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Godwill Barasa

Founder, Lock & Mercer

Nairobi, Kenya

GodwillBarasa

I build web platforms in Kenya, and then I run them.

Software engineer in Nairobi. I founded Lock & Mercer, a venture studio, and I run its technology. The studio's side of the record is at lockandmercer.com.

Stack

React · Next.js · Laravel · WordPress · TypeScript · Sanity · Vercel

  • Godwill Barasa seated in an armchair in a blue-lit interior in Nairobi
    Nairobi
  • Godwill Barasa at the Techsgiving technology event in Nairobi, standing in front of a sponsor backdrop
    Techsgiving, Nairobi
  • Godwill Barasa with three other attendees at a technology event in Nairobi
    Technology event, Nairobi
  • Godwill Barasa beside a white grand piano in a mirrored, blue-lit room
    Nairobi
  • Godwill Barasa standing in a Nairobi hotel lobby beside a decorated Christmas tree
    Nairobi

Software engineer

01Work

Built here, run here

Four platforms, owned or rebuilt, all in production. This page carries the first-person account: the decisions and what they cost. The full case studies live on the studio site.

Work 01

SpaceYako

Property platform for Kenya, owned and operated by Lock & Mercer

www.spaceyako.com →

The decision that shaped everything else: agents pay to list, seekers never pay, and no money moves between users. That rules out escrow, rules out disputes over deposits, and keeps the platform out of the flow of funds entirely.

Verification was the harder call. Standing is computed from the expiry date on an agent's practising certificate rather than stored as a flag, so the badge disappears when the certificate does and nobody has to remember to remove it. A verification that never gets withdrawn is decoration, not verification.

What I got wrong first: the fraud here is not invented copy, it is stolen photographs. Text screening cannot see that at all. The fix was perceptual hashing, and the threshold is set by which mistake costs more rather than by accuracy.

The venture, at Lock & Mercer →

Work 02

Business Report

Independent Kenyan business publication

www.businessreport.co.ke →

I rebuilt it as a server-rendered newsroom and carried the archive across on a redirect map verified against production. The map is the deliverable: every indexed URL either resolves or redirects, and the check runs against the live site, not a spreadsheet.

What went wrong first: after the cutover, certificate renewal lapsed. Mail was up the whole time, but to everyone on the outside it looked down. The fault was the certificate, not DNS. I now treat certificate issuance as part of the cutover itself, not a thing that follows it.

The full case study, at Lock & Mercer →

Work 03

Khendo FM

Radio station across Western Kenya and the North Rift

www.khendofm.co.ke →

Migrated off WordPress. The part I care about: the site reads on-air state and now-playing from the broadcast itself. A station site that says what is playing because someone typed it into a CMS is wrong within the hour. One that reads the broadcast cannot drift.

The full case study, at Lock & Mercer →

Work 04

COFEK

Consumers Federation of Kenya

cofek.africa →

A rebuild of cofek.africa. The constraint that mattered: the audience is on the connection people actually have, not the one in a device lab. Everything about the build follows from taking that seriously.

The full case study, at Lock & Mercer →

02Currently · as of August 2026

In progress

  • Three months deep in SpaceYako, almost all of it on the trust surface: EARB standing that expires on its own, perceptual hashing to catch listings built from stolen photographs, and fraud screening that advises a moderator rather than auto-rejecting anyone.
  • Running Business Report, Khendo FM and COFEK in production. Certificates, mail deliverability, redirect maps checked against the live site, and the rest of the operational surface that only shows up once launch is over.
  • Writing up the M-Pesa work as it goes: the payout and reversal half of the money lifecycle, which almost nothing online covers properly.

03Writing

Notes

Published on the studio site and attributed there. Listed here, linked across, never copied.

04The engineering record

The engineering record

Long-form technical writing, published here rather than on the studio site. Mostly M-Pesa and the Daraja API, because in Kenya the payment rail is where platforms actually break.

Kenyan platforms live or die on the payment rail and on whether a stranger can believe what they are looking at. These are working notes on both: M-Pesa and the Daraja API in production, and the verification and screening that sits behind SpaceYako.

All 19 pieces →

05In brief

Who is Godwill Barasa?
Godwill Barasa is a software engineer based in Nairobi, Kenya. He founded Lock & Mercer, a venture studio, and runs its technology.
What does Godwill Barasa do?
He builds and operates web platforms in Kenya: product engineering, editorial platforms, broadcast web systems, site migrations, web performance, technical SEO, and trust and verification systems. He works in React, Next.js, Laravel, WordPress, TypeScript, Sanity and Vercel.
Where is Godwill Barasa based?
Godwill Barasa is based in Nairobi, Kenya.
What has Godwill Barasa built?
He built and operates SpaceYako, a property platform for Kenya; rebuilt Business Report, an independent Kenyan business publication, as a server-rendered newsroom; migrated Khendo FM, a radio station in Western Kenya and the North Rift, off WordPress; and rebuilt cofek.africa for the Consumers Federation of Kenya.

06Contact

One address. It reaches me, not a studio inbox.

godwill.codes@gmail.com