When I look at The Hut today, I don't just see a shop. I see the physical result of years of learning, uncertainty, persistence, and growth. This shop is new. The journey behind it is not.
If you walked into The Hut today, you’d see a relatively new shop. Clean benches. Microscopes. Hot air stations. A few finished devices waiting for collection. What you wouldn’t see is everything that had to happen before that shop could exist.
One more thing worth knowing before the story starts: The Hut is the name on the door, but it isn’t the whole company. The company is NoveaTech — the name everything has operated under since 2016, long before there was a physical shop to walk into. The Hut is simply NoveaTech's public face, the part that's easiest for people to relate to. What follows is the story of NoveaTech, told through the door that finally opened.
Long before any of this had a name, there was a broken DVD player in the house. I was eleven years old, and instead of accepting that it was finished, I wanted to know why it had stopped working. So I opened it up.
Inside was a small optical lens, worn down and no longer able to read a disc properly. I didn't know the technical term for it at the time. I only knew that if I could find a replacement and put everything back together correctly, the player might work again. I did, and it did.
It wasn't a big moment to anyone else in the house. To me, it was the first time I understood that things weren't magic. They were systems — and systems could be opened, understood, and fixed rather than simply thrown away. That single afternoon planted something that never really left.
Everything that came later — the coding, the design, the repair work, The Hut — traces back to that same instinct. The tools changed over the years. The instinct never did.
My serious journey into technology began around the end of November 2016. There was no grand opening, no investor meeting, no business plan printed and stapled. There was just a growing interest in computers and a feeling that there was something more I could do with them than just use them.
Instead of waiting for someone to formally teach me, I started teaching myself. The first major area was programming and coding. I spent hours understanding how software worked, breaking things, fixing them, reading documentation that didn’t make sense at first, then reading it again until it did.
That period matters because I wasn’t learning technology as a hobby. Even then, I was beginning to see it as a way of creating opportunities. Coding taught me how to think logically. It taught me that complex problems can be broken into smaller, solvable parts. That mindset — learn, experiment, struggle, adapt, improve, continue — became the backbone of everything that followed.
This was the foundation. Not a shop. Not a brand. Just curiosity and consistency. Everything I built from that point on — the code, the design work, the repairs, and eventually The Hut — has operated under one name ever since: NoveaTech.
Between 2016 and 2018, my learning expanded beyond code. I fell deep into graphic design and digital creative software. I spent considerable time inside Adobe applications — Photoshop, Animate, Premiere Pro, and other tools in that ecosystem.
I was exploring the relationship between technology and creativity. Coding had taught me logic. Design taught me how to communicate visually. Animation introduced motion and digital storytelling. Video editing taught me timing, narrative, and how to communicate through moving images.
I didn’t specialize immediately. That was intentional, even if it didn’t feel like a strategy at the time. I was building a broad technical foundation without knowing exactly where it would lead. Looking back, that breadth was critical.
By around 2018, I was considerably more confident. I could build something, design it, animate it, and edit it. I wasn’t an expert in any single tool, but I was becoming someone who could move between disciplines — and that ability to move would later define my work.
From 2018 through 2020, I continued developing those abilities. Software, graphic design, coding, digital media — I kept building. But something shifted in how I approached technology.
I was no longer only interested in using technology. I wanted to understand how things worked underneath. How a file renders. How an interface communicates. How a device is put together and why it fails. That curiosity — not just using the tool, but understanding the system — became one of the defining characteristics of my journey.
It’s what eventually pulled me deeper into hardware.
Here’s a distinction that matters: my relationship with phone repair actually predates the formal beginning of my broader technology journey in 2016. I had been replacing batteries and screens as far back as around 2014.
In 2020, as I was becoming more involved with iPhone-related work, I already had that practical base. Replacing batteries. Screens. Straightforward replaceable components. It was hands-on, immediate, and it taught me respect for physical devices.
I didn’t wake up one day and become a repair technician. The practical side had been developing alongside my interest in software and design. At first, the repairs were relatively straightforward — I was comfortable replacing what was broken, but I hadn’t yet entered the much more demanding world of board-level repair.
That transition was coming, and it would change how I thought about repair entirely.
During this period I was also trying to build myself as an entrepreneur. I had ambitions of turning my technical abilities into a real business. Then COVID-19 arrived in 2020.
It didn’t feel dramatic in the moment. It felt like uncertainty. Plans were interrupted. Momentum was lost. Opportunities became harder to pursue. Like many entrepreneurs during that period, I had to wait, adapt, and reassess.
I don’t portray this as a failure. It was an interruption in a journey that was still being built. The dream didn’t disappear. It was delayed. And delays, I’ve learned, are part of building something that lasts. You learn to hold onto the direction even when the timeline falls apart.
Around 2021, I moved into micro-soldering and advanced electronics repair. This was a major change — not just technically, but philosophically.
Instead of simply replacing damaged parts, I became interested in what was actually happening at board level. Circuit boards. Components. Electronic faults. The extremely small components inside modern smartphones and computers that most people never see.
Micro-soldering demands a completely different level of patience and precision. Working with microscopic components requires concentration, hand control, technical understanding, problem-solving, and a willingness to make mistakes and learn from them.
This was the shift from being primarily a component replacement technician to becoming someone interested in diagnosing the underlying problem. I no longer wanted only to replace what was broken. I wanted to understand why it was broken. That mindset — diagnosis over replacement — became central to the technician I was becoming.
It also humbled me. At board level, you can’t force a solution. You have to understand the circuit.
As my technical ambitions grew, I understood that skill alone was not enough. Professional repair requires appropriate tools and equipment. Around 2022, I began investing more seriously in the equipment necessary to perform professional repair work.
Buying that first proper microscope, a reliable hot air station, precision tools — it represented more than tools. It was a statement that I was taking the craft seriously. When you build a business from the ground up, spending money on equipment when you could spend it elsewhere feels risky. But it also makes the years of learning tangible.
The equipment represented years of self-learning becoming something you could touch. It was me saying: this can be sustainable. This can be professional. This can be a business.
These are not separate in my mind. They are different parts of the same ecosystem. Coding taught me logic. Design taught me visual communication. Repair taught me how physical systems work. Entrepreneurship taught me how to turn skills into value. That combination is what I wanted The Hut to eventually carry.
There were periods when I was not highly visible online. I wasn’t constantly posting my work. I wasn’t documenting every achievement. That doesn’t mean I was inactive.
A lot of the development was happening quietly. Learning. Working. Experimenting. Making mistakes. Improving. Trying to understand business. Trying to understand technology. Trying to build a future when no one was watching.
Progress doesn’t always happen publicly. Sometimes the most important development happens when nobody is clapping. Those quiet years were not wasted. They were where the foundation hardened.
In mid-2023, I got married.
Marriage introduced another dimension. My ambitions were no longer only about myself. I was building a life and taking on greater responsibilities. It changed how I viewed stability, work, ambition, and the future. Entrepreneurship stopped being just about freedom and creativity. It became about building something sustainable.
Then, in 2025, I became a father.
Fatherhood didn’t make the story more sentimental. It made it more mature. The question was no longer simply “What can I achieve?” It became: What can I build? What kind of future can I create? What example can I set?
It added responsibility, perspective, and a stronger reason to build something meaningful. Not a shop that just fixes phones, but a foundation my family can be proud of. Not hype. Work that lasts.
After years of learning, experimenting, repairing, designing, coding, working, pausing, restarting, and developing myself, I reached another major milestone. NoveaTech opened its own physical shop: THE HUT.
The Hut represents much more than a physical location. It's the storefront for a company — NoveaTech — that's existed since 2016. It represents the accumulation of everything that came before it.
I don’t want The Hut to be just another repair shop. The vision is to create a professional environment where people can receive reliable technological services while the business continues evolving.
The Hut should represent technical skill, professionalism, reliability, creativity, learning, innovation, problem-solving, customer service, entrepreneurship, and continuous improvement. The business is still young, but the experience behind it is not. That’s the part I want people to understand.
The Hut may be new, but the journey behind it is not. The physical shop is new. The company is not — NoveaTech has been building since 2016. The ambition is not new. The tools may be new. The curiosity is not. The business may be entering a new chapter. The learning began years ago.
I didn’t build this overnight. I built it by moving between disciplines, by failing quietly, by investing when it was uncomfortable, and by continuing when plans were interrupted. Coding developed problem-solving. Problem-solving encouraged deeper technical curiosity. Design developed creativity. Phone repair introduced physical technology. Component replacement created an interest in deeper diagnosis. That curiosity led to micro-soldering. Micro-soldering required professional equipment. The accumulated skills eventually created the foundation for a business. Marriage and fatherhood added responsibility and perspective. The Hut became the physical expression of years of preparation.
The recurring pattern was always the same: learn → experiment → struggle → adapt → improve → continue.
When I look at The Hut today, I don't just see a shop. I see the physical result of years of learning, uncertainty, persistence, and growth.
I am not claiming to have reached the destination. I am opening another chapter. The Hut is a foundation. There is still more to learn. More technology to understand. More businesses to build. More customers to serve. More skills to develop. More ideas to explore.
This is not a success story about someone who had everything figured out. It is a story about someone who kept learning until the pieces finally started coming together.
Harare based. Repair, web, design, and product thinking — all under one roof. The Hut is the storefront of NoveaTech, the foundation, not the finish line.