Software Testing: A strategic asset for African Tech SMEs
Blog
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18/07/2025
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In a fast-paced digital landscape, African tech SMEs face a difficult equation: deliver faster, with fewer resources, without compromising on quality.
That’s where software testing becomes a strategic asset. It not only helps prevent critical bugs, but also accelerates delivery, reduces long-term costs, and ensures a seamless customer experience.
QA Challenges for African Tech SMEs
Across many African tech companies, teams are skilled and agile but often understaffed, with limited resources. Between tight deadlines, limited budgets, and growing client expectations, ensuring software quality is harder than it looks.
Here are the 3 biggest challenges QA teams (often developers themselves) face daily :
Faster development cycles, Less time to test
With widespread adoption of Agile methodologies, frequent sprints, and DevOps, releases come at a rapid pace. This leaves little time to test each feature thoroughly. Automation is often considered… but rarely implemented, due to a lack of proper tools or specialized profiles.
Testing too late = Paying more
According to the IBM System Science Institute, fixing a bug in production can cost up to 1,000x more than if it had been caught during the design phase.
Why such a gap? Because late-stage defects often require:
- Emergency fixes in unstable environments
- Service outages & potential contract penalties
- Data loss or customer churn
Insufficient test coverage
Due to time constraints or lack of methodology, testing is often focused only on “happy paths.” But it’s the edge cases, unexpected errors, and complex interactions that cause real trouble.
Left unchecked, these blind spots turn into ticking time bombs.
➜ Poor test coverage can increase the risk of critical bugs in production by 30–50%.
👉 Good news? These issues aren’t inevitable. Even small teams can adopt a structured, scalable, and progressively automated QA approach.
That’s exactly what Elix QA is built for.
Structure & Automate your testing with Elix
Elix QA is the quality assurance module of the Elix Suite. Designed for agile, fast-moving environments, it helps teams structure, automate, and monitor the entire testing process, without slowing things down. It supports developers, testers, and QA managers at every stage, from test creation to final delivery validation.
Here are key features of Elix QA Module :
Test Library – Create, organize, standardize test cases
- Build & manage test cases with templates, expected results, steps, and validation workflows
- Intuitive Tree view for navigating, duplicating, or archiving test cases
- Approval workflow: only published tests can be linked to User Stories
- Time tracking and automatic effort logging during test creation
Test Management – Full visibility with minimal friction
- QA Dashboard: track multiple projects/sprints with progress status
- Summary view of User Stories (in design, development, testing…)
- Advanced test case search by status, name, or feature
- Export test reports in PDF/Word
Test Execution – Run your campaigns, manual or automated
- Prepare test runs/suites by iteration
- Track time and effort during execution
- Manage bugs from detection to resolution
- View complete test case history
- Run automated tests via Selenium or other tools
- Autonomous testing with AI: generate test cases from User Stories (build plans, execute, report)
Release Management – Plan deliveries with confidence
- Schedule releases: dates, tasks, environments, products
- Manage installations and environments (URLs, types, modules…)
- Track deployed versions and their statuses (ready to test, in production, etc.)
Elix QA : Get real results, fast
Deployed across various African tech environments, Elix QA has delivered fast, measurable improvements :
📉 Fewer critical bugs: Broader test coverage dramatically reduced early regressions
⚙️ Automated testing = Faster delivery : Less manual work, faster time-to-market
🔄 Agile cycles simplified: Every sprint ends with a fast, documented validation
📊 Data-Driven decisions: Built-in quality KPIs support confident Go/No-Go decisions
🤝 Enhanced collaboration: Shared test campaign views align QA, Dev, and Product teams
With Elix QA, software testing becomes simple, integrated, and above all : efficient.
Automated campaigns, clear dashboards and KPIs, smarter collaboration: everything is built to help your team deliver better, faster, and with fewer surprises.
Want to scale your QA without complicating your processes?