Creative tooling
Our projects ask how creative communities are organized, where their workflows break, and what small pieces of software could make their work easier to sustain.
Hello World is a research studio that builds tools for cultural production in West Africa.
We make software, often open source or free to use, that helps creators and creative communities work, share, publish, learn, and organize. Our focus is West Africa and the internet around it: the informal systems, creative scenes, and small communities that already shape culture. We're interested in tools that make those communities more durable.
AI is making software easier to produce, but that does not make human creativity less important. It makes taste, judgment, and problem selection more important. The tools will change. The craft will change. But the central work remains human: deciding what is worth solving, who it should serve, and what kind of world the solution quietly encourages.
Software as inquiry
We treat products as investigations, not just deliverables. A tool is a way to ask sharper questions about people, culture, infrastructure, and the habits around making things.
Knowledge sharing
Through essays and case studies, we try to articulate the decisions, costs, reversals, and tradeoffs behind the work. Those are often the lessons other builders can actually use.
Hello World was originally founded in 2014 as a consulting studio by Timi Ajiboye and Opemipo Aikomo. The studio helped launch products including Tix and Sendcash before turning more directly toward its own research and tools.