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PlatformActive2026 to now

Senpai Collective

The platform the community runs on

A web application that takes an African creative from an application form to paid client work, and turns everything they do along the way into a verification record a client can actually check.

Type
Platform
For
Self-commissioned
Started
5 January 2026
Running
Live
Sector
Education, Work
What we do
Service design, Product design, Platform engineering, Programme operations
Live at
Visit senpaicollective.com

What it is

The platform the Senpai Collective runs on. Applications and vetting, cohorts and pods, programmes, tasks, projects, a member directory you can search, a job board, peer and client review, and a contribution record attached to the member who earned it.

The problem

A talented African designer or engineer has no credible way to prove what they have done. A portfolio is a claim and a referral is a favour, and neither survives a client who needs to know whether this person can be trusted with the work.

Who it is for

African creatives who need a record that travels, and the clients and employers who need to check one.

How we are going about it

  • The unit of reputation is the skill, not the job title.
  • Self-assessment counts for nothing. Only reviewed work moves a skill.
  • Work that did not go through the platform does not exist for verification.
  • The record is a by-product of doing the work, not a report written afterwards.
  • Every rule members are held to is a published document, enforced in code.

Where it stands

Live in production. The founding cohort is forming, and its targets were published before it started.

What is here

The Senpai Collective homepage, showing members of the communityCase studyThe platform the community runs onThe full write-up: what the problem was, what we built, and what it produced.Read the case study →Livesenpaicollective.comThe thing itself, running

Field notes

In order. Start at 01 if you want the whole thing.

  1. 01We spent four years training African creatives. Here is what was missing.Between 2017 and 2021 we built a community of 2,000 African creatives. 157 students came through Design 101, 45 finished, and at least 30 of them now earn in dollars. The teaching worked. What we could not do was capture the value or sustain it. The founding cohort of the Senpai Collective is forming, so here is what was missing, what we built instead, and how we will know whether it worked.
The Senpai list

Follow Senpai Collective

New notes on this project as they are written, and everything else we publish while building the digital infrastructure Africa needs. Roughly weekly.

No pitch, and one click to leave.

Notes are added while the work happens. The case study is what it added up to.