LewaHub: Building a School Discovery Platform for Cameroon

Chia Voltaire — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 16:45:32 +0000

What We Built

LewaHub is a platform designed to make discovering and comparing schools in Cameroon easier, faster, and more reliable.

Education is a fundamental part of society, but finding trustworthy information about schools in Cameroon can still be difficult. Many parents and learners rely heavily on word of mouth from friends, family members, school staff, or advertisements encountered while moving from place to place.

While these methods can be useful, they can also make it difficult to access consistent, credible, and comprehensive information about available schools.

LewaHub was built to help close that gap between choosing the next step in an academic journey and having the information needed to make that decision confidently.

Our goal is simple:

Make reliable school information accessible whenever and wherever parents and learners need it.

Instead of visiting multiple schools or relying entirely on recommendations, LewaHub brings relevant information together in one platform.

Users can discover schools across Cameroon and explore information such as:

School location and contact information
Administrative structure
Curriculum and programs offered
Available facilities
School fees
Academic sections and tracks
Reviews and evaluations
Other information useful when comparing schools

What started as an unfinished idea is now a real product with a polished user experience, functional backend, search, verification workflows, and review functionality brought together into one system.

🚀 The Comeback Story

LewaHub did not start as a finished product.

It began as a prototype built around a real problem. The idea was strong, but the product needed more structure, a cleaner interface, better user experience, and reliable end-to-end functionality before it could genuinely serve its intended users.

For this internship project, we came back with a different mindset.

We decided to treat LewaHub as a real product rather than simply a demo.

That meant focusing on the things that matter when building something people can actually use:

Creating a consistent and unified experience across the platform
Improving the UI and overall user experience
Making the product feel trustworthy and accessible
Building reliable backend flows for search and verification
Bringing the different features together into a coherent user journey
Moving from a prototype toward a functional product

The biggest difference is that LewaHub is no longer just an idea or prototype.

It now has a clear user journey, real functionality, structured data, and a foundation that can continue evolving into a larger platform for education discovery in Cameroon.

🛠️ Tech Stack

Frontend

React 18 : Building the interactive user interface
TypeScript : Safer and more maintainable frontend development
Vite : Fast development and production builds
Tailwind CSS : Responsive and consistent UI styling
React Router : Client-side navigation
Leaflet & React Leaflet : Interactive school maps
Framer Motion : Smooth UI animations
i18next / React-i18next : Internationalization
Lucide React : Consistent interface icons

Backend

Node.js : Backend runtime
Express.js : REST API and server architecture
JavaScript (ES Modules) : Backend application logic
Prisma ORM : Database access and management
Zod : Data and request validation
Redis : Caching and fast data access

Database & Geolocation

PostgreSQL : Core relational database
PostGIS : Geographic and spatial data
Haversine Distance Calculation : Distance-based school discovery
OpenStreetMap : Geographic and mapping data

AI

OpenAI-compatible API : AI-powered functionality
Natural-Language Search : Helping users find schools using conversational queries

Security & Infrastructure

Helmet : HTTP security headers
CORS : Cross-origin request management
Express Rate Limit : API abuse protection
dotenv : Environment configuration
Git & GitHub : Version control and collaboration

DEV Community: Chia Voltaire

LewaHub: Building a School Discovery Platform for Cameroon

What We Built

🚀 The Comeback Story

🛠️ Tech Stack

Frontend

Backend

Database & Geolocation

AI

Security & Infrastructure

🎥 Demo

Live Website

GitHub Repository

Video Walkthrough

👥 Project Members