' phones.

All our work
Our product

xlambda

xlambda.tech

Developer cloud

Media, live streaming, Postgres, Redis and email for developers, behind one API key.

Read the story
Our product

LastWaveEdu

edu.lastwave.africa

EdTech · School management

Run a whole Kenyan school from one place: CBC marks, report cards, exams, timetables, KEMIS and guardian SMS.

Read the story
We power & run it

KFE Consortium

kfeconsortium.co.ke

Conservation · Community

The digital home of the Kakamega Forest Ecosystem Consortium, telling the story of restoration and community livelihoods.

Read the story
We power & run it

Gloha Family Welfare

glohafamilywelfare.com

FinTech · Welfare

A secure member portal and back office for a family welfare group: contributions, payments, reports and records.

Read the story

In the lab

LastWaveRMS PropTech

Kenya-first rental management: M-Pesa reconciliation, USSD for tenants without smartphones and an offline-first caretaker app.

Campus AI Assistant AI · Education

A retrieval-augmented assistant that answers students from their own university's documents, timetables and notices.

Quant research engine Rust · Systems

A low-latency market research and execution engine written in Rust, our proving ground for high-performance systems.

Our flagship · xlambda.tech

The developer cloud built in Africa.

Media, live streaming, PostgreSQL, Redis and email behind one API key. Over 1,000 developers ship on xlambda, and every LastWave product runs on it first.

Why xlambda Open xlambda.tech

Images, video and 360° tours

Upload straight from the browser with presigned URLs. C++ workers on libvips and FFmpeg produce every responsive variant and adaptive video rendition, served from cdn.xlambda.tech.

  • Presigned direct uploads
  • Image variants and transforms
  • Adaptive HLS video
  • 360° panoramas and virtual tours
  • Shareable /watch and /tour links
  • Content moderation queue
media.ts
import { MediaClient } from "@xlambda-tech/media";

const xl = new MediaClient({ apiKey: process.env.XLAMBDA_API_KEY! });

const { mediaId } = await xl.media.upload({
  file,                        // Blob, File or Uint8Array
  filename: "campus-tour.jpg",
  contentType: "image/jpeg",
  mediaType: "pano_360",
});
// Workers build every variant; fetch one from the CDN:
const { url } = await xl.media.getUrl(mediaId, "hd");

One key, one dashboard

Every service shares one project, one scoped API key and one bill. No stitching five vendors together.

Typed SDKs, both languages

@xlambda-tech/* on npm and xlambda-* on PyPI, with ready-made webhook handlers for Next.js, Express, Fastify and Node.

Close to African users

Designed for the latency, bandwidth and payment realities of the continent, not retrofitted to them.

Battle-tested in-house

Every LastWave product runs on xlambda first. If it breaks, we feel it before you do.

Just speak to us

You bring the idea. Our team brings everything else.

No spec, no tech vocabulary needed. However complex the idea, our team works out the best technical decision and turns it into a product that works for African users.

  1. 01

    Tell us the idea

    On WhatsApp, a call or the form, in plain words, in English or Swahili. No spec, no jargon needed, however complex it is.

  2. 02

    Our team architects it

    We make the technical decisions for you: the stack, the data, the payments, the cost to run, and how it scales. You get a clear plan and price.

  3. 03

    We ship in days

    A working first version lands in days, not quarters. You see progress every week and steer as we go.

  4. 04

    We run and grow it

    Hosted on xlambda, monitored by our team and improved continuously. You own the product; we keep it healthy.

Tell us your idea What we build

Professional services

One team for the whole stack.

Product, cloud, payments, AI and the deep systems work, delivered by hardworking teams who also run what they build.

Product engineering

Web apps, mobile apps and PWAs, from a napkin idea to a production launch, designed for real users on real phones.

Learn more

Cloud and infrastructure

Hosting, databases, media, streaming and email on xlambda, or on the cloud you already use, with CI/CD and monitoring done right.

Learn more

Payments and telco

M-Pesa Daraja, mobile money, SMS, USSD and WhatsApp: the rails African customers actually use, wired in properly with reconciliation.

Learn more

AI and automation

Assistants grounded in your own documents, agents that do real work, and automations that remove the repetitive parts of your operations.

Learn more

Systems engineering

When performance matters: Rust, Go and C++ services, media pipelines, low-latency engines and the hard parts other teams avoid.

Learn more

We run it for you

Technology as a service: we build, host, monitor and keep improving your platform, so your team focuses on the mission, like KFE and Gloha do.

Learn more

Africa first, by design

We build for the user in front of us.

Global tools assume fast fibre, credit cards and desktop screens. Our teams grew up with the African user, so our solutions are tailored to how people here actually live, pay and connect.

About LastWave Africa

Phone-first

Designed for the mid-range Android in your customer's pocket, not a desktop in an office.

Offline and low-data

Apps that keep working when the signal drops and sync when it returns, and pages that respect data bundles.

Mobile money native

M-Pesa and mobile money are first-class, with reconciliation built in, not bolted on.

SMS and USSD

Reach every customer, including those on feature phones, with SMS alerts and USSD menus.

Local languages

English and Swahili from day one, and the context of how people here actually work.

Data protection

Aligned with Kenya's Data Protection Act and the privacy laws of the markets we serve.

Research & external contracts

We go deep where others stop.

Our teams lead research in Rust, the Linux kernel, networking, AI and automation, and systems engineering, and we are open for external contracts.

Research areas

Rust

  • Async runtimes and networking
  • Low-latency engines
  • FFI with C/C++ pipelines

Linux kernel

  • eBPF tracing and observability
  • Scheduler and I/O tuning
  • Kernel modules and drivers

Networking

  • SRT, WebRTC and HLS delivery
  • Edge and CDN design
  • Low-bandwidth protocols

AI and automation

  • Retrieval-augmented generation
  • Agents and tool use
  • Swahili and multilingual NLP

Systems engineering

  • Distributed data systems
  • Media processing in C++
  • Queues and back-pressure

Grow with us

More ways to work with LastWave.

Careers

Join teams shipping real products and deep research in Rust, kernels, networks and AI.

See open roles

Partnerships

Resell, integrate, co-build or research with us across the continent.

Partner with us

Funding opportunities

Back the infrastructure African software is being built on.

Investor & grant enquiries

Questions

Good to know.

Something else? Our team answers on WhatsApp, usually within the hour during working days.

I only have an idea. Can you still help?

Yes, that's where most of our projects start. Tell us the idea in plain words on WhatsApp, a call or the form. Our team works out the right technical approach, gives you a clear plan and price, and builds it.

How fast can you deliver?

A working first version of most products ships in days, not months. Larger platforms are delivered in weekly increments, so you see and use real progress from the first week.

What is xlambda?

xlambda is our developer cloud: media processing, live streaming, managed PostgreSQL, managed Redis and email from your own domain, behind one API key, with SDKs for TypeScript and Python. Over 1,000 developers build on it.

Do you host and maintain what you build?

Yes. We can run the whole platform for you, as we do for KFE Consortium and Gloha Family Welfare: hosting, monitoring, security updates and continuous improvements.

Do you take external research and engineering contracts?

Yes. Our teams take contracts in Rust, Linux kernel and systems work, networking, AI and automation, and performance engineering, for clients in Africa and worldwide.

Which countries do you work in?

We are a registered company in Kenya building for the whole African region, and we work with clients and partners anywhere in the world.

Have an idea? Tell us today.

Speak to us in plain words. However complex it is, our team will work out the best way to build it, and ship the first version in days.

Start a project Chat on WhatsApp