Africa’s digital economy is expanding at a steady pace, with new products emerging in finance, health, logistics, education, and more. Despite this growth, product teams often face a familiar hurdle which is a lack of structured, accessible references for digital design and product decisions specific to African contexts. Tabs was built to address that.
- Africa’s digital economy is expanding at a steady pace, with new products emerging in finance, health, logistics, education, and more.
- Despite this growth, product teams often face a familiar hurdle which is a lack of structured, accessible references for digital...
- Tabs was built with simplicity and usability at its core.
- The curation process is editorial, not algorithmic, which ensures quality over quantity.
Keep reading for the full breakdown on Digital Products — everything you need to know is covered below.
Tabs is a curated platform that showcases well-executed African digital products. It was designed to serve as a discovery and learning tool for designers, product managers, researchers, and entrepreneurs working on digital products across the continent. The goal from the outset was clear: make it easier to find, study, and reference high-quality African interfaces and flows.
The product originated from a recurring problem observed in product teams: when trying to make design decisions, especially in early-stage or resource-constrained startups, teams struggled to find relevant examples. Global design libraries and interface showcases often reflect priorities and constraints that differ significantly from what local users experience. Tabs fills that gap by creating a focused, growing archive of African products with real market adoption.
Tabs was built with simplicity and usability at its core. The first version prioritized quick navigation, clear categorization, and mobile responsiveness. Users can browse products by industry, country, or function, for example, checking how fintech apps in Kenya handle onboarding or how logistics platforms across West Africa structure order tracking.
Each entry on Tabs is documented with context. Beyond screenshots, Tabs highlights why a particular flow or screen works, what product insight it reflects, and how it adapts to user needs in its environment. The documentation focuses on what’s useful for builders—what choices were made, how constraints were handled, and how different parts of the product interact.
Sourcing content for the platform involves continuous research. It combines organic discovery with direct submissions from teams and designers across Africa. A set of criteria, such as clarity of UX, responsiveness, product-market fit signals, and user relevance, is used to evaluate what gets added. The curation process is editorial, not algorithmic, which ensures quality over quantity.
Tabs is not just a gallery. It has become a tool for design thinking and product research. Teams use it during sprint planning, user journey mapping, and competitor analysis. Design educators use it in teaching materials to provide real examples for discussions. Some use Tabs as part of onboarding documents to help new hires understand what quality looks like in the region.
The system behind Tabs has also been designed for scale. Internally, content is tagged and stored in a structured format that makes retrieval fast and flexible. This allows for the creation of tailored collections and insights as more data is added. As the archive grows, the goal is to introduce patterns, benchmarks, and even local heuristics derived from the collection.
One of the most meaningful outcomes of building Tabs has been seeing its influence beyond its interface. Designers have reached out after finding inspiration or validation for their decisions. Founders have used Tabs to study how peers solve common challenges, from KYC verification to feature prioritization. These kinds of stories underscore the original vision: to document, not just display.
Africa’s digital ecosystem deserves better infrastructure for shared learning. Tabs is one attempt at creating that. It doesn’t claim to be definitive, but it offers a starting point that is grounded in real use, built for real teams, and shaped by people who understand the nuance of designing for African users. It turns scattered insight into structured knowledge—something every product team can use.