Why Software Is Met With Distrust in Hargeisa

In Hargeisa, many businesses have seen the same pattern repeat.

Generalist development teams arrive offering to build a system that could easily become the backbone of an entire company. Retail management. HR. Hospital records. Internal operations. The systems are built quickly, delivered once, paid for in a lump sum, and then left behind. The goal is not to build a product, a company, or long-term expertise. It is to complete a project and move on to the next one.

From the outside, this looks like progress. From the inside, it often feels temporary.

When we first started talking to businesses in Hargeisa while building Agabb, we noticed a reaction we did not immediately understand. People listened, but there was a visible sense of distance. A quiet dismissal. It felt like they had already decided not to trust what we were saying.

At first, this was frustrating. Over time, it became clarifying.

We realized we were not the first people to walk into these stores and offices with software. Many had come before us. Systems were installed. Promises were made. For a short while, things worked. Then issues appeared. Data drifted. Small bugs accumulated. Support slowed down. Eventually, nobody came back to fix what no longer worked.

The software did not fail all at once. It faded.

The reason many businesses in Somaliland still rely on notebooks and manual records is not resistance to technology. It is experience. Paper does not disappear when a developer leaves. A notebook does not stop working when an update breaks. It may be inefficient, but it is predictable.

By the time we arrived, we were paying for decisions we did not make. We were being judged not just as ourselves, but as the next attempt in a long line of abandoned systems.

Once we understood this, we changed how we worked. We stopped assuming trust. We showed up consistently. We invested heavily in support. We fixed problems quickly, even when they were inconvenient or not strictly our fault. We moved slower than we wanted to, because reliability mattered more than speed.

We learned patience. We learned that trust in places like Hargeisa is earned through presence, not promises.

For business owners, reliability is not a feature. It is the product. A single glitch can undo months of progress. When livelihoods depend on a system, tolerance for failure is low.

Over time, showing up consistently began to matter. People noticed. Trust grew slowly, then steadily. What we learned is simple but easy to ignore: software does not earn trust by being delivered. It earns trust by staying.