Who Owns the Work? Intellectual Property When Professionals Work Through Tunga
You do. The intellectual property in everything a professional makes for your company through Tunga, such as code, documentation and designs, is assigned to you, including work made with the help of AI tools. The rights pass to you once the invoice for the period in which the work was made has been paid; until then you can already use the work under a licence. Each professional assigns these rights to Tunga in their own contract, so Tunga can pass them on to you. Tunga does not use your work or your confidential information for anything else.
How the rights reach you
- From the professional to Tunga. In their contract with Tunga, each professional assigns all intellectual property in the work they make for a client to Tunga, in advance, and waives their moral rights as far as the law allows.
- From Tunga to you. Tunga assigns those rights to your company in advance. They pass to you once the invoice for the period in which the work was made has been paid.
- Until then, a licence. You can use the work for your own business from the moment it is made. Tunga can only withdraw that licence if an invoice is still unpaid 30 days after a written reminder.
What counts as the work
Everything a professional creates for you while working for your company: software in source and object code, documentation, designs and other results. This also applies to work made with the help of AI tools. You decide which AI tools may be used in your projects.
Code the professional already had
Sometimes a professional brings in something they made before, such as a library or a set of scripts. That remains theirs. If it ends up in your work, you get a permanent, irrevocable, worldwide licence to use, change and build on it, at no extra cost. Professionals have to tell Tunga in advance if they plan to use such code.
Open-source and third-party components
Professionals only use open-source or third-party components where your policies allow it or you approve it. You set those policies, and the professional follows the licence terms of each component.
Confidentiality and your code
- Confidentiality applies to both sides, during the engagement and after it ends. The professionals are bound by the same obligations.
- Your own agreement. If your company wants the professional to also sign its own confidentiality or IP agreement, that is possible.
- No competing use. Tunga does not use your work or your confidential information to build, market or sell a competing product, and has no right to sell or license what is built for you.
- Access stays with you. You grant and revoke access to your systems, repositories and data. Keeping code and documentation in your own repositories keeps the knowledge in your company.
- At the end, Tunga returns your software, materials and confidential information, or destroys them and confirms that in writing if you prefer.
Where Tunga fits
Tunga takes the staffing side off the plate of companies that need digital professionals: software engineers, AI operators, product managers and other digital roles, from across Africa. The client directs the work. Tunga handles finding and vetting, contracts, payments and compliance, onboarding, keeping people, and replacing them when someone leaves or it isn't working. The professionals are independent freelancers contracted by Tunga and work remotely from their own country; the client has one contract, with Tunga, and a delivery manager who checks in with both sides. In 2025, about 1 in 56 placements ended because the professional left for another job. Founded in 2015; 3,500 professionals across 38 African countries and 300+ client companies, as of September 2026.
Tunga is not the right fit when the role has to be on site, when the work means talking to your clients in a language other than English or French, or when saving on cost is the main reason you're looking.
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