Morobi launches Lesotho’s 1st online shopping mall

Founder of NexaVTS, a local technology company, Litšitso Morobi, has introduced Hae Mall – Lesotho’s first locally developed online shopping mall – in partnership with his team.

Morobi said his mission is to demonstrate that innovation does not have to be imported, but can be created by Basotho for Basotho.

In an interview with theReporter, he explained that Hae Mall was designed around existing buying and selling behaviours in local communities, where business often happens through relationships and social media platforms such as WhatsApp.

Hae Mall takes that familiar way of trading and organises it into a digital space where businesses can permanently display their products. Customers can browse and when an order is made, the details are sent directly to the business’s WhatsApp.

From there, the owner and customer can communicate directly about delivery and payment. It’s digital innovation, but still deeply human.

Beyond its function, Morobi said Hae Mall represents a pathway from learning to livelihood. Every student from the Computational Thinkers & Data Experts (CTDE) web development programme’s 2025/2026 cohort will transition into NexaVTS after completing their studies.

“They will work on Hae Mall and other real-world projects, gaining experience and employment in the very field they studied. It forms a self-sustaining ecosystem where CTDE trains talent and NexaVTS employs it — bridging the gap between education and meaningful work,” he noted.

Morobi’s journey in technology began at NUL International School (NULIS) under the mentorship of his computer science teacher, Ralilateng Liphoto, who introduced him to programming in 2019.

By the time he completed high school, he was coding at the level of third and fourth-year university students.

“I realised that true understanding is shown not by how well you perform, but by how well you can help others understand. That insight inspired me to found CTDE — an initiative to support students struggling with computer science at both high school and university levels,” Morobi recounted.

He believes that education in the age of artificial intelligence and automation must evolve. Through CTDE and NexaVTS, he aims to build a circular system that learns, teaches, builds, and employs — all within Lesotho.

Together, these two initiatives are his contribution to redefining the story of Basotho technology: independent, human-centered, and sustainable.