What is AfriHex?

AfriHex is a developer platform for digital addressing in Africa. It turns any location into a precise, human-readable hex code using Uber's H3 grid — for example, the centre of Accra's Kotoka airport is AF-GH-7-0GXTQD5RFZZZZ — and layers a full suite of location products on top, starting with Ghana.

Where a traditional postal system gives you No. 10, Spintex Road, Accra (and even that fails most of the country), AfriHex gives every coordinate a unique, stable identifier that anyone can look up — no street names required.

How it works

1. Sign up for a free API key (POST /v2/self/signup or the dashboard).
2. Send the key in the X-API-Key header on every /v2/* request.
3. Search a place name, or resolve an address you already have — either way you get back normalized coordinates in one call.

curl "https://api.afrihex.com/v2/search?q=Accra%20Mall" \
  -H "X-API-Key: $AFRIHEX_API_KEY"

{
  "success": true,
  "data": {
    "query": "Accra Mall",
    "count": 2,
    "results": [
      {
        "type": "place",
        "name": "Accra Mall, Airport Bypass, Accra, Ghana",
        "gps_name": "GL1524944",
        "region": "Greater Accra",
        "district": "La Dade Kotopon",
        "latitude": 5.6221843,
        "longitude": -0.1729361
      }
    ]
  }
}

From there, one more call turns those coordinates into a stable hex code (AF-GH-7-0GXTQD5VJZZZZ) — see the full search → normalize → encode → validate → save walkthrough in the Quickstart.

Three products, one grid

That search-and-encode flow is AfriHex Locate — digital addressing and geocoding, useful on its own for a small project with no banking or field-ops requirements. Two more products build on the same grid once you need them, but not before:

Product	Core APIs	Buyer
AfriHex Locate	Hex codes, address lookup, geocoding, reverse geocoding, place search, boundaries	App developers, marketplaces, property platforms
AfriHex Verify	Address validation, proximity checks, verification certificates, proof of delivery, fraud & AML/PEP screening	Fintechs, lenders, insurers, onboarding teams
AfriHex Operate	Service areas, routing & matrices, location monitoring, geofences, webhooks	Logistics, field sales, utilities, IoT operators

Verify and Operate — KYC, fraud/AML, monitoring, routing — come later, once you need to trust or track a location instead of just resolving one. See Products for the full breakdown, or the Mobile Integration guide for an app that spans all three.

Design principles

• Stable identifiers. Hex codes are pure math — the same coordinate always produces the same code, offline, with no lookups.
• Country profiles. The stack is forkable: the same platform serves another African country by swapping a country profile and an addressing provider.
• Built for fintech. Consent management, signed verification certificates, webhooks with retries, and per-tenant isolation are first-class.

Ready?

Head to the Quickstart to make your first request in under five minutes, or jump straight into the API Reference.