RAG development · South Africa
RAG development services in South Africa
Mobile-first, low-bandwidth products with mobile money built in, from a senior team on overlapping hours.
Clarigo Infotech builds retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems: AI search and assistants that find the right information in your documents, databases and knowledge base, then answer with sources. RAG keeps answers accurate and current without retraining a model, and respects who is allowed to see what.
South African companies most often hire us for fintech, healthcare software and AI automation.
10+
Years of delivery
600+
Projects delivered
20+
Countries served
25-30
Days to a live MVP
Get a free consultation
Tell us what you need. A senior engineer replies within one working day.
Mobile-first and built for real conditions
African businesses need products that work on any phone and any connection, with mobile money and local payments built in.
Works on any connection
Lightweight apps and sites that stay fast on slow networks and older phones.
Mobile money and local payments
M-Pesa, Flutterwave, Paystack and card payments integrated.
Overlapping hours
Two and a half to four and a half hours from India, so most of the day overlaps.
Cost-effective delivery
Senior engineers at offshore rates with full code ownership.
What we build with RAG
Chat with your documents
Ask questions across PDFs, policies, manuals and contracts and get answers with citations.
Enterprise knowledge assistants
One place for staff to find answers across Google Drive, SharePoint, Confluence and more.
Customer support answers
Grounded answers for support teams and chatbots, drawn from your help centre and product data.
Search over structured data
Combine document search with SQL and APIs so answers include live numbers.
Permission-aware retrieval
Users only get answers from content they are allowed to see.
Evaluation and tuning
Test sets that measure retrieval and answer quality, and tuning until they pass.
How we approach RAG development
Why RAG instead of fine-tuning
Fine-tuning changes how a model writes; RAG changes what it knows at the moment it answers. For most business questions RAG is cheaper, easier to update and easier to audit, because every answer points to its source.
Getting retrieval right
Quality depends on how documents are cleaned, split, embedded and searched. We use hybrid search (keyword plus vector), re-ranking and metadata filters, and test retrieval separately from the final answer.
Keeping it current and secure
Connectors keep the index in sync as documents change, and access rules from your source systems are applied at query time so nobody sees what they shouldn't.
Measured, not guessed
We build a test set of real questions with expected answers and track accuracy, citation quality and 'I don't know' rates, so you can see improvement and catch regressions.
Built for South African teams
Time-zone overlap
South Africa is three and a half hours behind India, so our working days overlap for most of your morning and early afternoon.
The Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA)
We design to POPIA's conditions for lawful processing: purpose limits, security safeguards and data-subject access, with data hosted in South African cloud regions when required. We sign NDAs before work starts.
Billing
Invoices in South African rand (ZAR) or US dollars. Typical senior rates are $25 to $49 (USD) per hour, or a fixed price for a defined scope.
Built for South Africa's key sectors
South African companies use us for fintech, healthcare software and AI automation, designed to POPIA, with a strong daily overlap in working hours.
Mining
Mines invest in safety, monitoring and automation systems. AI here usually means faster reporting, fewer manual steps and better customer replies.
Financial services
Banks and insurers lead in mobile and digital channels. We start with one costly process and automate it end to end.
Retail
National chains expand e-commerce and loyalty programmes. We build AI agents, assistants and automation around these workflows.
Tourism and wine
Operators and estates sell to international visitors online. AI here usually means faster reporting, fewer manual steps and better customer replies.
Meetings in your time zone
Our team's hours, in South African time
06:30–16:00
Monday to Friday
Overlap with your working day
09:00–16:00
About 7 hours every day
Daily stand-up
09:30
South African time, plus written updates every evening
Local platforms and setup
Messaging channels
Languages
Local payments
Data hosting
AWS Africa (Cape Town), Google Cloud africa-south1 (Johannesburg) and Azure South Africa North, in your own cloud account, so data stays where your rules require.
How it works
Week 1: discovery and design
We agree the use case, success measures and data, and show you a clickable design.
Weeks 2-3: build and integrate
We build, connect it to your systems and data, and demo working software every week.
Week 4: test and launch
We test with real cases, add monitoring and guardrails, then go live.
After launch: improve and scale
The same engineers keep tuning quality, cost and features as usage grows.
See what we've built
Try it yourself, free
Free browser tools from our team. No sign-up needed.
RAG development services: questions from South Africa
Do you work with companies in South Africa?+
Yes. Clarigo Infotech works with companies across South Africa, including Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban, as part of clients in 20+ countries. South African companies most often hire us for fintech, healthcare software and AI automation. We work remotely from India with one in-house team.
What time-zone overlap do we get from South Africa?+
South Africa is three and a half hours behind India, so our working days overlap for most of your morning and early afternoon.
How do you handle the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA)?+
We design to POPIA's conditions for lawful processing: purpose limits, security safeguards and data-subject access, with data hosted in South African cloud regions when required. We sign NDAs before work starts.
Which currency do you bill in, and what does it cost?+
We bill in South African rand (ZAR) or US dollars. Senior engineers typically cost $25 to $49 (USD) per hour, and fixed-scope projects such as an MVP in 25 to 30 days are quoted after a free consultation.
Can you build in English and Afrikaans and isiZulu?+
Yes. We build interfaces and content in English and Afrikaans and isiZulu, and test them with native speakers before launch.
Where will our data be hosted?+
Usually in AWS Africa (Cape Town), Google Cloud africa-south1 (Johannesburg) and Azure South Africa North, or wherever your data rules require. Everything runs in your own cloud account, so you stay in control.
Do you support WhatsApp?+
Yes. Customers in South Africa often prefer WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger and LinkedIn, so we connect chatbots, notifications and support flows to them.
How is RAG different from a normal chatbot?+
A normal chatbot answers from what the model learned in training. A RAG assistant answers from your current, private information, so it is more accurate for your business and can show its sources.
Which data sources can you connect?+
PDFs and Office files, Google Drive, SharePoint, Confluence, Notion, websites, help centres, databases and APIs. We add connectors so the index stays up to date.
RAG development services around the world
Worldwide page →North America
UK & Europe
UKGermanyNetherlandsSwitzerlandIrelandSwedenFranceItalySpainPortugalBelgiumLuxembourgDenmarkNorwayFinlandAustriaPoland
Middle East