About Cengkuru Michael

I’ve spent the last decade building systems that make public spending harder to hide.

Current Role

Data Specialist at CoST — the Infrastructure Transparency Initiative

Building disclosure and monitoring systems with government teams across Africa.

The Work

I started as a developer on Uganda’s National Procurement Portal in 2015. That system now publishes over 100,000 contracts. Building it taught me that disclosure without verification is performance. Data without accountability is noise.

Since then I’ve worked on procurement and infrastructure platforms across seven countries. The pattern is consistent: governments want transparency systems, but most portals die within three years. The ones that survive share something in common.

I build those ones.

The work sits at the intersection of open data standards (OC4IDS, OCDS, Beneficial Ownership) and systems that actually ship. Red flag detection. Automated disclosure workflows. Dashboards that surface what matters. Training that transfers capability to government teams instead of creating dependency.

Regional Impact

  • Uganda — Lead architect, National Procurement Portal
  • Nigeria — Technical assistance, Open Contracting Disclosure Portal
  • Mozambique — Implementation lead, Infrastructure Transparency Portal
  • Kenya — Technical assistance, Kenya Tender Portal
  • Ghana — Technical assistance, GANEPS EGP System
  • Malawi — Ongoing advisory, Infrastructure Disclosure Platform
  • South Sudan — Technical assistance, National Procurement System