I build payment and real-time systems for African markets.
Senior backend engineer. Founded InstaEscrow, the M-Pesa escrow product for Kenya's social commerce market. Senior engineer at SafeBoda. Eight years deep on Elixir, Go, and distributed systems.
Live · simulated event stream
The kind of systems I build.
Every product I ship has a real-time backbone — Redis Streams, Phoenix Channels, server-sent events with replay. This stream previews the events flowing through InstaEscrow on a normal day: payments, escrow holds, dispute filings, wallet releases.
Phase 2: the same widget reading from a real Phoenix backend at live.erick.africa. Phase 1 ships with deterministic client-side events so the page is fast, static, and offline-safe.
- 11:09:12instaescroworder.createdBuyer placed order #IE-4486 — KES 850
- 11:09:12autopaypayment.authorizedM-Pesa STK push confirmed — KES 1,250
- 11:09:12instaescrowescrow.heldFunds held in escrow #ESC-5104
- 11:09:12logisticsdelivery.dispatchedOrder #IE-0941 dispatched to courier
- 11:09:12instaescrowdelivery.confirmedBuyer confirmed receipt — auto-release in 24h
- 11:09:12autopaypayment.releasedReleased KES 18,000 to seller wallet
- 11:09:12autopaywallet.payoutSeller withdrew KES 32,500 via Paystack transfer
- 11:09:12arbiterdispute.openedDispute #DSP-7195 opened — buyer claims item not received
Selected work
Three case studies.
InstaEscrow
Solo-built M-Pesa escrow platform for Kenya's social commerce market. Holds live payments today.
SafeBoda
IAM rewrite, real-time dispatch, Kafka event processing for one of East Africa's largest ride-hailing platforms.
Mindful Care
Phoenix LiveView patient platform powering psychiatric urgent care across 8 US states.
Stack
What I reach for.
- Languages
- Elixir · TypeScript · Go · Dart · Python
- Backend
- Phoenix · NestJS · FastAPI · Absinthe (GraphQL) · Ecto · GenStage · Oban · Broadway
- Frontend
- React · Next.js · Vue · Nuxt · Flutter (BLoC) · Tailwind
- Data
- PostgreSQL · PostGIS · Redis · ETS/Nebulex · ElasticSearch · ClickHouse · Vespa
- Real-time & messaging
- Kafka · RabbitMQ · Redis Streams · Phoenix Channels · SSE · WebSockets
- Infra
- Docker · Kubernetes · AWS · Caddy · blue-green deploys · pgBackRest · Grafana/Loki