The idea was not born in an air-conditioned office, but on the dust and concrete of real sites in Burkina Faso — from a drainage canal in Ouagadougou to road works in Bobo-Dioulasso — uniting construction field experience and software engineering.
Gestrapro was born from the direct intersection of construction site realities and software engineering, each contributing what the other could not build alone.
Managing Director of Estra BTP in Burkina Faso (Ouagadougou, Bobo-Dioulasso). He brings his real-world site laboratory, deep knowledge of workforce dynamics, and the demand for an uncompromisingly simple tool.
Software architect and founder of Futurion. He provides robust multi-tenant SaaS engineering, offline-first reliability, and infrastructure tailored to the West African economic landscape.
Rigorous on-site observation across dozens of real construction sites revealed five major blind spots that destroy West African construction profitability:
Material waste and pilferage alone account for ~4% to ~8% in cost overruns on every site. Cement bags vanish, fuel burns on undocumented trips, and heavy equipment is swapped across jobs without tracking.
Paper logbooks, Excel sheets, and WhatsApp groups never reconcile. Data remains siloed, never alerts anyone in time, and fails under formal audit scrutiny.
True costs and margins are only uncovered when the job is over and losses are already locked in. Consumption anomalies must trigger live alerts during construction, not post-mortems six months later.
Failing to account for true hourly costs and machine wear distorts project quotes and fleet replacement decisions. A site using a motor grader for 300 hours must bear the real cost of that wear.
Lenders and diaspora owners (~30% of remittances invested in real estate) lack independent physical verification. Without certified evidence, banks lend cautiously and owners fear ghost construction sites.
Incumbent software (Procore, Buildertrend, Fieldwire) was built and priced for North America and Europe, ignoring West African field constraints:
Per-seat billing is impossible when foremen, storekeepers, timekeepers, and accountants must all collaborate. GestaPro offers flat-rate company pricing with unlimited users.
With ~22% internet penetration in Burkina Faso, an app requiring continuous connectivity crashes in the field. GestaPro operates 100% offline-first.
Foreign tools impose unfamiliar terminology on local crews. GestaPro is natively francophone, tailored for varying literacy levels, and bilingual for international financiers.
Foreign tools force USD or EUR conversions. GestaPro operates in exact integer FCFA, preventing rounding errors on progress claims.
Western exports do not align with the OHADA / SYSCOHADA chart of accounts used by accountants across the 17 regional member states.
Bank credit cards cannot be mandated on site. GestaPro integrates directly with Orange Money, Moov, MTN MoMo, and Wave for subscriptions and field expenses.
Data belongs to the firm that logs it. It can be exported at any time in formats your accountant can use.
Without permission, no one sees anything. The firm decides what it shares, job by job, and can revoke access at any time.
Where captured, photos, location context, date and time can remain connected to the event or figure they support.
If the site manager cannot use it, the tool is at fault, not the person.
Support happens in French, on WhatsApp, with people who know West African construction.
No drones, no 3D models and no AI demos: first the fundamentals that protect margin and build trust.
These stages outline our deployment trajectory, firmly rooted in Burkina Faso before scaling regionally.
Offline daily logs, rigorous material inventory control, fuel monitoring, heavy equipment tracking, and crew attendance.
Procurement, 3-way matching, subcontractor and task-crew management, progress claims, and real-time margin control.
Distant owner and diaspora portal, sealed evidence packages, and physical progress verification workflows for lenders.
Expansion to Côte d’Ivoire, Benin, and the wider WAEMU zone with localized mercuriale price schedules.
A useful conversation starts with what actually happens on your sites in Ouagadougou, Bobo-Dioulasso, or across the region.