Why Tranquilo exists
For years, I kept asking myself the same question.
Surely there has to be a better way.
Ask enough Zambians living abroad about trying to get something done back home and you will probably recognise the reaction.
The pause.
The rolling of the eyes.
Sometimes the kiss of the teeth.
And then comes the story.
The builder who disappeared.
The relative who was sent money but couldn’t quite account for where it went.
The job that somehow cost twice as much as expected.
The person who promised to handle something, stopped answering their phone and resurfaced weeks later with another explanation.
The project that required constant chasing from thousands of kilometres away.
Almost everyone seems to have one.
Some people have several.
And underneath those stories is something much more serious than inconvenience.
It is trust.
The money is only part of the story.
One of the things I think we sometimes fail to appreciate at home is what that money represents.
A dollar sent from London, Toronto, Johannesburg, Brussels, Sydney or Dallas is not just a dollar.
Someone worked for it.
Someone gave up evenings for it.
Someone stood through a winter commute for it.
Someone postponed something they wanted.
Someone worked overtime.
Someone paid rent, taxes, childcare and bills before deciding that what remained should be sent home to build a house, support a parent, take care of a family member, start a business or complete something they have dreamed about for years.
Those sacrifices are invisible to the person receiving the transfer.
But they are real.
And when that money is treated casually, marked up unnecessarily, misused or simply not accounted for properly, something much more valuable than money disappears.
Trust disappears with it.
And this isn’t only a diaspora problem.
The same frustration exists inside Zambia.
People in demanding careers, people responsible for organisations, elderly parents, business owners and families constantly find themselves asking somebody else to handle something on their behalf.
And too often, delegation requires another full-time job:
- Checking.
- Calling.
- Following up.
- Verifying.
- Asking for photographs.
- Asking for receipts.
- Asking whether the thing that was supposedly done on Tuesday was actually done at all.
That isn’t how life should work.
You should be able to ask someone to do something, know that it will be handled diligently, understand what it cost and receive evidence that it was completed.
That shouldn’t feel revolutionary.
It should be normal.
The moment that made me say: enough.
In September 2026, I found myself close to yet another situation involving somebody abroad who had entrusted money to someone in Zambia to complete a task.
Circumstances changed. The work was no longer required, and the person abroad even offered to compensate the individual fairly for the effort already made and asked that the remaining money simply be returned.
What followed was an exhausting absence of accountability.
I won’t tell the story in detail because the individuals involved are not the point.
The pattern is.
I remember thinking:
How many times have I heard some version of this story?
How many people have stopped investing, building, helping or even trying because getting things done from a distance became too stressful?
How much opportunity have we lost because people simply don’t know whom they can trust?
And how much easier could life be if somebody built a service specifically around solving that problem?
That was the moment years of frustration crystallised into something much simpler:
Build the better way.
That is why Tranquilo exists.
Tranquilo provides personal assistance for Zambians at home and abroad.
But underneath the errands, coordination, sourcing, inspections, appointments, projects and everyday requests is something larger.
We are building infrastructure for trust.
A system in which you know who is handling your request.
A system where costs are clear.
Where possible, you see quotations before money is spent.
You receive updates.
You receive evidence.
You receive receipts.
You know what happened.
You know what something cost.
And if something goes wrong, somebody is accountable for helping resolve it.
Tranquilo is trust and transparency, delivered as a service.
This is not about believing Zambia is hopeless.
Quite the opposite.
I believe enormous amounts of value are trapped behind our trust deficit.
There are Zambians around the world who want to build here.
Invest here.
Support their families here.
Own homes here.
Retire here.
Start businesses here.
Come home.
And there are brilliant, honest, diligent people here capable of serving them.
The problem is that those two groups don’t always have a reliable system through which to find and trust one another.
Tranquilo intends to help build that system.
Not by asking you to trust us blindly.
But by trying, every day, to:
make trust verifiable.
Because trust should never require blind faith.
It should be earned.
Through transparency.
Through communication.
Through documentation.
Through accountability.
And ultimately, through doing what you said you were going to do.
That is the standard we’re building Tranquilo around.
It is also the standard I believe Zambia deserves.
Chansa Kalunga
Founder, Tranquilo
Personal assistance for Zambians at home and abroad.
Further reading
Why I Worry That Zambia’s NGMI (Never Going to Make It)
A founder essay on trust, accountability and the cultural behaviours that can either accelerate or constrain Zambia’s potential.
Read the essay →