The AI Infrastructure Stack I Recommend to Every African Founder

If you're building an AI product from Africa, your infra has to survive power cuts, shaky internet, and payment headaches. Here's the stack I recommend after shipping real ML systems from Lagos.

Why Your Infra Stack Matters More in Africa

If you're building from Lagos, Nairobi, Accra, or Johannesburg, you're not just fighting product-market fit. You're fighting:

• Unreliable power.
• ISP outages.
• Payment providers that don't support your country.
• Skeptical international users.

The wrong infra choices can:

• Lock you into expensive services you can't pay for in USD easily.
• Make it impossible to debug outages.
• Kill trust at the exact moment your product starts taking off.

After running my own ML platform and working with clients, this is the opinionated, battle-tested stack I recommend to early-stage African founders.

This post is not sponsored. It's what I actually use or would use at different stages.

Principle #1: Reliability First, Fancy Later

Your infra should prioritize:

1. Uptime: your product should be available when your users need it.
2. Simplicity: fewer moving parts, fewer 3 AM incidents.
3. Cost clarity: you should know exactly what you'll pay at 100, 1,000, and 10,000 users.

You do not need:

• Kubernetes on day 1.
• 7 different AWS services.
• A microservice zoo.

You do need:

• One solid API.
• One solid database.
• One solid way to observe what's going on.

Part 1: Hosting & Compute

Stage 1: Idea - Prototype (0-100 Users)

For the first version:

• Backend: FastAPI on a single VM or platform like Render/Fly.io.
• Frontend: Next.js on Vercel or Netlify.
• Database: Managed Postgres (smallest tier).

Why this works:

• Simple mental model.
• Low cost.
• Easy to debug.

Even at this stage, you can still be disciplined:

• Use environment variables properly.
• Configure logging.
• Create a /health endpoint.

Stage 2: First Paying Customers (100-1,000 Users)

At this point, you're worried about:

• Outages during peak hours.
• Latency from African users hitting US/EU servers.

Recommendations:

• Compute:

  • 2 small API instances behind a load balancer.
  • Keep it on one cloud (e.g. DigitalOcean, Hetzner, or AWS Lightsail).

• Regions:

  • If most users are in Africa, pick a region that minimizes latency (e.g. Europe for West Africa, or nearest reliable region).

• Auto-restart:

  • Use something like systemd, Docker restart policies, or a managed platform with health checks.

Stage 3: Scaling (1,000+ Users)

Now your questions become:

• How do we handle spikes?
• How do we avoid single points of failure?

Without going full enterprise cloud, you can:

• Add a CDN (Cloudflare) in front of everything.
• Scale DB up to a bigger managed tier.
• Introduce a queue if you have heavy background jobs.

Still no Kubernetes. Still no 20 microservices.

Part 2: Data & Databases

Primary Database: Managed Postgres

Why Postgres:

• Strong ecosystem.
• Good support from multiple providers.
• Works great for most SaaS workloads.

What I look for in a provider:

• Automated backups.
• Point-in-time recovery.
• Easy upgrades.

Caching Layer: Redis (Cloud or Managed)

Use Redis when:

• You have expensive ML predictions you don't want to recompute.
• You want to store sessions or short-lived tokens.

Patterns that work well:

• Cache ML predictions with smart TTLs.
• Cache rendered pages for anonymous users.

You don't need to overcomplicate this. A single Redis instance (with a replica at higher scale) can go a long way.

Part 3 - Monitoring, Logging, and Alerts

If you're building from Africa, you can't babysit your app 24/7. You need software to watch it for you.

Minimal Stack (Free or Cheap)

• Uptime monitoring: UptimeRobot or similar.
• Error tracking: Sentry.
• Metrics:
  • Self-hosted Prometheus + Grafana.
  • Or a lightweight managed solution if budget allows.

What to Monitor (At Minimum)

• Uptime on main endpoints.
• Error rate by endpoint.
• Latency (p95) on your core API.
• Database health: connections, disk, CPU.

The goal:

Know about problems before your users do.

Part 4 - Payments & Billing From Africa

One of the biggest headaches for African founders is getting paid.

Option 1: US/EU Entity + Stripe (Heavier, Long-Term)

• Set up a US LLC (e.g. via Stripe Atlas or another provider).
• Get a US bank account (Mercury, Wise Business, etc.).
• Use Stripe for:
  • Subscriptions.
  • One-off payments.

Pros:

• Access to the full Stripe ecosystem.
• Easier for US/EU customers to trust.

Cons:

• Setup cost.
• Compliance and taxes.

Option 2: Fintech Intermediaries (Faster Start)

• Payoneer.
• Wise Business.

You can:

• Receive payments from US/EU as if you had a local account.
• Withdraw to your Nigerian (or African) bank.

Pros:

• Faster setup.
• Good for early-stage.

Cons:

• Higher fees.
• Not as clean as Stripe at scale.

My Recommendation

• If you are serious about SaaS for global customers:
  • Plan for a US/EU entity eventually.
• If you are just validating an idea:
  • Start with Wise/Payoneer.
  • Keep your infra cost low until revenue justifies a proper entity.

Part 5 - Putting It All Together: A Default Stack for African AI Products

Here's a concrete default you can copy and then customize.

Backend

• Language: Python.
• Framework: FastAPI.
• Serving models:
  • Plain Python processes for v1.
  • Optionally, a separate model service once load increases.

Frontend

• Framework: Next.js.
• Hosting: Vercel (free/low-cost tiers to start).

Infra & Data

• Hosting:
  • DigitalOcean / Hetzner / Render / Fly.io.
• Database: managed Postgres.
• Cache: Redis (managed or Redis Cloud free tier).

Observability

• UptimeRobot (free tier) for uptime.
• Sentry (free tier) for errors.
• Prometheus + Grafana on a small VM for metrics.

Security Basics

• HTTPS everywhere (Let's Encrypt / Cloudflare).
• Environment variables for secrets (NOT in Git).
• Regular backups.

Part 6 - Common Mistakes I See African Founders Make

1. Overengineering too early

   • Kubernetes + microservices at 0 users.
   • Result: more things to break.

2. Ignoring monitoring

   • You only find out about downtime when users complain on WhatsApp.

3. Putting infra costs on personal cards with no plan

   • USD subscriptions that are unsustainable.

4. Choosing tools that don't support your country

   • Payment providers.
   • Banks.

5. Not designing for flaky connectivity

   • No retries.
   • No offline-friendly UX.

Each of these is avoidable with a bit of planning.

Part 7 - A Simple Infra Checklist for African AI Startups

Use this as your starting point:

• [ ] One main API with health checks.
• [ ] One managed Postgres instance with backups.
• [ ] One Redis instance for caching.
• [ ] Uptime monitoring on critical endpoints.
• [ ] Error tracking plugged into your app.
• [ ] Basic dashboards for latency and errors.
• [ ] A payment path that actually works from your country.

If you check all of these, you are already ahead of many well-funded teams.

Want a Second Pair of Eyes on Your Stack?

I help African founders design reliable, cost-conscious AI infrastructure that survives real-world conditions.

If you're:

• Planning to launch an AI product from Africa.
• Worried about infra, payments, and uptime.
• Unsure which tools to pick.

I offer:

• AI Infra & MLOps Stack Review (Founders Edition)
  • 60–90 minute call.
  • Architecture + provider recommendations tailored to your market.
  • Risk assessment and prioritized roadmap.

Interested?

• Schedule a call
• Or email scardubu@gmail.com with subject AI Infra Stack Review.

If you know a founder in Africa building AI products, send them this post before they accidentally build a fragile house of cards.