Ghana 2026 World Cup Raffle
Load testing a national platform for 10,000 concurrent users
Duration
2024 – Present
Team
QA Engineer + Backend Team
Category
QA Engineering
Overview
Ghana 2026 World Cup Raffle
The Ghana 2026 World Cup Raffle Platform (blackstars.npontu.com) is a national-scale system handling ticket purchases, USSD payments, SMS notifications, and sponsor management for Ghana's World Cup fundraising effort. I led QA engineering across all integration points including K6 load testing, API debugging, and data reconciliation.
The Challenge
The platform needed to handle 10,000+ concurrent USSD users during peak raffle periods while maintaining Eganow payment API reliability. K6 load tests kept failing due to authentication token expiry under high concurrency — a critical bug that would have caused payment failures at launch.
Approach
Load Test Design
Designed K6 burst test scripts simulating realistic USSD user journeys with payment flows and Basic Auth headers.
Auth Bug Diagnosis
Traced token expiry to a 60-second JWT TTL being exhausted in 3-second burst scenarios; fixed x-Auth header encoding.
Retry Logic Implementation
Collaborated with backend team to implement request queuing and exponential backoff under load.
Data Reconciliation
Built Python scripts to match USSD records, SMS logs, and database entries automatically — 99.2% match rate.
Exchange Rate Validation
Flagged USD/GHS conversion discrepancies in donation data affecting 3% of transactions.
Results
Resolved the critical authentication bug, enabling stable 10,000 concurrent user load tests. The data reconciliation system achieved 99.2% match rate. The platform launched successfully with 46 pre-production bugs identified and resolved.
Tech Stack
Key Learnings
- JWT token TTL must be calibrated against burst load test durations — not just normal request rates
- Three-way data reconciliation (USSD + SMS + DB) is essential for payment platforms to catch discrepancies
- USSD flow design requires understanding all operator routing variations across MTN, AirtelTigo, Telecel
Interested in working together?
Open to QA, frontend, and WordPress opportunities.