10 Real Projects You'll Build in a Software & AI Engineering Program

When an employer or client evaluates you, they do not care what topics were on your syllabus. They care what you can build. A portfolio of deployed, working applications says more than any certificate.

Every project in McTaba's Software & AI Engineering program is designed to demonstrate a specific, hireable skill: payment processing, messaging automation, production deployment, or AI integration. Together, they form a portfolio that covers the most common problems African tech companies and businesses need solved.

Here are all 10, in the order you build them.

Phase: 1 (Weeks 1 through 6)
What it does: Generates payment links for clients, triggers M-Pesa STK Push on their phone, processes the payment, and generates a PDF receipt automatically.
Tech: React, Node.js, M-Pesa Daraja API (STK Push), PDF generation

What it proves: You can integrate Africa's most important payment system. This is often the first thing employers ask about when hiring for Kenyan tech companies. Even in your first month, you are building something directly relevant to the market.

Phase: 2 (Weeks 7 through 13)
What it does: Connects to the WhatsApp Business API, captures incoming messages, parses them into structured lead data, and displays everything in a web-based CRM dashboard.
Tech: WhatsApp Business API, PostgreSQL, Express, React

What it proves: You can build business automation tools on top of WhatsApp, which is the dominant business communication channel across Africa. Sales teams, customer support departments, and small businesses all need this.

Phase: 2 (Weeks 7 through 13)
What it does: Users dial a short code and navigate a USSD menu to check account balances, view recent transactions, and submit support requests. An admin panel manages user data and support tickets.
Tech: Africa's Talking USSD API, Redis (session management), React admin panel

What it proves: You understand USSD engineering, which reaches more users in many African countries than any smartphone app. Banks, telecoms, and utility companies need USSD applications, and very few developers know how to build them.

Phase: 3 (Weeks 14 through 22)
What it does: A full online store with product listings, shopping cart, checkout flow, payment processing (M-Pesa and Stripe), and automatic WhatsApp notifications when an order status changes.
Tech: Next.js, Prisma, M-Pesa/Stripe, WhatsApp Business API, state machines

What it proves: You can build end-to-end commerce systems with multiple payment providers and automated customer communication. This is the kind of project that directly translates to freelance work or a job at an African e-commerce company.

Phase: 3 (Weeks 14 through 22)
What it does: Manages group savings (chamas). Members contribute via M-Pesa on a recurring schedule. The system tracks balances, sends automated contribution reminders via Telegram, and provides group analytics on a dashboard.
Tech: Cron jobs, M-Pesa Daraja API (recurring), Telegram Bot API, PostgreSQL

What it proves: You can handle recurring financial transactions, automated reminders, and group-based data models. Chamas are a massive part of the Kenyan financial ecosystem, and this project demonstrates deep understanding of how money moves in the local market.

Phase: 4 (Weeks 23 through 26)
What it does: A booking system for salons, clinics, or service businesses. Customers book appointments, pay an M-Pesa deposit to confirm, and receive SMS reminders before their appointment.
Tech: React Big Calendar, M-Pesa deposit handling, SMS API, background job scheduling

What it proves: You can build scheduling systems with financial deposits and multi-channel reminders. Service businesses across Africa need exactly this, and most currently manage bookings through WhatsApp messages and notebooks.

Phase: 4 (Weeks 23 through 26)
What it does: A unified API that any application can call to send a notification. The hub routes the message through WhatsApp, SMS, or email based on the recipient's preferences, with automatic failover if one channel is unavailable.
Tech: Microservices, BullMQ queues, WhatsApp API, Twilio/Africa's Talking SMS, SendGrid email, failover logic

What it proves: You can architect production-grade infrastructure. This project covers microservices, job queues, multi-channel delivery, and reliability engineering. It is the most technically complex project before the capstone.

Phase: AI engineering track (integrated across Phases 3 and 4)
What it does: A WhatsApp bot that answers customer questions about a business's products, policies, and services using RAG. The bot retrieves relevant information from the business's knowledge base and generates accurate, contextual answers.
Tech: WhatsApp Business API, RAG pipeline, vector database, LLM API, context engineering

What it proves: You can build practical AI applications for the African market. A WhatsApp-based AI assistant is one of the most immediately useful AI products for African businesses, where WhatsApp is the primary customer communication channel.

Phase: AI engineering track (integrated across Phases 3 and 4)
What it does: An AI agent that automates a multi-step business process. For example: receiving a new order, checking inventory, processing the M-Pesa payment, updating the database, and sending a WhatsApp confirmation, all orchestrated by an LLM that decides which tools to call at each step.
Tech: AI agent framework, tool-use patterns, M-Pesa API, WhatsApp API, database operations

What it proves: You can build AI systems that automate real business workflows, not just chat about things. This combines everything: software engineering fundamentals, African Stack integrations, and AI engineering.

Phase: 5, the Capstone Sprint (Weeks 27 through 30)
What it does: A multi-tenant operating system for small African businesses. Combines payment processing (M-Pesa, Airtel, Stripe), USSD self-service for customers, WhatsApp automation for order management, a CRM dashboard, and AI-powered features (automated support, intelligent lead scoring). Each tenant (business) gets their own isolated environment with role-based access control and audit logging.
Tech: Everything from the previous 9 projects, plus multi-tenant architecture, RBAC, Docker, CI/CD, advanced API design

What it proves: You can architect, build, and deploy a complex, production-grade platform. This is the project you walk into a job interview or a client meeting with. It demonstrates that you do not just know individual technologies in isolation. You can combine them into a system that solves a real, complex business problem.

Students also have the option to propose a custom capstone project if they have a specific product idea, as long as it demonstrates equivalent technical breadth.

After completing these 10 projects, you can demonstrate:

• M-Pesa and mobile money integration (the most requested African-market skill)
• WhatsApp Business API automation (the most in-demand business tool integration)
• USSD engineering (a rare and valuable skill)
• AI-powered product features (agents, RAG, automation)
• Production deployment (Docker, CI/CD, cloud hosting)
• Microservices and multi-tenant architecture

Each of these is a hiring signal. Together, they make you one of the most well-rounded junior developers in the African market. For the full technical breakdown of how these projects are structured, see the curriculum guide.