About us
Built in Kampala. Held to a global standard.
Being from here is not a caveat — it’s the advantage. We know how businesses in this region actually run, and we build to the standard of any agency you could hire in London, Berlin, or Dubai. Our work has to prove both, every time.
The story
Twenty years of shipping, distilled into one studio.
Blends & Pearls grew out of a simple observation: businesses in East Africa were being asked to choose between local vendors who were close but inconsistent, and international agencies that were polished but distant, expensive, and slow.
We built the studio to remove that choice. The same team that architected Uganda’s national procurement platform and shipped apps to the Play Store now designs, builds, hosts, and maintains software for growing businesses — at close range, on fixed timelines, in plain language.
And because we build with AI in our own workflow — not as a buzzword, but as the way we work daily — we move at a pace that used to take teams three times our size.
Founder & lead engineer
Gilbert
Rutatiina.
Software engineer and CTO with 15+ years across government, fintech-adjacent systems, and consumer apps. Led system architecture for Uganda’s e-Government Procurement platform at the Ministry of Finance. Two-time hackathon and startup-competition winner.
- 15+ years shipping software
- e-GP Uganda — system architecture lead
- Garage48 2011 & Pivot East 2012 winner
- Tiger Loyalty — live on Google Play
What we
hold to.
Four commitments. Every contract, update, and support reply has to live up to them.
Speed you can plan around
Fast means a date on paper, not adrenaline. Timelines are fixed before contract and milestones are billed, not hours.
Plain language
If we can't explain a decision without jargon, we don't understand it well enough yet. You'll never need a translator to read our updates.
Ownership, end to end
We design it, build it, host it, and maintain it. There's no other vendor to point at when something needs attention.
Proof over promises
Award wins, a national platform, apps in production for years. We'd rather show what we've shipped than describe what we could.
The road here.
2002
First sites shipped in Kampala
Our founder starts building and maintaining websites for Kampala businesses — working directly with owners, learning what actually matters to them.
2011
Garage48 Kampala — winner
Somesha, an education platform, goes from idea to working product in 48 hours and takes the top prize.
2012
Pivot East — winner
Easy Order wins East Africa's startup competition in the business category, digitising ordering and resource management.
2013–2020
Scaling production systems
Years of full-stack engineering at SMSONE in Kampala — large, busy systems that had to stay up and stay fast.
2020–2023
National infrastructure
Leading system architecture for Uganda's e-Government Procurement platform at the Ministry of Finance — software a country depends on.
2023
Cross-border product work
CTO and lead developer roles in Dar es Salaam; the Tiger Loyalty app ships to the Google Play Store.
Today
Blends & Pearls Ltd
A studio in Kampala designing, building, hosting, and caring for software — for clients here, across Africa, and abroad.
The next milestone could be the thing we build for you.
Start the conversation →Work with people who’ve shipped before.
A free 30-minute call. We come back with a written plan, a fixed timeline, and a price. If we're not the right fit, we'll say so.