Writing & research
The evidence base
My research sits on the same question as my engineering: how economies that operate outside formal systems actually work, and what can be built for them. Mapping Harare’s informal manufacturers is not a different project from building a farm ledger for smallholders — both are attempts to make an invisible economy legible enough to serve.
Publications & research
Publications
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Book chapter · Springer
Geo-Database and Infrastructure for the Informal Manufacturing Sector in Harare
Mazongonda, S.S., Chikutukutu, I. & Chirisa, I. (2024). In Chirisa, I. & Matamanda, A.R. (eds), Urban Infrastructure in Zimbabwe, The Urban Book Series, Springer Cham.
Using GIS mapping and field surveys, we built a geo-database of Harare’s informal manufacturing sector to analyse clustering, accessibility and service provision. The findings show spatial agglomeration shaped by inadequate infrastructure, limited formal planning and informal governance — and argue that geo-databases are a practical decision-support tool for policymakers integrating informal manufacturers into urban economies.
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Book chapter · IGI Global
Spatiality, Clustering, and the Agglomeration Economies of Scale: A Spatial Statistical Approach to Informal Manufacturing in Harare, Zimbabwe
Research contributions to Mazongonda, S.S. & Chirisa, I. (2018). In Mugambwa, J. & Katusiimeh, M.W. (eds), Handbook of Research on Urban Governance and Management in the Developing World, IGI Global, pp. 224–247.
A spatial statistical treatment of why informal manufacturers cluster the way they do in Harare, and what those agglomeration economies mean for urban governance.
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Book · co-author
3S Rules: The Business Models of Billion Dollar Worth Entrepreneurs
Ibrahim, P. & Chikutukutu, I.T. (2019). Independently published. ISBN 978-1080115846.
A study of how the world’s largest companies were actually constructed — Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Alibaba, Twitter, LinkedIn, Airbnb, Lyft, Tesla and SpaceX, alongside African and Asian cases including Dangote Group and Econet Wireless — reduced to the structural rules that recur across them.
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Research
The Impact of Minibus Traffic on Queue Discharge Headway Distribution at Signalised Intersections
Research on urban traffic flow in Harare, drawing on the computer-vision counting and classification system developed for Traffic Impact Assessments.
Informal minibus transport does not behave like the vehicle mix that signal-timing models assume. This work measured what that difference does to queue discharge at signalised intersections in a developing-city context.
Coverage
Press and third-party profiles
Reporting and independent profiles covering truQ, the company I co-founded and served as CTO, and the funds and programmes that backed it.
TechCabal
Logistics company truQ bags ₦2.5 million as TC Startup Battlefield winner
October 2023
Technext
truQ bags ₦2.5 million as TC Startup Battlefield winner
October 2023
Disrupt Africa
On-demand logistics startup truQ sees quick uptake since Lagos launch
December 2020
Techstars
Africa’s most active startup investor announces new investments in Africa
2022
Crunchbase
Isaac Chikutukutu — founder profile
Ongoing
Tracxn
truQ — company profile, founders and board of directors
Ongoing
Elsewhere
Notes in progress
Three things I keep circling back to: offline-first product design, geospatial data in low-resource settings, and what development finance gets right and wrong about technology. When one of them will not leave me alone I write it up and post it on LinkedIn.
What I am building now
Divisi — advice built for the farm you actually have
Most agricultural advice is written for someone else’s field. Divisi is calibrated to yours: your exact plot, your soil, your rainfall, your season. Free, on the phone you already own, and named for the Shona charm that protects a farmer’s land.
- Crop recommendations ranked by expected yield for your specific land, not district averages.
- Hyper-local 7-day forecasts, with early warnings for heat, storms, flooding and drought.
- Field-ready pest and disease guides, and a glossary of the words and measures farmers actually use — buckets, paces, matchboxes, hectares.
- Weekly task plans, a farm diary and a ledger that builds a record buyers and lenders will accept.
- Works fully offline after a 60-second setup, and syncs the moment signal returns.
Free — no trial, no card, no selling farmer data. divisi.africa →
Free on the web, no app needed
Get in touch
If you are building for these markets, I have probably already hit the problem you are about to hit.
What gets me out of bed: offline-first products that still work when the network does not. Geospatial and field-data systems. Metering and payment rails that have to clear on the first attempt. And the question most people find tedious and I find genuinely interesting — whether a development-facing product is fundable before a line of it is written. If you are working on any of that, I will make the time: advisory and board conversations, partnership discussions for Divisi, and selective senior engineering work.