Mizani
Offline-first Android budgeting for everyday money
What it is
Mizani is a native Android app for tracking income, expenses, transfers, refunds, and balances across cash, mobile money, and bank wallets. It helps people understand day-to-day cash flow and multi-currency activity while keeping the ledger on the device.
The Problem
Keeping a useful view of personal finances is hard when money is spread across cash, mobile money, bank accounts, and different currencies. A tracking app also needs to work through unreliable connectivity without asking people to trust a cloud account with sensitive records.
My Role
I built Mizani as a native Android personal finance app, shaping its core flows from onboarding and transaction entry to wallet management, insights, local security, and data export.
Approach
Developed in Kotlin with Jetpack Compose and a local Room database protected with SQLCipher. The app works without an account or continuous internet access; currency reference rates are fetched only when requested. I added country presets, support for cash, mobile money, and bank wallets, income, expenses, transfers, refunds and adjustments, plus cash-flow insights, CSV and Excel exports, passphrase-encrypted backups, and optional PIN or biometric access.
Hardest Decision
The core challenge was adding useful currency and recovery features while keeping the ledger private and usable offline. I kept rates as optional, dated reference data and built encrypted backups for moving or restoring records, without introducing account or sync dependencies.
Status
Released as Mizani 1.0.0 for Android, with offline transaction and wallet tracking, multi-currency entry, cash-flow insights, exports, and protected backups. The app includes regional setup for Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Nigeria, Ghana, and South Africa.
What I'd Change
I would extend the insights with opt-in budget targets and recurring transactions while preserving local-first storage and clear export and backup controls.