Agritech, health and fintech teams in Ghana build for users who are often offline: farmers in the field, community health workers in villages, traders whose data has run out. An app that simply shows "No internet" fails these users. An offline first app works with the data on the phone and treats the network as a bonus. This skill sets you apart, because many developers only test on fast office WiFi.
The core idea: the phone is the source of truth
In an offline first app, the screen always reads from local storage, not straight from the server. The server is used to fill and update that local copy.
- Reading: the screen shows what is in the local database immediately. In the background, the app fetches fresh data when it can, saves it locally, and the screen updates.
- Writing: when the user saves something, it goes into the local database first, marked as "not yet synced". The user sees it straight away.
- Syncing: when a connection is available, the app sends unsynced records to the server and marks them as synced.
Choosing a write strategy
Not all data is the same:
- Write locally, sync later suits records like survey answers, sales and notes. Losing them would be bad, and a short delay does not matter.