Abdulhaqq Sule

Yesterday, I turned 35.

Birthdays at this stage of life aren't just about celebrations; they are about heavy, sometimes uncomfortable, reflections. As I looked at the state of Haqqman and the landscape of the African tech space, I realized I was tired of a particular kind of "middle-man" fatigue.

For years, my team and I have been the bridge. We set up, customized, and managed world-class third-party platforms for our clients. We did it well. But there were two massive bottlenecks that kept me up at night — bottlenecks that forced us to start building our own ecosystem of products as far back as 2020.

Turning 35 was a moment to look back at those four years of building and double down on what is clearly a lifetime strategy.

The Currency Rollercoaster

The first bottleneck was the USD.

Most of the tools we recommended to our clients were priced in dollars. While the USD rate was consistent, the Naira was doing a chaotic dance. Month after month, we would have to communicate new budgets to clients, not because their usage had changed, but because the exchange rate had shifted. Unless a client was lucky enough to pay an annual hedge, their digital strategy was at the mercy of the market.

Digital stability shouldn’t depend on the central bank's daily bulletin.

The 20% Bloat

The second bottleneck was "feature bloat." We would onboard a client onto a robust global platform, and they would end up using only 20% of its features. Yet, they were paying for 100% of it, in a currency that was becoming increasingly expensive.

There was no "lean," Pan-African version of these tools — nothing that was robust enough for an enterprise but priced in the currency we actually earn.

The Nightmare of Shortcuts

I’ll be honest: we didn't always plan to build from scratch. We tried the "easy" way first. We tried to clone open-source projects and refactor them to fit our needs.

It was a nightmare.

Trying to force someone else's code to adapt to the specific nuances of a Nigerian business process was like performing surgery with a blunt knife. It was a mess. We realized that if we wanted something that would last a lifetime, we couldn't build it on a borrowed foundation. We had to start from scratch.

Going All In: The Bootstrap Game

At Haqqman, we decided to play the long game. We didn't want a quick "MVP" that would break under pressure. Our clients are coming from established, well-funded platforms; they aren't patient enough to be "beta testers" for a broken version of what they already have.

So, I made a choice: we would bootstrap. Every Naira of revenue generated from our agency business was reinvested into building our own digital products. We stayed lean. We stayed focused.

I was inspired by the tech founders who go "all in" — the ones who don't just look for traction in weeks, but build for decades. What we started in 2020 was never a side project; it was a commitment to digital sovereignty.

Thirty-five feels like the year of clarity. It’s a reality check on the progress we've made since those first lines of code in 2020 and a reaffirmation that this journey is just getting started. I am no longer just managing the web; I am building it, for the long haul.

The Dogfooding Rule

One of the most beautiful policies I enforced is that my team and I must use our own products. 90% of the tools we use to run Haqqman today are the very products we are building.

This created an ecosystem. Because we use them, we rely on them. If something is slightly off, we feel it immediately. This has led to a connected web of products that actually talk to each other, built specifically for the way we work here in Abuja.

Pricing for the World, Honoring the Local

Today, I’ve landed on a pricing strategy that feels fair. If you are a Nigerian business, you have the option to pay 100% in NGN at an affordable, stable rate. If you are international, you pay in USD. No more currency volatility for the local creator; no more "dollar-only" barriers for the Nigerian entity.

The Next Phase

I am done with the "building in silence" phase. I spent my birthday reflecting on the transition from the agency model to the product-first model, and it's clear: we are entering the marketing and scaling phase.

In the coming weeks, I’ll be writing about the birth of the specific products that are now powering creators and entities every day. The work of building the foundation is largely done. Now, it's time for aggressive, intentional growth.

Abdulhaqq Sule is the CTO at Haqqman. Having turned 35, he is focused on scaling a Pan-African product ecosystem that removes the currency and complexity barriers for digital entities.