Building Laravel Senegal. The Artisan of the Day Is Kheraba Diaby.
Kheraba Diaby’s journey into Laravel started during his time at university in Senegal. In his second year, he built an application to help students share past exams, study hints, and resources. The first version was written in plain PHP, but when he rebuilt it using Laravel, something clicked.
“The funny part was my pagination bug,” he recalls with a laugh. “If you were on page five and tried to go back to page four, the system just sent you back to page one.” It wasn’t perfect, but it marked his first real step into Laravel, planting the seeds for a deeper connection with the framework.
Scaling Skills in FinTech
Diaby now works as a backend developer at Alal, a fintech company dedicated to simplifying cross-border payments for African businesses via prepaid cards. He was the first engineer to join the team alongside the CTO, helping shape the technical foundation of the company.
At Alal Technologies, the stack revolves around Laravel, Livewire, Alpine.js, and Filament. “Laravel makes it possible to build and scale infrastructure fast,” Diaby explains. “It gives us both productivity and flexibility, which are crucial for fintech in Africa.”
Starting Laravel Senegal
While his professional career was growing, Diaby also wanted to connect with others passionate about Laravel in his home country. That opportunity came when his CTO challenged him to step up and organize a community.
“At first, it was just a challenge,” Diaby says. “My CTO told me, ‘You should start a Laravel developer group in Senegal.’ I thought, why not? I’m a Laravel developer, but I didn’t know the others, and they didn’t know me.”
Together with his friend Idrissa Ndiouck (whom he reached out to on LinkedIn), Diaby co-founded Laravel Senegal, the country’s first community dedicated to the framework. The group has since become a hub for developers to meet, share knowledge, and strengthen the local tech ecosystem.
“There are a lot of talented Laravel developers in Senegal,” he says. “But without a space to connect, we don’t get to learn from each other. That’s why the meetup matters.”
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