The argument we kept having
Before we wrote the first line of GwizaSuite, we argued about French. Specifically, we argued about when to build it.
The easy answer was “after launch.” Most SaaS does it that way — ship the English version first, translate later when you have budget. The harder answer, and the one we ended up choosing, was “day one, but the boring middle.”
What “the boring middle” means
The maximalist version of i18n translates everything: every error message, every edge-case tooltip, every placeholder. It’s expensive and most of it is rarely seen.
The minimalist version translates only the shell — the navbar, main buttons, headings — and leaves the rest in English. It feels half-done to users who actually work in French.
We shipped the middle: every screen a staff user touches daily is fully translated. Every customer-facing surface (invoices, statements, receipts, the portal) is fully translated. Deep admin screens and the developer API default to English. Nobody has complained.
Why this matters commercially
- Roughly half of Rwanda’s active supplier businesses do their daily operations in French.
- Customer-facing French is non-negotiable — an invoice has to land in the recipient’s language.
- Staff with mixed-language teams can have a French-speaking accountant and an English-speaking sales rep in the same branch, same data, no friction.
Every customer I’ve gained in the last year chose us partly because my accountant opens the system in French. That’s not a feature, that’s a barrier removed.— Claudine Uwamahoro, Finance Lead, Rubavu Imports
Day-one bilingual isn’t glamorous engineering. It’s type-safe string dictionaries and a lot of careful review. But it changes who can buy the product, and that is always worth doing from the start.