Project Details
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FUWMarketplace
Project description
A campus marketplace that keeps the transaction inside the campus
The Challenge
Students at Federal University Wukari were buying and selling through group chats, where a listing is a message that scrolls away, a price is whatever the last person said, and nobody can tell a real seller from a stranger. Accommodation was worse: rooms were found by asking around, and the only evidence was somebody's word.
It had to work on the phones students actually carry, on campus data, and it had to be free to use — the moment it charges a student fee it stops being used. It also had to be scoped to one campus, because the trust in it comes from everyone being a member of the same institution.
The Solution
A Next.js application with PostgreSQL behind Prisma: listings in categories with photos and prices, a services board, an accommodation section with rooms near campus, and an admin approval step on new sellers so the trust boundary is real rather than decorative. WhatsApp is the contact channel, because that is where the conversation was already happening — the platform replaces the discovery, not the conversation.
Skills and deliverables
Features delivered
The hard part
Moderation that is fast enough to be used. An approval queue that a human has to clear is either a bottleneck or a rubber stamp, so the design separates what must be reviewed from what can be published immediately, and gives the admin the evidence they need to decide in one screen.
The Impact
Live and running for Federal University Wukari: listings, categories, student accounts, an accommodation section and an admin approval flow, deployed and in use. The measure that matters is the one it replaced — a listing now has a price, a state and a history instead of being a message in a group chat.
