It's 8am in Lusaka. My US team is wrapping up their Thursday, and I'm starting my Friday. In the background, my phone pings with a Slack message from Toronto — a quick question about an API endpoint. By the time I've made coffee and sat down, New York is asleep and Nairobi is just logging on. This is the reality of remote work when you're based in Africa and your clients are spread across North America and beyond.
I've been working remotely as a software engineer for over seven years. In that time, I've shipped production code for beauty-tech startups in the US, built government chatbots for Michigan, and led engineering teams for a Canadian real estate startup — all without ever stepping foot in those offices. Remote work didn't just change how I work; it completely redefined what was possible from where I live.
The Time Zone Dance
The first thing people ask when they hear I work for American companies is: 'How do you handle the time zones?' Zambia runs on CAT (Central Africa Time), which puts me 6-7 hours ahead of the US East Coast. For a long time I treated this as a disadvantage. I'd stay up late to attend meetings, wake up to hundreds of Slack notifications, and constantly feel like I was chasing a moving train.
Then I flipped the script. The time difference means I have several hours of uninterrupted deep work before my US colleagues even wake up. No meetings, no noise, no interruptions. I do my best thinking between 7am and 11am CAT — three hours before anyone in New York is at their desk. What used to feel like a bug became the most productive window of my day.
“The time zone is only a problem if you're trying to work like you're in the same office. Embrace async, and it becomes a superpower.”
Trust is Built in Commits, Not Meetings
One of the most important things I learned early on: remote trust is transactional in the best sense. Your work either speaks for itself or it doesn't. Nobody can see you at your desk for eight hours a day, so the only currency that matters is what you ship. Clean commits, clear PR descriptions, and hitting your deadlines consistently will build more trust than any Zoom call.
I make a point of over-communicating progress. Not in a performative way — I don't send 'just checking in' messages — but in a purposeful way. When I finish a feature, I write up what I did, why I made the choices I did, and what to watch out for. When I'm blocked, I say so immediately with context. This habit eliminated most of the anxiety my managers had about working with a remote developer they'd never met in person.
Async-First is a Superpower
The best remote teams I've worked with treat asynchronous communication as the default, not the fallback. Meetings are reserved for decisions that genuinely need real-time discussion. Everything else — status updates, questions, code reviews, planning — happens in writing, with thoughtful responses rather than reactive ones.
This forces a discipline that makes teams better. You can't ask a vague question in a meeting and expect someone to fill in the gaps. You have to think through what you're actually asking, provide context, and be clear about what you need. That clarity makes the answer better too. I've found that async-first teams write better documentation, make better technical decisions, and have far less meeting fatigue.
Tools that make async work:
- Loom for quick video walkthroughs instead of calls
- Linear or Jira for transparent, self-documenting work
- Notion or Confluence for living documentation
- GitHub for code reviews that serve as a permanent record
- Slack with proper channel discipline (not a chat room)
The Isolation Problem is Real
Here's the thing nobody talks about in the 'remote work is amazing' think-pieces: it can be isolating in ways that slowly wear you down. When you're the only engineer in your timezone, you miss the casual office conversations where ideas form. You miss the energy of a team in a room problem-solving together. You miss having someone tap you on the shoulder and say 'hey, have you seen this?'
I combat this deliberately. I invest in local developer communities — meetups, online groups, Discord servers for African tech professionals. I schedule optional 'coffee chats' with teammates to talk about anything except work. And I take my lunch break seriously instead of eating at my desk. These aren't luxuries; they're maintenance. Remote burnout sneaks up on you, and by the time you notice it, you're already running on empty.
Practical Lessons After 7+ Years
- Set a hard end to your workday and stick to it — the work will always be there tomorrow
- Create a dedicated workspace, even if it's just a specific chair and a lamp
- Dress for work, even if only from the waist up for video calls — it signals to your brain that you've started
- Block your calendar for deep work in the morning and protect it like a meeting
- Invest in good internet, a good microphone, and good lighting — they signal professionalism before you say a word
- Say no to meetings that could be emails, but say yes to building genuine relationships with your teammates
The Bigger Picture
Remote work didn't just open professional doors for me — it changed what was economically possible for someone living in Lusaka. The talent is here. The ambition is here. What remote work does is remove the geography tax that used to price African developers out of the global market.
But it only works if you treat it seriously. Remote work is not a perk — it's a responsibility. The freedom it gives you is proportional to the discipline and intentionality you bring to it. Get that balance right, and you can build a career that would have been impossible a generation ago.
