Build Your First East Africa MCP Server in 30 Minutes

Every tool in the East Africa coordination infrastructure stack started from the same scaffold. Here's exactly how to build and publish one yourself. What You're Building An MCP server is a Python package that exposes tools to AI assistants. When a user installs it and connects it to Claude, the AI can call your tools as naturally as answering a question. pip install your-mcp-server # Then Claude can: # "Check NHIF coverage for outpatient surgery" → calls your tool → returns structured result Step 1: Set Up the Project (2 min) your-mcp-server/ ├── src/ │ └── your_package/ │ ├── __init__.py │ └── main.py ├── pyproject.toml ├── README.md └── .github/ └── workflows/ └── publish.yml mkdir your-mcp-server && cd your-mcp-server mkdir -p src/your_package touch src/your_package/__init__.py src/your_package/main.py Step 2: Write Your Tool (10 min) # src/your_package/main.py from __future__ import annotations from typing import Annotated from fastmcp import FastMCP mcp = FastMCP ( name = " your-mcp-server " , instructions = " Describe what your server does in one paragraph. " , ) @mcp.tool ( description = ( " What this tool does in plain language. " " Include the Western parallel if applicable. " " Note if it uses DEMO data. " ) ) def your_tool ( param1 : Annotated [ str , " Description of param1 " ], param2 : Annotated [ int , " Description of param2 " ] = 0 , ) -> dict : # Your logic here return { " result " : f " Processed { param1 } " , " note " : " DEMO — replace with real data source in production " , " source " : " your-mcp-server " , } def main (): mcp . run () if __name__ == " __main__ " : main () Step 3: Configure pyproject.toml (3 min) [build-system] requires = ["setuptools> = 61.0 "] build-backend = "setuptools.build_meta" # ← exact string, no variation [project] name = "your-mcp-server" version = "0.1.0" description = "One-line description" authors = [{name = "Your Name" , email = "you@example.com" }] license = { text = "MIT" } readme = "README.md" requires-pytho