Many users in Ghana buy small data bundles, travel between towns with patchy signal, or lose connection when a bundle runs out mid task. An app that still shows useful content offline feels far more reliable. Progressive web app (PWA) techniques make this possible with web technology alone. This topic is optional but valuable for products serving northern Ghana.
What a PWA is
A progressive web app is a website that can:
- Be installed to the home screen, opening like an app without an app store.
- Work offline or on poor connections, by saving important files on the phone.
- Load faster on repeat visits, because files come from the phone instead of the network.
The two pieces
1. A web app manifest. A small JSON file describing your app's name, icons and colours, linked from your HTML:
<link rel="manifest" href="/manifest.json">{
"name": "Tamale Market Prices",
"short_name": "Prices",
"start_url": "/",
"display": "standalone",
"icons": [{ "src": "/icon-192.png", "sizes": "192x192", "type": "image/png" }]
}2. A service worker. A script that sits between your page and the network. It can save files in a cache and serve them when the network fails.