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Building Africa's Future Now! May-June 2022

pages 29-31

CONTENTS - May-June 2022 4

Publisher's Message

Business 7 8 13

Online Shop 14

14 16 20 21 22 24 26

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Improve Your Next Remote Call with Accessibility Tools This 26-Year-Old Founder Wants to Build the LVMH of Africa The OneTen Coalition Commits to 1 Million New US Jobs for Black People in the Next Decade 7 Tips for Starting an Online Business Who Gets a Seat at the Table?

5 'Free' Zoom Alternatives Rihanna Expands Fenty Beauty & Fenty Skin to Africa A Proven 10-Step Startup Marketing Playbook The 10 Richest Black Women in the World Lobos 1707 CEO Dia Simms Leading $2.4 Billion Diversity Plan in Wine and Liquor Industry Through Pronghorn Africa Unveils new Platform to Cushion Countries from Ukraine Crisis Shocks

Development 36

28 32 34 36 37 40 44 Transparent Soccer

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We Need to Redesign Cities to Tackle Climate Change, IPCC Says A Global Impact Investing Network Training Program Africa’s Renaissance: Realised Through Sustainable Finance Safaricom's M-Pesa, Visa Offer Virtual Card for Global Transactions Africa’s Creatives are Promoting Sustainability to Combat Climate Change South Africa’s Private Surveillance Machine is Fueling a Digital Apartheid Arizona-based Start-up Reinvents the Wheel

Agriculture 46 48

50 52

The World’s Food System is Too Dependent on Wheat Averting the Food Crisis and Restoring Environmental Balance with Data-driven Regenerative Agriculture Why This Chicken Coop was Built on Wheels Seaweed Farming Has Vast Potential

Pandemic-Health A New Network

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As Hunger Spreads in Somalia, Babies Start to Die What is Google's "Look to Speak" app and how DAWN

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History of the Dream 119

Historic Meeting 68

59 61 62 63

does it work?

Kemisola Bolarinwa, Inventor of CancerDetecting Bra New Ebola Outbreak in DR Congo, Contacts Traced-WHO Generic Drugmakers to Sell Pfizer's Paxlovid for $25 or Less in Low-income Countries South Africa's Aspen COVID-19 Vaccine Plant Risks Closure After No Orders.

Technology/Science 87 88 92 94

Governance

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66 68

70 72 74

The Democratic Republic of Congo Becomes the Biggest Country in East Africa’s Trading Bloc It's Not Too Late to Fix the Climate Crisis Vice President Kamala Harris in Historic Meeting with President Samia Suluhu Hassan of Tanzania Grain Supply Tops Putin-African Union Head Talks Agenda Germany and Africa Forge Energy Ties Barack Obama Urges 'Fight' Against Autocracies at Home and Abroad

103 104 105

Lifestyle/Culture 106

Investment

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76 78

108 110 112

79 80 82

83 84 85 3

African Stock Exchange/Bourse Canza, an African NeoBank and DeFi On/OffRamp, Secures $3.27 Million Seed Funding Zepz, Formerly WorldRemit, Raises Cash at $5 Billion Valuation The British Twins who set up a Black-founded $1bn 'Unicorn' SVB Financial Group Launches Fellowship Program to Foster Future Black Women Venture Capital Leaders European Union Plans to Court Africa to Help Replace Gas Imports 2022 World Changing Ideas Awards Who can Compete with Airbnb in Africa?

May-June 2021

The Space Economy is Ready for Lift-off Tiger Steaks and Lion Burgers: Lab-grown Exotic Animal Meat is on the Way A Cameroon-born Entrepreneur is Trying to Make African Soccer More Transparent Africa’s Fourth Industrial Revolution Hinges on Fast, Reliable, Affordable Internet Connectivity Ethereum Founder is Backing Zambia’s Bid to be Africa’s Tech Hub More Than 5 Billion People Now Use the Internet SpaceX's Starlink Satellite Internet is now Available to Order in 32 Countries Meet the Plastic-Eating Enzymes that can Fully Break Down Garbage in Days Google Unveils New 10-shade Skin Tone Scale to Test AI for Bias

115 116 118

Lebohang Kganye is the Winner of Foam Paul Huf Award 2022 First-Ever Black-Owned Animation Network Set to Launch in Summer 2022 Turning Agave Waste into Bricks The Chefs Shaping African Cuisine A Bold New Design Journal is Upending the Status Quo: ‘Design Should Feel More Like Jazz’ ‘Top of the World’: Black Climbing Team Makes History as First to Scale Mount Everest The Jordan Brand Presents 'The Women's Collective' Full of Black Women Creators Somali-French Gallerist Mariane Ibrahim

History 121

New Edition of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream”

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Publisher's Message

Ricky Katsuya Publisher's Message

WELCOME AND THANK YOU for taking the time to read our June DAWN edition. We are excited to feature stories that have truly transformed Africa and the world. Stories such as:  Somalia's impact on the money transfer industry through it's large diaspora population (page 10);

needs you. The consequences for Africa’s youth unemployment could spiral into societal instability, which inevitably could render some countries ungovernable (pages 32, 34, 46, 82, 84, 94, 100).

 The need to redesign cities which, in essence, will have a great impact on the reduction of Overall, we are also elated that the US Senate carbon emissions. It is a well-known fact that has come up with a bipartisan framework as a good big cities emit the largest percentage of carbon start to nationwide Gun Control for the country. emissions (page 28); Gun massacres in the USA should stop now! We  We are looking forward to featuring Africa’s emplore all US citizens to tell the Congress to act approach to building smart cities and smart now. villages. Reduction of rural to urban migration Ricky Katsuya will be a net positive. The west should invest Publisher/President in Africa’s development of smart cities and dawn@africabusinessassociation.org smart villages to bolster reduction of emissions aba@africabisinessassociation.org (pages 29, 37, 48, 66, 108); www.africabusinessassociation.org  The need to finance Africa’s agriculture and manufacturing programs is now. We are We’d like your feedback. Please email appealing to all entrepreneurs in the diaspora thoughts and suggestions to dawn@ to seize this moment to found or grow africabusinessassociation.org businesses in Africa - as the youth of Africa

Awakening the African Giant Within 4

May-June 2022

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PRESS RELEASE

Media Contact: Office of Communications For Immediate Release: June 1, 2022

202-730-6639/202-993-0409

Export-Import Bank of the United States Opens Application Period for 2022-2023 Advisory Committees Agency Seeks Nominees for Six Advisory Groups WASHINGTON – The Export-Import Bank of the United States (EXIM) today opened the application period for the 2022-2023 Advisory Committee, Sub-Saharan Africa Advisory Committee, and four subcommittees. In addition to the four existing committees and subcommittees, EXIM is seeking applications for two new subcommittees – the Council on Small Business and Council on Advancing Women in Business. These two new bodies will complement recent subcommittee additions that include the Council on Climate and the Council on China Competition. The application period begins today and will remain open through June 30.

“For EXIM to be truly open and inclusive, we need more partners and more ambassadors from all communities across America that share a vision for what this agency can become,” said President and Chair Reta Jo Lewis. “The members of our committees are standouts in their respective fields, and their insights and knowledge of economic security and opportunity are integral to improving America’s export competitiveness.”

EXIM’s Advisory Committee provides guidance to EXIM on the agency’s overall policies and programs, particularly on competitive financing to support American jobs through exports. The committee’s 17 members represent small business, environment, production, commerce, finance, agriculture, labor, services, state government, and the textile industry.

The Sub-Saharan Africa Advisory Committee provides advice on strengthening and expanding EXIM financing support for U.S. manufactured goods and services in Sub-Saharan Africa. The nine committee members represent small business, banking, finance, trade promotion, and commerce.

The two current subcommittees include the Council on China Competition and the Council on Climate.

The Council on China Competition was formed following the creation of EXIM’s China and Transformational Exports Program in 2019 and provides guidance on how EXIM can advance America’s economic leadership and global competitiveness with respect to China. The Council on Climate was formed in 2021 as an initial foundation for the Biden-Harris Administration’s commitment to financing the global clean energy transition through tools like export credit.

The two newly established Advisory subcommittees – the Council on Small Business and Council on Advancing Women in Business – will add important new voices to EXIM’s network of outside stakeholders. The Council on Advancing Women in Business will convene leaders from across private and public sector institutions to offer ideas for more women in business and better considering equity goals set in EXIM’s strategy. The Small Business Council will focus on offering ways to help more American small business exporters find new markets, achieve more sales, and lower the risk of selling internationally.

Candidates wishing to be considered for membership on any committees must complete an online questionnaire and submit a biography, headshot, and letter of interest demonstrating relevant knowledge, experience, and qualifications to advisory@exim.gov by midnight EDT on June 30, 2022.

For more information, please contact advisory@exim.gov.

ABOUT EXIM: The Export-Import Bank of the United States (EXIM) is the nation’s official export credit agency with the mission of supporting American jobs by facilitating U.S. exports. To advance American competitiveness and assist U.S. businesses as they compete for global sales, EXIM offers financing including export credit insurance, working capital guarantees, loan guarantees, and direct loans. As an independent federal agency, EXIM contributes to U.S. economic growth by supporting tens of thousands of jobs in exporting businesses and their supply chains across the United States.

Since 1992, EXIM has generated more than $9 billion for the U.S. Treasury for repayment of U.S. debt. Learn more at www.exim.gov.

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About the

Africa Business Association The Africa Business Association is an independent international business development organization. We offer access to the latest resources, information, and best practices in advocacy and communications for the African Diaspora and the African entrepreneurs in Africa.

We work to help you have access to news and events as starting points for constructive conversations and calls to action. We seek to cut through the froth of the political spin cycle to underlying truths and values. We want to be so focused on progress that together we can provide a credible and constructive generation of Africans that take seriously our previous generations and act upon all their wishes, our hopes and aspirations to make lasting change for all future generations.

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Africa Business Association

"DAWN"

PUBLISHER/PRESIDENT Ricky Katsuya

ADVISORY BOARD

Earl 'Skip' Cooper, II, CEO, Black Business Association H.E. Sheila Siwela, Ambassador H.E. Kone L. Tanou, Ambassador

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Ricky Katsuya

LAYOUT/TYPESETTING Lion Communications

AFRICA BUSINESS ASSOCIATION NEWS 6564 LOISDALE COURT, SUITE 600 Springfield, VA 22150 USA 1-240-467-6811 aba@africabisinessassociation.org dawn@africabusinessassociation.org www.africabusinessassociation.org

Copyright © 2022

by Africa Business Association News All Rights Reserved.

The posting of stories, commentaries, reports, documents and links (embedded or otherwise) on this site does not in any way, shape or form, implied or otherwise, necessarily express or suggest endorsement or support of any of such posted material or parts therein.

Image credits: Cover-pinterest, wallpapersafari.com

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Business - Improve Online Communications

Improve Your Next Remote Call with Accessibility Tools

By Quartz at Work

THE STIGMA AGAINST the term “accessibility” has made many ignore free and useful resources that can alleviate the stresses of remote work. At the recent Interaction Design Association conference, Beatriz González Mellídez, an accessibility and digital inclusion lead at the French IT firm Atos, highlighted several accessibility tools and practices we should adopt:

• Describe your slides. When presenting, avoid phrases like “as you can see here” and instead clearly describe the graphic on the screen. This practice doesn’t just benefit users with visual impairments, explains González. “It can help your colleagues who are driving or commuting and can’t watch the video.

Describing your slides guarantees that they don’t miss any important content.”

• Say hi with sign language.

The hand signs for hello and goodbye can be useful in a large group meeting.

Waving an open palm with your fingers splayed signals hello and a waving your hand with closed fingers serves as a sign-off.

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• Protect your tech from your kids.

If you have to use your mobile device as a babysitter while you’re on a call, activate the “Guided Access” feature on your iPhone or iPad. Originally developed for users who have trouble focusing, it limits kids to a single app and prevents them from accidentally sending a wayward email. https://qz.com/work Image credit: face2faceafrica.com, YouTube

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Business

Starting with 30 Designers and 15 Retail Partners, this 26-Year-Old Founder Wants to Build the LVMH of Africa

By Rebecca Deczynski

WHEN AMIRA RASOOL returned from a trip to South Africa as a senior in college, she came back with more than just souvenirs.

The compliments she received on the clothing and accessories she'd purchased while abroad made her recognize both a problem and an opportunity: So many brands and designers in Africa didn't offer e-commerce, much less sell their items to international retailers. A few years after that fateful trip, she launched The Folklore, an e-commerce distribution company that aims to bring African fashion designers and brands to a global market. Today, she announced a pre-seed funding round totaling $1.7 million, and led by the Los Angeles-based early-stage venture capital firm Slauson & Co. The investment marks a key, though still modest, victory for Black women entrepreneurs, as it makes Rasool one of fewer than 200 Black women entrepreneurs to raise at least $1 million in venture funding. While she's humbled by the milestone, she sees it as a jumping off point for ever more growth.

To wit, the entrepreneur today also announced the launch of The Folklore Connect, an extension of the business that allows global retailers (some department stores, but primarily smaller boutiques) to purchase inventory from The Folklore's growing database of about 30 African designers. Moving forward, this B2B approach will be the core focus of the business, though Rasool says The Folklore will still allow consumers to find products on its site, and direct them to brands' own e-commerce platforms or retail partners for purchase, similar to platforms like Lyst and ShopStyle.

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"We've unlocked access to the next frontier of fashion brands, and we've made it easier for them to connect with consumers," Rasool says. "Now, we're doing the same with retailers."

The 26-year-old, New York City-based entrepreneur launched her company in 2017, bootstrapping and running the business herself for about two years. She credits the Techstars's accelerator program, which she joined in 2021, with giving her the confidence and perspective to know which investors to pitch and how to do so successfully. "At first, I was kind of begging investors to be a part of my company," she says.

"Then I realized, wait -- this is an opportunity for them, too. I came in with data points that showed the potential of this huge market and said, 'This is something I'm letting you in on,' " she says.

Although Rasool always intended for The Folklore to operate as a platform to get African designers into a global market, she started with consumer-focused e-commerce to build brand awareness and to learn how to navigate the retail ecosystem. "It was a natural evolution," she says, but building her business meant learning how to solve solutions on the fly.

In the early days, there were countless logistical challenges. Because Rasool was working with brands in different countries, she had to figure out different payment systems because there was no DAWN

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The Folklore Connect is currently launching with 15 retail partners, which Rasool declined to name, but plans to expand in August. The company will offer retailers a tiered membership model: a free version will give The Folklore a commission on each purchase, while a membership with a flat annual fee will offer retailers a reduced commission fee and access to data collected by The Folklore, like information on customer buying habits amassed from its own direct-to-consumer arm. Rasool declined to share the company's annual revenue.

African brands and designers can sign up to the platform for free, and The Folklore will work with them to build their own businesses.

That might mean helping them to find a third-party logistics vendor, vetting their production facilities, singular one that or securing photographers to better capture was available product imagery. in every country After all, ultimately, Rasool views her company -- The Folklore as a vehicle through which African designers can has paid most achieve greater global success, and in this regard, of its brands via she sees no immediate competition. While fashion Bill.com, but that conglomerates like Paris-based Louis Vuitton service is not Moet Hennessey (LVMH) and Milan's Luxottica available in both Morocco and Nigeria, where several brands are Group exist in other parts of the globe, designers based. With The Folklore Connect, the company across Africa have yet to be united in the way that is launching its own card payment processing Rasool hopes to do -- and she believes she has system, which it expects will simplify the payment what it takes to make a big impact. "What I'm really looking forward to is going to a boutique in Atlanta process to brands.

Shipping was also a huge issue. Without a and finding one of the brands we work with there," relationship with UPS or DHL, The Folklore worked she says. "I want to be able to check in with one of with its designers to develop a plan to provide our brands and hear them say, 'We sold so much more affordable shipping, which sometimes meant we just hired an operations manager.' " sending out orders in smaller batches. "There https://www.inc.com/rebecca-deczynski/ were times when we tried to ship something that the-folklore-amira-rasool-african-fashionwas maybe 10 pounds, and it cost $600," Rasool conglomerate.html says. Now, the company has secured an exclusive shipping partner -- and can benefit from discounted Image credit: The Folklore, The Folklore Connect rates.

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Business

SOMALIS CHANGED THE FACE OF MONEY TRANSFERS WORLDWIDE Source: Quartz Africa

Innovations from Somalia range from the early adoption o nies of Somali origin including World Remit and Dahabsh

SOMALIA’S MONEY TRANSFER market is one of the most developed in the world, characterized by a large diaspora sending billions of dollars home in remittances each year and a local population that prefers mobile money to cash.

Latest data from the World Bank in 2017 suggests that 73% of the population above the age of 16 use mobile money services—making Somalia one of the most dynamic markets in Africa and worldwide.

Despite only being introduced 10 years ago, over two thirds of all payments in Somalia now rely on mobile money platforms.

Although Hormuud, Somalia’s leading mobile money provider, only received GSMA Mobile Money Certification in March, a global standard of telecoms excellence, the country has changed the face of money transfers worldwide for decades.

The major factors behind the country’s innovation in money

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transfers are a tough operating environment, a weak banking system, lack of policy implementation, and deep distrust of government and the local currency.

Innovations range from the early adoption of the Hawala system to the global rise of money transfer companies of Somali origin including World Remit and Dahabshill.

“Anyone who has a mobile has mobile money services,” says Abdullahi Rage, a Mogadishubased research analyst at the African Center for Strategic Progress, a US think tank.

“The problem in Somalia is that we have a lack of data—it’s hard to get an exact number. But I would say more than nine out of 10 people use mobile money in Somalia.”

Somalia has long been a challenging market with deep divides in government that often spill over into armed conflict and parts of the country under the control of terrorist group al-Shabaab. But these problems have created the perfect hotbed for innovative solutions, especially with regards to financial technology.

“It’s the culture in our community, we are risk

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A market like nowhere else

of the Hawala system to global money transfer compahill. REUTERS/OMAR FARUK

takers. Due to the challenges, we have had to explore new ideas,” says Ahmed Mohamed Yuusuf, CEO and chairman of Hormuud, one of Somalia’s biggest telcos with 4.5 million subscribers.

The first innovation was the early adoption of the hawala money transfer system, which originated in 8th century India and spread to the Horn of Africa and the Middle East. The service allows users to send and receive money in different countries through an informal network of brokers, without any funds crossing borders.

This method of money transfer was popular in Somalia before mobile money and continues to this day, with most brokers moving into the formal telecoms industry. Yuusuf says that up to 45% of the hawala agents in Somalia, who mostly process payments from the US and UK, use Hormuud’s EVC Plus mobile money to do business.

The chairman of the group says it was the high costs, inefficiencies, and structural barriers associated with Somalia’s legacy banking system that previously drove people to the hawala network and the same is true of mobile money.

Somalia has an extremely competitive mobile money market with lots of small-sized players rather than a few large companies like other markets in Africa. In comparison to neighboring markets like Kenya, which is home to Safaricom’s M-Pesa, one of Africa’s most well-known mobile money services, cash is transferred in dollars and most telecoms companies do not charge a fee for transfers.

When Hormuud launched EVC Plus in 2011, Yusuuf says they made it a free service to encourage Somalis to adopt the financial technology. Instead of using EVC Plus to generate revenue, it is used to onboard clients to other services such as data and voice.

The remittance version of EVC Plus, however, is a charged service. Yusuuf says that it is often used by humanitarian organizations to help deliver aid to Somalia. More than $200 million has been sent to Somalia in the last few months on the platform as the country suffers its worst drought in decades, where more than 4 million people are at risk of starvation.

Indeed, Somali has a dynamic remittances sector with more than 2 million citizens living outside the East African country. The UN Development Programme estimates that $1.6 billion is sent back to Somalia each year – almost a third of the country’s GDP which was $5.42 billion in 2021.

One of the most well-known companies to emerge from Somalia is World Remit, a money transfer company that was founded in 2009 by a Somaliland entrepreneur who was frustrated by the lack of remittance options when he arrived in the UK as a refugee.

Somalis also transfer money between mobile accounts in dollars as the Somali shilling is very unstable and the IMF says that around 98% of the local currency in circulation is fake. The lack of faith in physical money is another key reason why mobile money has been so successful in Somalia, leading to a situation where it has almost completely replaced the Somali shilling in some parts of the country.

Research shows that Somalia processes some 155 million transactions a month in a population of see page 12

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Business

Somalis

from page 11

only around 17 million people. Most people keep their money in a digital wallet as opposed to a physical bank.

Lack of oversight a concern One of the main problems in the domestic market, however, is the lack of regulation for mobile money.

Fragile institutions and ongoing political risk have delayed robust legislation that can regulate the mobile money industry to ensure it benefits consumers and the country.

This has sparked concerns that mobile money is being used for illicit finance and to support alShabaab.

“It’s a challenge to control the flow of money in and out of the country,” says analyst Rage. “But private companies are doing their best to at least have checks and balances”.

A good example is Hormuud which received Somalia’s first GSMA Mobile Money certification in March. The certification from the world’s leading industry organization is a milestone for Somalia’s telecoms sector and puts Hormuud among the top mobile money providers in Africa for safety and security.

The CEO tells Quartz that the company had to meet 350 different criteria and that know your customer (KYC) requirements were the hardest to meet.

“We don’t have a national ID in place and therefore identifying customers was a bit of a challenge,” he says. “But then there are other mechanisms in place, for example records provided by local authorities”.

One of the key challenges was making sure that the rigorous standards required by GSMA did not discourage financial inclusion for Somalis that do not have access to formal identification.

The solution was to lower the maximum amount unidentified users could hold on a digital wallet to $300, which reduced the likelihood that it would be used for illicit finance.

Despite the lack of a strong regulatory body, Yuusuf says that there have been some recent improvements. Somalia’s central bank awarded Hormuud with Somalia’s first mobile money license

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in 2017—a sign to investors that the l o c a l market is maturing.

It also introduced a central payments system in August w h i c h allows digital payments to be made between Somalia’s banks, making payments easier for people across the country.

Moving to digital in Somalia The biggest challenge for Somalia’s telecoms industry is the transition away from analog phones to smartphones. The World Bank found that 49% of the population owned a mobile phone in 2019 but most of the phones were feature phones that use USSD technology to access mobile money.

“It’s not digital, it’s not internet based,” says Rage. “Mobile penetration in the country is high compared to low internet penetration”.

This poses a challenge for telecoms companies that are keen to introduce data as an income generating stream. The CEO of Hormuud says that it is currently investing heavily in fiber optics to ensure that “every family has access to the internet”.

“Voice is dying out. Things like WhatsApp and other apps are coming in, so our focus at the moment is on extending and monetizing data services,” he says. https://puntlandpost.net/2022/04/10/somalischanged-the-face-of-money-transfers-worldwide/ Source: https://qz.com/africa/2152271/ somalia-changed-the-face-of-moneytransfers-worldwide/?utm_source=email&utm_ medium=daily-brief&utm_content=2669f853b973-11ec-ad4a-1ec36e9636f2 Image credit: somdirectory.so, hormuud.com

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Business

The OneTen Coalition Commits to 1 Million New US Jobs for Black People in the Next Decade

By Jasmine Browley

HISTORICALLY, BLACK PEOPLE have faced significant systemic barriers in the workforce, and despite an improved labor market, they still can’t obtain well-paying, stable jobs with quality benefits at the same rate as other groups.

In response, Grads of Life, a national initiative dedicated to closing the gap between p e o p l e historically excluded from the workforce and employers hiring talent, recently announced it will expand its partnership with OneTen, a coalition of CEOs and companies committed to placing one million Black Americans without four-year college degrees into family-sustaining jobs over the next 10 years.

“We know that structural barriers call for structural solutions — and OneTen has responded overwhelmingly to this call,” said Elyse Rosenblum, CEO of Grads of Life. “It has been Grads of Life’s privilege to support OneTen and its more than 60 member companies and 250 executives. OneTen’s efforts have already led to more than 20,000 hires and increased access to economic opportunity and mobility for Black talent nationwide. We are

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excited to double down on this partnership in 2022, engaging employers in new markets and advancing the talent practices necessary for Black Americans to thrive.”

Grads of Life plans to launch programs around skills-based hiring, work-based learning, and company training to the coalition’s C-suite convenings and working groups to support OneTen employers in improving their DEI outcomes and achieving their OneTen commitments.

“Grads of Life has been an instrumental partner in helping to launch OneTen and close the opportunity gap for Black talent in corporate America,” said Maurice Jones, CEO of OneTen said in a news release. “Together, we’ve achieved an incredible feat of providing some of the largest employers in the country with new strategies to hire, promote, and upskill promising talent who are often overlooked because they don’t have a fouryear degree. We’re excited to continue advancing this work to help achieve full racial equity and economic mobility for Black Americans.” https://www.essence.com/news/money-career/ oneten-coalition-commits-to-1-million-new-jobsfor-black-people Image credit: Gilead Sciences, YouTube

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Business

7 Tips for Starting an Online Business

By BOSS Editorial

ANYONE CAN START an online business but there are critical questions that most aspiring online entrepreneurs fail to answer. Many of them are not sure about the specific thing they want to sell. Another set of newbie entrepreneurs doesn’t know where or who to sell to. Another significant portion is the one that is not sure about how to sell or market their online shop.

If you can successfully answer these three questions, you are ready to start an online business and make it a huge success. Like a physical shop, an online shop has products. It uses different strategies to let customers know they exist and what they offer them. These seven tips will help you get started.

names are good, but they might not be related to your online business niche.

You should look for online business name generators or brainstorm several others and choose the best.

Create your online shop Most online businesses do not have a physical shop. If it is a goods shop, they store their goods in warehouses and display them online. That means you must create an online shop that your customers will interact with online to make purchases.

Define your niche The online market is wide, with millions of businesses and billions of customers. There is absolutely nothing that you cannot purchase online. Some businesses make good money on Etsy selling photography prints. Others sell software, electronics, fabric, machines, toys, etc.

When a customer wants to buy photography prints, that is the keyword phrase they will type, and the search engine will display a long list of shops selling those products. You must be specific on your niche and start to build your list of products for that niche.

Create a name that relates to your niche Every business has a name that customers identify it with. Your business name will be your brand name. Whenever your customers or searchers come across that name, it should give them an idea of what kind of products you are selling even before they go deeper to find out. Some business 14

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Your firstt step Y t tto creating ti an online li shop h is i to t have a domain name, a hosting company, and a website. Most hosting companies also sell domain names to make your experience better. Build your website or blog and make it easy to navigate.

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Currently, the best websites and blogs display all their menus and buttons/dropdowns on one page.

Segment your market You may decide to target any random visitor searching for products online. That is okay, but it might not give you excellent results. You cannot entirely ignore the customers who find your online shop when generically searching for products but pay more attention to a specifically targeted segment. This is the area where you must pay the closest attention in your marketing campaigns.

Work out a shipping strategy If you are selling software or e-books, you have an easier way to deliver your products to your customers. The customers only need to make a payment and download the product.

If you sell physical goods, you must have a seamless shipping strategy that will not add too much cost to your customers. You can do it yourself or use delivery partners such as courier companies, dropshippers, local riders, etc. Just be certain that the goods will reach the customers intact and in time.

You may also decide to create texts as marketing content, videos, photos, etc. You can also make a lot of sales through affiliate marketing strategies.

Decide whether you want to do paid posts or generic. Whatever marketing strategy you choose, set aside a good budget and always have some capital back-up.

Build a solid brand Your brand cannot grow if you don’t plan it strategically. Your best starting point to brand building is to create your business logo. Make the logo unique and easily identifiable by customers.

Let your brand be present across many platforms so that customers will interact with it multiple times.

Create a unique slogan that will look attractive

Define your marketing strategy High competition in the online market pushes out the businesses that don’t do their homework nicely.

To avoid being pushed out, have multiple strategic marketing ideas. You may decide to create a social media account for your online business and post your products there often.

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and something that customers can relate easily to.

From there, create a strong online presence and make your brand recognizable. https://thebossmagazine.com/7-tips-of-startingan-online-business Image credit: http://www.medubookstore.com, https://www.facebook.com/AfricaTextileMuseum, https://fentybeauty.com

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Business

Who Gets a Seat at the Table?

By Ciku Kimeria, Quartz Africa editor

Climate na Tille earlier

RECENTLY I CAME ACROSS a very interesting article in The Conversation: Although Rwanda has been written about extensively in top academic journals—especially as it pertains to the 1994 genocide—less than 3% of articles about Rwanda are by Rwandan researchers. In other words, Rwandan researchers are not yet even considered experts on Rwanda, and no, this isn’t for lack of Rwandan researchers.

The case of the missing experts on Rwanda is just the latest iteration of something that’s long been the case: The routine exclusion of minorities of power from global discussions. It cuts across gender, race, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity and many other layers. (I refer to minorities of power as Black and brown people, women and other marginalized groups, who are not actually minorities by number, but are minorities when it comes to corridors of power.)

This routine exclusion often manifests on highlevel panels where all the experts are men—yes, there’s a word for that, it’s manels—or where there is only one person of color or one woman.

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This type of bias is increasingly being called out.

Some public figures have been vocal about turning down speaking engagements that do not include a diverse range of speakers.

On Africa Day this past week — which coincidentally coincided with the two year anniversary of the horrific murder of George Floyd—I found myself on an all-African panel discussing how Africa can shape the global agenda. In this safe space, one of the major aspects discussed was just how difficult it is for Africans to get included in high-level global discussions, even those pertaining to Africa.

Uzoamaka Madu, the host of the discussion, is a Nigerian communications specialist who is taking concrete steps to change that. After years spent in Belgium, where she frequently found herself the only African panelist on conversations about Africa, she decided she had to do something to change the status quo. For those who claim it’s really too hard to find African experts, she’s building a database of, you guessed it, African experts.

Madu recently put out a call for African experts DAWN

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e activists Vanessa Nakate, Luisa Neubauer, Greta Thunberg, Isabelle Axelsson and Loukie, from left, arrive for a news conference in Davos. The AP news agency apologized for publishing an image with Nakate cropped out.

across a range of different sectors to create profiles in what will become a “comprehensive, searchable online database of ‘Experts on Africa’ who can speak to health, agriculture, the economy and trade to ease the access to African expertise for international institutions, media and think tanks.” It is currently open to submissions and from September, anyone will be able to search the site for experts.

By 2035, Africa will be the continent with the greatest number of people entering the global workforce. It is important that African voices make their way into global discourse, not just as it relates to the continent, but beyond it, too. Also, African experts should be seen as experts in all sorts of fields, not pigeon-holed to weigh in solely on African issues. You will never see a top microbiologist from Canada or Germany being described as an expert on microbiology in North America or Europe, for example.

Of course, increasing diversity in global discourse is just one part of the challenge. The harder part is making sure that once people are in the room, they 17

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are treated as peers.

Consider when the AP cropped out the Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate from a photo including Greta Thunberg and others. Nakate, now 25, is finally recognized as a global leader speaking at forums such as COP26 and Davos, and being recognized on lists of influential people from Time and the Financial Times.

There is also the undeniable burden this puts on those who do make it to the top: Once in the corridors of power, many may feel the weight of representing a whole continent or the race. This is something not felt by majorities of power who have the privilege of being seen as individuals.

Next time you’re speaking at a panel, or you’re seeking an expert, ask yourself, who has been left out and what can I do from my position of power to ensure that these voices are heard? https://qz.com/emails/quartz-at-work/2172053/ workplace-trends-may-2022-who-gets-a-seat-atthe-table Image credit: https://edition.cnn.com/2020/01/25/ world/vanessa-nakate-cropped-intl-scli DAWN

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Business

Need a TikTok Marketing Strateg Here's How to Get Start

By Jonathan Mar

MORE THAN 755 MILLION monthly users— twice the size of the U.S. population. That’s the forecast from Insider Intelligence on how many people TikTok will reach in 2022. This would make it the third largest social media network, just behind Facebook (2.1 billion) and Instagram (1.3 billion), and slightly ahead of Snapchat and Twitter.

There have been thousands of startups that have successfully unlocked TikTok as an acquisition channel , either organically with their brand profile content or via paid acquisition. DrainFunnel, a small company that helps eliminate drain clogs, has reached millions of views and a staggering 2.4 million likes on its branded TikTok videos.

The founder takes viewers through product demonstrations, gives them a behind-the-scenes look at product photography and even answers viewer questions.

Similarly, Hopper, a discount travel app, has found a way to promote its app while utilizing a native TikTok touch within its videos and boosting them with paid spending.

As TikTok continues to gain steam, it would be a huge miss not to include the platform when building out a growth marketing strategy.

your profile adds validity, social proof and inspires engagement from those who land there.

There’s a variety of content to consider adding onto your branded TikTok pages — below are just a few ideas to help you get started: • Founder and staff Q&As • Use case examples • Trend and viral replies/reactions • Product explainers • Answering viewer comments/questions • Behind-the-scenes opportunities Inspiration and ideas can also be drawn from competitors or other brand profiles. Save time by seeing what already works with other pages and taking pointers from the best.

Channel-specific creative

I typically recommend testing the same creative assets across all social channels as a best practice.

Time and again, I’ve seen assets made for nonTikTok channels perform poorly on TikTok. This means that ideation, styling and asset production have increasingly needed to be specific to TikTok. It makes sense — TikTok content is structured differently from other social channels. Some of those attributes include: • 9:16 ratio and shorter than 20 seconds Organic page benefits • Background track There’s no crystal ball to reveal whether your • Text overlays to emphasize points startup should explore organic or paid acquisition, • Play to trends but both are important.

• Very lo-fi, not studio quality The two primary advantages for creating organic If there’s one major takeaway from the bullets content are leveraging free traffic from videos and building a brand page in the process. Why above, it’s the fourth one—play to trends. On does producing organic content also impact paid any given week, there are a handful of trends acquisition? When users see your paid acquisition that take over TikTok, often popularized by larger ads and click your brand name, they’ll be directed influencers and made widespread by thousands of to your TikTok profile page. Having content on others performing their take on it. By emphasizing creative direction and focusing on popular trends, 18

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gy? ted

influencers (less than 50,000 followers) at a rate of $100-300 per video—oftentimes, that’s all you’ll need.

To double down on influencer content, leverage TikTok’s Spark Ads, which allow advertisers to boost influencer posts and put media budget behind the organic content. This works particularly well on TikTok because ads then look native to the platform.

rtinez

Constantly evolving

you’ll naturally hit the rest of the attributes, such as creating the video in 9:16 perspective and including a background track.

One major advantage TikTok has against other paid social channels is that the cost per thousand impressions (CPMs) are significantly lower. With that huge upside comes a caveat: Creative will fatigue more rapidly, since the videos are getting served at a faster rate. If you plan to run a successful TikTok campaign, be ready to continuously add new content to the mix.

Leverage influencers What’s TikTok without Charli D’Amelio, Noah Beck and the various other power figures raking in millions of views? While that’s hard to imagine when thinking about how to incorporate influencers into your TikTok strategy, remember you don’t need a marquee name to be successful.

Instead, leverage TikTok’s Creator Marketplace, which has made it frictionless to discover influencers from all types of categories, styles, regions and follower counts. You can typically work with smaller 19

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TikTok is a creative ground for experimentation when it comes to ever-changing campaign formats and features, all being rolled out on a frequent basis. This means you should test everything as it becomes available.

Two of the latest campaign features made available in early 2022 are auto-targeting and App Profiles. With auto-targeting, TikTok removes the complexity and time of having to test a myriad of interest layers. Instead, the campaign set on autotargeting finds the best combination of interest settings to target.

This can be paired with App Profiles, which sends users to an App Store-like screen before actually sending them to the App Store. The idea behind this is to increase the signal on the platform, so TikTok can target higher propensity users who will be more likely to download the app after seeing the real App Store page.

Some of the best practices from other major paid social channels still apply to TikTok. Tactics such as broad targeting and lowest cost bidding have been successful for many advertisers. If you see something working on Facebook or Snapchat, don’t shy away from trying it on TikTok. Bottom line: TikTok isn’t just becoming a huge force in paid acquisition — it’s already there. As you start devising a growth marketing strategy for 2022 and beyond, including TikTok as a part of that longterm plan will have you ahead of the competition. www.inc.com/rebecca-deczynski/negotiationadvice-for-entrepreneurs-making-dealscompromise.html Image credit: https://1000logos.net/tiktok-logo DAWN

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Business

5 'Free' Zoom Alternatives that Break the 40-minute Barrier

By DOUG AAMOTH

To get started, you visit its site and start a meeting instantly with a unique URL that gets generated for you right at the top of the main page. Share the URL with up to 100 other people and, boom, you’re in.

Meetings are encrypted end-to-end, video is HD quality, you can remote control others’ desktops, and there are integrations with Google, Microsoft, and Slack.

IF YOU’RE USING the free version of Zoom and MICROSOFT TEAMS: 60 you’re not a huge fan of meetings to begin with, MINUTES FOR UP TO 100 PEOPLE, PLUS CHAT the 40-minute meeting limit could arguably be AND STORAGE seen as a feature.

If you’ve got a small But sometimes you’ve just got to meet for longer than two-thirds of an hour, right? And if you’re company and you need looking for free Zoom alternatives that are more want to do a bit more than just hold meetings, the free generous, have we got a list for you. version of Microsoft Teams RINGCENTRAL VIDEO: is a must-have.

UNLIMITED FOR Yes, video meetings are limited to only an hour 100 PEOPLE, PLUS and you can’t record them, but you get a pretty RECORDING fully-featured collaboration suite on the side that Probably best known for lets you instant message members of your team, its business phone systems, store and share up to 5 GB of files per person, RingCentral also offers a and access web versions of Word, Excel, and dynamite free video meeting PowerPoint. service called RingCentral Plus, if you haven’t used Teams’ excellent Video.

The free version is perhaps confusingly called Together mode, you haven’t lived.

RingCentral Video Pro, but once you see the list of features, the whole “Pro” thing kind of makes sense: you can host meetings of unlimited length with up to 100 participants, and you get 10 hours of cloud recordings that can be retained for seven days.

Meeting video is captured in HD, you can use virtual backgrounds, and there’s closed captioning and a whole bunch of other useful features. If you’re looking for the ultimate free Zoom alternative, this is the one.

JITSI MEET: OPENSOURCE, UNLIMITED FOR 100 PEOPLE, NO ACCOUNTS REQUIRED The easiest-to-use free Zoom alternative on this list is also the least well-known one: Jitsi Meet.

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GOOGLE MEET: 60 MINUTES FOR UP TO 100 PEOPLE, PATH OF LEAST RESISTANCE Chances are, everyone on your team has a Google account. If that’s the case, the free version of Google Meet will get everyone connected in no time.

You can also invite external participants should someone not have a Google account, so that’s a plus. Video quality is excellent, as are the tablet and mobile apps, and you get screen sharing and live captions—but no recording in the free version.

And while group meetings can only last up to an hour, if you’re a real micromanager, you can hold one-on-one meetings of unlimited length (shudder). To be fair, the free version of Zoom

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Rihanna Expands Fenty Beauty & Fenty Skin to Africa

BY Mya Abraham

RIHANNA IS TAKING OVER the world with her beauty empire, one region at a time.

The business mogul took to social media on Tuesday (May 10) with news that Fenty Beauty and Fenty Skin are coming to Africa.

“I’ve been waiting for this moment!” she wrote in a tweet, captioning a quartet of photos. “@ fentybeauty & @fentyskin are finally dropping in AFRICA!!! Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Namibia, Nigeria, South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe… we comin at ya May 27th and that’s just the beginning!!!” supports 30-hour one-on-one meetings as well— that’s still about 29 hours too long, if you ask me.

WEBEX: 50 MINUTES FOR UP TO 100 PEOPLE, BREAKOUT ROOMS, POLLING, AND WHITEBOARDING The free version of Webex may not give you a ton more time than Zoom, but it’s a venerable, solid platform 21

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Adding to the excitement, the official Fenty Beauty and Fenty Skin Instagram accounts shared a joint post, writing: “The wait is finally OVA!!! AFRICA – we pullin up! Who ready?! We’ve been workin hard to make this happen! We’ll be available in Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya, Namibia, Botswana, Ghana, Zambia, and Zimbabwe local retailers starting MAY 27!”

Fenty Beauty launched in 2017 as a groundbreaking, industy-disrupting beauty brand with its inclusive range of products for all skin tones.

It’s sold in domestic and international Sephora locations including Canada, Mexico, France, Spain, Denmark, Sweden, Thailand, Malaysia, Australia, Singapore, and the Middle East, and ships to more than 150 countries.

Rihanna is currently awaiting to give birth to her first child with partner, A$AP Rocky and is reportedly working on new music. https://www.vibe.com/lifestyle/beauty/rihannafenty-beauty-skin-africa-1234661990/

that lots of people are used to accessing (who hasn’t attended a Webex webinar?) and offers some nice freebies.

You won’t get cloud recordings, but you do get screen sharing, breakout rooms, polling, and whiteboarding, making Webex a good option for brainstorming sessions. https://www.fastcompany.com/90738186/markzuckerbergs-vision-for-the-metaverse-is-off-to-anabysmal-start?

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Business

A Proven 10-Step Startup Marketing Playbook

By Dualboot Partners

Do that consistently over time, and your digital network will grow.

Ours grew from 200 to 1,770 in a year. As we continued expanding our team and sharing relevant, quality content, that following more than doubled, to nearly 4,000 highly engaged followers now.

AT DUALBOOT PARTNERS, our marketing strategy is built around a single statement, one made famous by billionaire entrepreneur Jim Rohn: “Your network is your net worth.”

Building that network isn’t just about attending lots of events (although our dance card most weeks is pretty full) or cultivating a sizable social media following (also core to our approach). It’s a multifaceted effort that’s centered around one basic concept: You have to add value to your network for that network to work for you. When we focus on how we can be of service to others, we build trust, loyalty and connections that generate substantial returns on the investment we make into building them.

How do you do that? For our company, we’ve steadily built our network through a 10-step approach that is equal parts accessible and impactful. It requires time, consistency and commitment, but for us, it has helped us to grow exponentially across the USA since 2018 while building a reputation for service and industry expertise.

Step #1: Build your LinkedIn presence LinkedIn is a powerful business development tool, but you need an audience to make an impact. The first step? Add your employees as administrators to your company LinkedIn page, and encourage them to invite their connections to follow you. Each company can invite up to 100 people per month.

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Step #2: Create content Content is anything you produce as a company — blog posts, case studies, infographics, emails, videos. Businesses typically focus on creating content that sells their products or services, but we’ve found the most impact in producing content that answers important questions, introduces new ideas and establishes our company as a subject-matter expert. Good content communicates your value while adding value to your network, which turns you into a source your connections can trust.

You don’t have to tackle this all on your own. Hire writers to help (we do), and remember to share content from other organizations, too. This is a big part of building your network, as well. In time, those organizations might repay the favor.

Step #3: Create lists of prospects, customers and media contacts Early on in the life of your company, implement a customer relationship management (or CRM) system — which come in all levels of complexity and investment — to begin tracking your prospects, your current customers and your former customers.

Load all your known contacts into the system, and then consider purchasing industry lists to grow your reach. Also, start researching national media outlets for relevant PR opportunities and contacts.

If you want to lean heavily into PR, consider hiring

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a specialized PR firm to spread your message and insights, you give those around you the chance to introduce your brand to publications across the learn new concepts, ideas or perspectives. You are sharing knowledge, and the ripple effects can country. extend far beyond the event itself. So ask around Step #4: Distribute your content about upcoming events, and let your network know You can’t count on people to find your content you’re interested in taking part. on their own. You need to strategize a way to present that content to your audience in a Step #7: Seize low-hanging variety of ways. sponsorship opportunities We recommend using a marketing automation Event organizers are always looking for platform such as Mailchimp to send content to companies to sponsor their next golf tournament, targeted lists. Post your content on your corporate conference or panel discussion. Some of these and personal social media platforms. Share photos opportunities can be expensive, but not all. And of real people, and tag everyone in them to promote the return on investment can be significant. additional engagement and sharing. We analyzed Sponsoring an event often gives you access to two of our recent LinkedIn posts to show the impact lists of attendees to begin prospecting. You get a tag can have: The post with tags earned 5,070 opportunities to talk about who you are and what impressions, 75 reactions and a nearly 16% click- you do in front a new audience. And you keep your through rate. The post without tags earned 1,154 company relevant and top of mind while supporting impressions, 17 reactions and a 3% click-through your industry or community. Start searching for rate. The conclusion: Tagging works. local events to support, and sign yourself up.

Step #5: Identify local or industry awards, and apply

Step #8: Create a "pitch" video, and share it

Every market has a publication or organization that honors local businesses for a variety of reasons: 40 under 40, top CEOs, fastest-growing companies, best places to work. Do your homework to identify the awards you have the best chance at winning, and apply. This is about more than a plaque on your wall. Winning these awards creates PR, marketing and content opportunities for your business. It also provides external validation and introduces your brand to local journalists and influencers, even if you don’t win.

Few mediums are more powerful than video. Use this format to document your elevator pitch, and share it with your network via email, social media or on your website. It gives your connections something easy to share when referring you to others, and it helps hammer home who you are as a company. The key: prepare, rehearse and keep it short. Also, don’t hesitate to hire professionals to ensure your video is something you’re proud to share. This is an investment piece of content, one you’ll share for years to come. You want it to be good.

Step #6: Identify speaking/panelist opportunities The benefit of this step is twofold. First, exposure: When you speak at events and on panels, you increase brand awareness while becoming recognized as a subject-matter expert. The event becomes a business development opportunity, and there’s the potential to create new pieces of content as a result (i.e. social posts to promote your appearance or blog posts synthesizing the key takeaways).

The second benefit is another opportunity to add value to your network. When you share your

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Step #9: Coordinate events and join industry nonprofit board When you coordinate events, you give others the chance to learn, give back and build connections.

When you join an industry or nonprofit board, you are serving your community.

These efforts can be tremendously valuable for your company, as well. Events are a great opportunity to collect pictures for social media (tag everyone) and article ideas for your website. see page 24

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Business

The 10 Richest Black Women in the World

By Gabrielle Olya BLACK WOMEN, particularly those who live in the U.S., have to contend with both the gender wealth gap and racial wealth gap. For every $1 the average white man in America earns, the average Black woman earns just 69 cents, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Despite these barriers to wealth, these women have gone on to achieve enormous wealth. Take a look at the top 10 richest Black women in the world.

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Liberty Investors and was one of the company’s largest individual shareholders, until she sold her shares to become cash-rich, Forbes reported.

Appelbaum is the co-owner of a wine estate in Stellenbosch and a co-founder and deputy chairman of Women’s Investment Portfolio Limited, which has over $150 million in assets.

8. Beyoncé Net worth: $500 million, according to Celebrity Net Worth.

Beyoncé may be married to a billionaire, but she has accumulated a large fortune on her own as both a member of Destiny’s Child and as a solo artist.

In addition to money earned from album sales and touring, Beyoncé has added to her wealth through her clothing company, Ivy Park.

10. Serena Williams Net worth: $225 million, according to Forbes.

Tennis great Serena Williams has accumulated a fortune both on and off the court. She has racked up $94 million in career prize money, Forbes reported.

Williams also has a venture capital firm, a clothing line and owns stakes in the Miami Dolphins and UFC. 7. Ngina Kenyatta Net worth: $515 million, according to Tuko.

9. Wendy Applebaum Net worth: $310 million, according to Tuko.

Known as Mama Ngina Kenyatta, the widow of Wendy Appelbaum is the only daughter of South Kenya’s first president controls some of the largest African business mogul Donald Gordon, who privately-held land holdings in the country, Forbes founded the insurance and real estate firm Liberty reported. She controls about 500,000 acres of Investors. She previously served as a director at Kenyan land with an average price of $1,000 per

Marketing Playbook

from page 23

They also allow you to cultivate leads and ensure customer loyalty. A few years ago, we organized a volunteer event at the Charlotte Rescue Mission, carefully curating a list of attendees. We served lunch to the residents and then gave everyone a chance to meet and connect. Several came away with plans to volunteer again. One identified a new senior-level hire for his startup. Another made a connection that led to a future business opportunity.

Wins across the board.

Step #10: Be a servant leader We pride ourselves on making connections.

We do this whether or not it stands to benefit us.

It’s just who we are. If we see an opportunity to 24

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encourage new relationships, we make it happen.

If there’s a way for us to serve our customers and our community, we do it. And it leaves a lasting impression. Many of our biggest clients have come to us after we referred them to someone or something we thought could help. In the process, we earned their trust and, eventually, their business.

I can’t emphasize enough this is not our goal in serving others. It just happens. We encourage you to give it a try. The worst thing that can happen is you give to those around you, which is actually pretty great. https://www.bizjournals.com/charlotte/inno/stories/ partner-content/2022/04/01/a-proven-10-stepstartup-marketing-playbook.html

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acre. Kenyatta and her family also own Brookside 3. Folorunsho Alakija Dairies — Kenya’s largest dairy company — and Net worth: $1 billion, stakes in Kenyan Television station K24, a timber according to Forbes production company and the Commercial Bank Folorunsho Alakija is vice of Africa. chair of Famfa Oil, a Nigerian oil company whose partners 6. Janice Bryant Howroyd Net worth: $620 million, according to Celebrity include Chevron and Petrobras, Forbes reported. Prior to Famfa Net Worth.

Janice Bryant Howroyd is the founder and CEO Oil, Alakija started a fashion of ActOne, a provider of workforce solutions. She label whose clients included opened the business in Los Angeles in 1978 with the wife of former Nigerian $1,500, including a $900 loan from her mother; as president Ibrahim Babangida.

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of 2017, its estimated revenue was $950 million, 2. Rihanna Net worth: $1.7 billion, Forbes reported. Now, it’s seeing a yearly revenue close to $1 billion. Bryant Howroyd also owns according to Celebrity Net several dozen properties, including commercial Worth. rental properties and residences.

Most of Rihanna’s fortune comes from her business 5. Sheila Johnson ventures rather than her music, Net worth: $750 million, according to Forbes.

Sheila Johnson is the co-founder of the cable Forbes reported. Her biggest TV channel Black Entertainment Network. She moneymaker is her makeup founded it in 1979 with her then-husband Robert. line, Fenty Beauty, which she 2 Viacom bought BET for $2.9 billion in 2001, and a co-owns with luxury goods year later, Johnson got divorced and sold off her group LVMH. She also is the shares. She used that money to invest in hotels in co-owner of the Savage X Florida and Virginia — including the Innisbrook Fenty lingerie line. resort in Palm Harbor, Florida, which hosts an 1. Oprah Winfrey Net worth: $2.6 billion, annual PGA Tour championship — as well as planes, real estate and horses. Johnson is also a according to Forbes.

Talk show-host-turned film producer and produced 2013’s “The Butler.” media mogul Oprah Winfrey 1 4. Hajia Bola Shagaya reinvested the profits from her Net worth: $959 million, according to Gulsea. 25-year run on her namesake show into $2 billion, com.

Forbes reported. Her media empire includes the Nigerian businesswoman Hajia Bola Shagaya cable channel OWN and O Magazine. She also is the founder and CEO of Bolmus Group recently signed a multiyear deal with Apple TV+.

International, a conglomerate with interests in oil, real estate, banking, communications and https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/ photography. The real estate development sector savingandinvesting/richest-black-women-in-theof her group builds and owns dozens of luxurious world-2021/ar-BB1flute residential properties in some of Nigeria’s most Image credit: blogspot.com, businesstech.co.za, celebrityinsider. expensive neighborhoods, Forbes reported. org, howafrica.com, CNBC, NBC News, abtc.ng, africanripples. com, Page Six, MobileSyrup

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Business

Lobos 1707 CEO Dia Simms Leading $2.4 Billion Diversity Plan in Wine and Liquor Industry Through Pronghorn

By Derek Major

BLACK AMERICANS drink wine and spirits at the same rate as White Americans, however, they’re treated unequally in the liquor industry.

Dia Simms is changing that with Pronghorn.

Simms, the CEO of Lobos 1707, has teamed up with Erin Harris and Dan Sanborn to create Pronghorn, which will add diversity, equity, and inclusion to the alcohol industry while also generating wealth and driving acquisitions. Pronghorn will act as a business accelerator, making capital investments and providing assistance, industry-leading expertise, and resources to those interested.

Simms told Forbes the company is named after the second fastest land animal as a sign of its dedication and long-term goals “A band is a term used to describe a group of pronghorn. Our business serves as a constant reminder that by working together, we can accomplish more. Our program is designed to have a positive impact on the ecosystem as a whole,” Simms said.

Simms, Harris, and Sanborn have previous experience in the liquor industry, working to grow Sean “Puffy” Combs Ciroc vodka brand.

The Pronghorn team has a wealth of experience in branding, operations, content development, finance culture, and economics and plans to generate more than $2 billion in revenue for the Black community.

Between 2005 and 2021 the U.S. spirits industry generated more than $35 billion. In recent years, Black owned-companies have popped up across the country, including Uncle Nearest Whiskey and Du Nord Social Spirits, the first Black-owned 26

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Dia Simms distillery in the U.S. Pronghorn is working to bring down barriers to access in the liquor industry, including access to capital by enabling entrepreneurship. They plan to achieve their goal within a decade by addressing the employment gap, building a successful talent pool, and partnering with HBCUs, Black business bureaus, and Black professional organizations to recruit and develop those interested in the field.

“We’re starting with the Black community and the spirits industry with the goal of systemizing and effectively diversifying an industry,” Simms said. “The parts of the discussion about economic engineering and entrepreneurship are the quietest when, in fact, I think they are the most critical. I believe they are the key to unlocking true equity.

These are the necessary components for pro rider representation in 10 years, so that our community is represented equally on all sides of the spectrum, both as a consumer and with consumption, as well as in leadership at all levels, from intern to C-suite.” https://www.blackenterprise.com/lobos-1707ceo-dia-simms-is-leading-a-massive-2-4-billiondiversity-plan-in-the-wine-and-liquor-industry

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Business

Africa Unveils new Platform to Cushion Countries from Ukraine Crisis Shocks

By Adeyiga Abisoye

AFRICAN COUNTRIES will be able to jointly procure essential commodities, whose supply has been affected by the Ukraine crisis, following the African Trade Exchange (ATEX) launch, a platform created to avert the effects of the war in eastern Europe on Africa.

They will be able to purchase the commodities at favourable prices.

The African Export-Import Bank has developed the platform (Afreximbank) and African Development Bank (AfDB) in collaboration with the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Secretariat and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA).

It seeks to help the already fiscally strained African economies deal with the supply shortages caused by the Ukraine war, UNECA said in a statement on Wednesday.

“The Russia-Ukraine crisis has increased the strain on critical supply chains in commodity markets, with current and expected price increases in agricultural products and inputs such as cereals and fertilisers,” the statement read.

“The larger implications are the downstream effects of potential supply chain constraints that can raise prices, increase vulnerability and food insecurity, building unsustainable pressure on already stretched fiscal environments.”

The Ukraine crisis has caused shortages of wheat, maise, and other grains and fertilisers in several African countries, mostly net food importers that get over 80% of their wheat and maise from Russia and Ukraine.

This has seen food commodities prices, oil skyrocket, and currencies steeply depreciate in African countries.

In Kenya, prices increased by 6.47% in April alone, while the shilling has fallen to a record low of 27

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Ksh117 per US dollar.

Uganda registered a 1.4% inflation rate in April, and its currency has been fluctuating against the US dollar. In Tanzania, prices rose by 3.8%, while in Rwanda, they increased by 3.5% in April alone.

According to UNECA, ATEX will ensure supply chain resilience in Africa by enabling “trade of the main agricultural commodities and inputs imported by the continent from Russia and Ukraine,” improving the price stability of these basic commodities.

“The platform will facilitate pooled procurement by African buyers of these commodities from African suppliers where possible and from outside the continent where necessary, thereby contributing to the creation of new, continental supply chains which insulate Africans from the volatility which has characterised recent years,” UNECA said.

Before the launch of the platform, AfDB had announced a $1.5 billion Africa Emergency Food Production Plan that was meant to speedily help African countries produce about 38 million tonnes of food, including wheat, maise, rice, and soybeans, to mitigate the effects of the Ukraine war on food prices.

UNECA said both interventions are crucial to helping Africa improve food security and negotiate competitive prices in the international market. https://www.africanleadershipmagazine.co.uk/ africa-unveils-new-platform-to-cushion-countriesfrom-ukraine-crisis-shocks/ DAWN

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Development

We Need to Redesign Cities to Tackle Climate Change, IPCC Says

By Adele Peters AS MUCH AS 72% of the world’s emissions in 2020 came from cities—and by the middle of the century, urban areas could triple in size. That’s why the latest climate report from Cairo, Egypt The Independent the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN’s climate body, makes it Southeast Asia also need support to avoid sprawl clear that we need to build cities differently, as and what the IPCC report calls “carbon lock-in”— part of a long list of solutions that the world needs designs that make it hard to cut emissions. More to quickly deploy to have a chance of avoiding the financing is needed at the right time so cities worst impacts of climate change. can grow in the right way, Van den Berg says.

“If you want to resolve the climate crisis, you “Transport-related emissions in developing regions need to resolve cities,” says Rogier van den of the world have increased more rapidly than in Berg, acting global director for the Ross Center for Europe and in North America,” he says. “And that’s Sustainable Cities at the nonprofit World Resources a trend that is likely to continue in coming decades.

Institute. “It’s simple.”

That means that we should not only look at what Municipal leaders need to quickly enact a whole are the big emitters right now, but what are the scale of changes, from retrofitting buildings to emitters of the future.” handling urban waste differently. But one critical Cities can also do more to help capture carbon piece is changing how people get around. If cities by adding more green spaces, the report says, are redesigned to be more compact—the concept from green roofs to urban forests. Already, city of the 15-minute city, where it’s easy to walk or trees store around 7.4 billion tons of carbon, and bike to work and stores, and public transportation sequester around 270 million tons of carbon each is also easily accessible—the report says that it year. Adding nature back into cities also helps could help cut urban emissions by around 25%. make cities more resilient in the face of extreme Shifting to electric vehicles “is a huge opportunity,” heat, floods, and other climate impacts.

Van den Berg says, but “you can’t cover it all with Urban emissions are growing now, and by electric mobility. You also need to think about biking, the middle of the century, if cities don’t make walkability, proximity, and density of services.” much effort, could grow to as much as 40 billion When the urban design of a city changes, so metric tons of CO2 emissions each year. But do the people living there. Copenhagen wasn’t with ambitious action, that could drop down to 3 always dominated by bikes; now two-thirds of billion tons of emissions. The scale of cities is an residents bike to work or school. After Paris started advantage. “The growing concentration of people aggressively redesigning city streets, it now looks and activities is an opportunity to increase resource more like Copenhagen. efficiency and to decarbonize at scale,” Van den Making the shift in more car-centric cities in the Berg says. “It means that your big problem is your U.S. is more challenging, though even cycling big opportunity.” paradises like Amsterdam used to have a bigger https://www.fastcompany.com/90737985/we-need-tocar culture. New, fast-growing cities in Africa and redesign-cities-to-tackle-climate-change-ipcc-says

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Development - Cover Story

Senegal is Building a $2 Billion Futuristic City to Help cut Down on Overcrowding in Dakar — Check out its Abstract Design

By Aria Bendix

S E N E G A L E S E LEADERS have long dreamed of building a new urban center amid mounting congestion and overcrowding in the capital city of Dakar.

With a population that exceeds three million, the city plays host to skyrocketing housing costs and visibly high levels of unemployment.

On any given day, locals encounter gridlocked roads, cramped minibuses, and large groups of unemployed workers lingering on street corners.

A new development promises to alleviate some of this pressure.

After securing approval in 2013, developers are set to finish construction of Diamniadio, a $2 billion futuristic city less than 20 miles outside Dakar, by 2035. At the end of last year, the minister in charge of the project, Cheikh Kanté, said it was around 80% complete.

When finished, see page 30

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Hussein Bakri/BAD Consultant/Semer Group

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Development

Future City - from page 29

amorphous patterns of algae in a nearby lake, as well as the silhouettes of traditional female sculptures.

Diamniadio will span 4,000 acres and feature an industrial park, state ministries entertainment To stay connected to the facilities, and a university for around 30,000 natural landscape, each students. The project will also provide a mix of structure is made with luxury, middle-class, and affordable housing for copper — an element around 350,000 residents. found in the earth's crust.

In addition to reducing congestion, the Other materials used development is part of a national strategy to during construction include promote economic growth. Although Senegal's glass, steel, and concrete economy is growing at around 6% annually, its panels, which coalesce to public debt has risen to nearly 61% of its GDP. form a shimmering mosaic of Critics of the project worry that the $2 billion buildings. price tag will sink the country even further into debt. They're also skeptical of its motivation, with Senegal's most famous many drawing connections between the project's tree, the baobab, was a timing and the reelection campaign of current President key source of Macky Sall. inspiration for Others fear the project. that the Although they development can live for 2,500 will be years, baobabs unaf fordable have been victims for most of climate change Senegalese and rising global residents. temperatures.

Despite DLC works to t h e s e combat these concerns, forces by installing the city is a green roofs and m a s te r p i e c e implementing in urban renewable energy planning. One Design was inspired by the Senegalese culture and landscape technology.

It's Hussein Bakri/BAD Consultant/Semer Group of its principal also one of the projects, the Diamniadio Lake City (DLC), combines first LEED certified projects in the country. contemporary, abstract architecture with an DLC is located just 15 minutes from the homage to the nation's rich history and culture. country's new Blaise Diagne international Check out the design below. airport.

In addition to being highly accessible for DLC's design was inspired by the Senegalese pedestrians and those with disabilities, DLC is culture and landscape.

Its sharp curves and sloping lines mimic the located just 15 minutes from the country's new 30

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A

rendering of Diamniadio Lake City in Senegal

Hussein Bakri/BAD Consultant/Semer Group

Blaise Diagne international airport. When completed, it will house its own train station.

DLC's entertainment district DLC's entertainment district features a mall, national library, and high-end residential housing. It also includes a fivestar hotel.

The city's "fashion walk" offers yet another space for pedestrians to shop, eat, and convene.

At night, the buildings bear a striking resemblance to the fictional city of Wakanda.

Earlier this year, DLC buildings were mistakenly used in promotional material for Akon's Crypto City, a theoretical community modeled after the Black Panther metropolis.

"Fashion Walk" Hussein Bakri/BAD Consultant/Semer Group

https://www.businessinsider.com/senegal-building-2billion-futuristic-city-inspired-by-nature-2018-9

io+Lake+City+video&view=detail&mid=8C4C32B6FB10 4BB6AD988C4C32B6FB104BB6AD98&FORM=VIRE

Video: https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=Diamniad

Image credit: dlc.ae

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Development

A Global Impact Investing Network

THE GIIN TRAINING program offers practical coursework to help investors build applied skills to successfully attract, deploy, and manage capital.

The GIIN specially designs courses for investors looking to develop and deepen their practice, especially in the area of impact measurement and management.

The GIIN offers two specialized trainings to improve the capital-raising potential and deployment capacity of impact investors around the world. Our training and resources dig deep into applied skills rather than focusing on theory. Our practical coursework builds on the latest market data, case studies, simulations, and feedback from leading LPs, GPs, and advisors.

The GIIN has worked with hundreds of investors from over 30 countries to develop and deliver these materials and hosted trainings in the U.S., U.K., South Africa, India, Kenya, the Netherlands, France, Ghana, Nepal, and more.

The GIIN’s course offerings include: a two-day, in-person course on Impact Measurement and Management (IMM) as well as an online, selfguided curriculum for those Creating and Managing a Private Equity Impact Investment Fund.

Course Descriptions Impact Measurement and Management (IMM) The GIIN’s two-day, in-person Impact Measurement and Management (IMM) training, which has been consistently rated five stars by participants, is specially designed for investors

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looking to develop an impact measurement practice that fits their unique operational and strategic context. Through a dynamic format consisting of small group-learning, practical simulations, and case study analysis, this course enables investors to construct solutions to key challenges around IMM performance, including designing an IMM framework, metrics selection, efficient data collection and managing stakeholder expectations.

Guide for Impact Investment Fund Managers: A Step-by-Step Resource to Creating and Managing a Private Equity Impact Fund This online, self-guided curriculum advises fund managers on developing a fund structured, managed, and marketed to effectively deliver on impact and financial goals, and appeal to today’s impact investing LPs. Using this Guide How does an impact investment fund manager identify investors? Find investee companies?

Create a fund management team? This Guide seeks to answer these and other questions that are core to a fund’s operating and investment strategies. From structuring a fund and raising capital to managing reporting requirements after investment, fund managers take the steps described in this resource to effectively raise and deploy capital towards today’s most pressing social and environmental issues.

Given the prominent role of investment funds in the broader impact investing ecosystem, the GIIN

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Training Program believes that well-funded and managed funds are crucial to realizing social and environmental impact. From 2013-2016, the GIIN trained more than 275 individuals from over 200 different impact investment funds through in-person trainings on fundraising and investment skills in partnership with Avanz Capital. Building on and refining the materials used in those trainings, the GIIN consulted with an additional 80 impact investors and fund managers.

The result is this comprehensive Guide, offering self-guided, online training materials directly to new and emerging impact investment fund managers.

Each section of this Guide is designed to stand alone, allowing readers to absorb the information through their own pace, and review the specific information that is most relevant to their fund’s particular stage of development.

Investment funds are the most common vehicle used in impact investing. In the GIIN’s 2017 Annual Impact Investor Survey, fund managers accounted for 67% of the total sample by number of respondents and managed 54% of all assets in the sample.[1] In addition, 71 respondents (34% of the sample) reported investing via fund managers.[2] For the purposes of this guide, an investment fund is defined as a consolidated pool of capital from numerous individuals or institutions, collectively invested in a portfolio of investments. Investors in an investment fund are termed Limited Partners, or LPs. Investors are attracted to this type of investment vehicle in large part because it provides a broader selection of investment opportunities, greater management expertise, and lower investment fees than investors might be able to obtain on their own.

This Guide includes the following sections: • Designing an Impact Investing Fund • Creating a Strong Investment and Impact Thesis • Developing a Private Equity Fund Foundation and Structure • Building a Fund Management Team

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• Integrating Impact Measurement and Management • Developing an Economic Model • Marketing an Investment Fund • Navigating Investor Types and Landscapes • Creating Marketing Materials • Preparing for LP Due Diligence • Managing an Impact Investing Fund • Deal Sourcing and Selection • Conducting Due Diligence • Structuring the Deal • Post-Investment Management • Managing Investee Relationships • Reporting to Investors • Adding Value A note for users: While many of the concepts in this guide apply across impact investment products, this guide focuses on private equity because it is the most common asset class used by impact investment funds (by number of investors).

Commonly used and important terms are bolded throughout this guide. If you wish to provide feedback on this Guide, please email training@ thegiin.org.

This online resource is made possible by the support of the American People through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The contents of this online resource are the sole responsibility of the GIIN and do not necessarily reflect the views of USAID or the United States Government.

[1] Abhilash Mudaliar, Hannah Schiff, Rachel Bass, and Hannah Dithrich, Annual Impact Investor Survey 2017 (New York: The GIIN, 2017), 1, https://thegiin.org/research/publication/ annualsurvey2017.

[2] Mudaliar et al., Annual Impact Investor Survey 2017, 30. https://thegiin.org/training/#guide-for-impactinvestment-fund-managers-a-step-by-stepresource-to-creating-and-managing-a-privateequity-impact-fund DAWN

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Development

Africa’s Renaissance: Realised Through Susta

By Dr. Frank Aswani, the CEO of the African Venture Philanthropy Alliance

THE WORLD HAS VASTLY changed over the last few years. Staying abreast of all these rapid global changes can, in itself, be a challenge. But change is inevitable, and so is evolving along with it if we want to thrive. The African continent stands at the cusp of an emerging new world, a new way of doing things with vastly changing systems and structures; and people’s perspectives on how they want to live. This shift makes it necessary to reexamine everything and respond with appropriate, sustainable solutions especially as it pertains to the development required for the African people to competitively participate in this new order:

rose to over 32 million in 2021.

• The Challenge Climate Change poses to Africa: The continent is the most vulnerable to the effects of Climate Change despite contributing only 4% of carbon dioxide emissions. Yet, it receives the least amount in Climate Financing. According to AfDB, Africa alone will need US$ 20– 30 billion per year over 10 to 20 years for climate change adaptation. The Climate Crisis will affect areas that stand at the centre of the continent’s areas of development - agriculture, healthcare, water, productivity, all made worse by an increase in • The SDG financing gap: The financing conflict. needed to achieve the continent’s SDGs greatly These challenges may seem daunting but surpasses all current development finance they present a significant opportunity to broaden flows and is currently estimated at between funding sources by strategically engaging all $500 billion - $1.2 trillion annually. Further, the financing players, including the vast pools of supply of social investment capital remains private resources available across Africa, through significantly mismatched with demand from Sustainable Financing. social enterprises and impact businesses.

At AVPA, we use the European Union definition of Sustainable Finance: the process of taking • Declining social investment financing: environmental, social, and governance (ESG) Social sector funding in Africa traditionally considerations into account when making comes from two main sources - Governments and Overseas Development Agencies (ODA's). investment decisions in the financial sector, leading to more long-term investments in Both remain deficient and are currently sustainable economic activities and projects. under pressure due to declining aid, growing Environmental considerations might include government debt, and changing priorities of climate change mitigation and adaptation, donor countires. biodiversity conservation, pollution prevention, • Effects of the COVID-19 pandemic: The the circular economy, among others. Social COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated inequality considerations could refer to issues of inequality, and set developing countries' efforts to meet inclusiveness, labour relations, investment in the SDGs several steps back. It will also be human capital and communities, as well as human harder for them to rebound from the effects rights issues. The governance of public and private of the pandemic as they “lack domestic institutions – including management structures, financial systems to provide reserves, which employee relations, and executive remuneration may accelerate global financial inequalities”.

– highlight governance considerations, which For instance, according to the International have a fundamental role in ensuring the inclusion Monetary Fund, the number of people living in of social and environmental considerations in extreme poverty across Sub-Saharan Africa

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ainable Finance decision-making processes.

In 2020, AVPA published an 18-country study that mapped the diverse field of social investment across East, West, and Southern Africa. The report highlighted that aid donors, DFIs, and sustainability aligned fund managers are the largest providers of social capital across these regions deploying billions of dollars annually. Additionally, Corporate Social Investors (CSIs) across sub-Saharan Africa largely support basic services such as healthcare and education.

In each of these regions, hundreds of institutions are deploying capital to achieve ambitious social and environmental goals. Yet the capital from these and public funding sources remains deficient.

This calls for us to broaden the funding base to include private financial and capital markets in a way that fosters the growth of fair, inclusive, and sustainable economies.

To achieve meaningful progress, the continent needs an ambitious shift in funding sources and structures that includes the adoption of new innovative financing models like green bonds, climate financing, social impact funds, revenue based financing and more. These strategies would be especially effective in addressing the gaps seen in agriculture, food security, power generation, clean water and sanitation, to name a few. Encouraging funding and investments in these areas will create “long term value creation and impact”.

Although the concept of sustainable financing is still growing, there are many countries and organisations successfully implementing ESG initiatives. South Africa was the first African country to issue a green bond in 2012 and is developing a green finance taxonomy, a governance framework, and a benchmark climate risk scenario for use in 35

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stress tests by the financial sector. The Central Banks of Seychelles and Mauritius are some of the institutions that have set up the Network for Greening the Financial System in order to help strengthen the global response required to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement The African Ministerial Conference for the Environment, alongside international institutions, has recently put forward the African Green Stimulus Programme, in partnership with the UN Environment Programme.

These are just a few of the initiatives already underway on the continent but we need many more of these across Africa. To this end, AVPA has been organising various initiatives to help build capacity, increase awareness and drive partnerships that will hopefully help unlock new capital for social impact. One such initiative is a Dialogue Series on Sustainable Financing that brings together key actors to discuss the challenges and opportunities of this financing model across Africa. Key insights from these discussions include: • Good governance remains a critical component to long-term success of business growth across Africa • Peer-to-peer learning, tools, resources, and training is needed to help organisations embed ESG thinking and practice into their day-to-day operations • Financial institutions are not seen to be providing enough sustainable financing see page 36 DAWN

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Development Sustainable Finance

from page 35

• For African SMEs to scale, sustainable financing needs to be prioritized as they constitute the back bone and growth engines of economies across Africa AVPA will use the information gathered during the Dialogue Series on Sustainable Financing to complement and strengthen services provided to

IMPACT INVESTING Impact investing is an exciting and rapidly growing industry powered by investors who are determined to generate social and environmental impact as well as financial returns. This is taking place all over the world, and across all asset classes. Learn about the latest market developments in the GIIN's latest research here.

Safaricom's M-Pesa, Visa Offer Virtual Card for Global Transactions

By Duncan Miriri M-PESA, THE mobile phone-based African money transfer service owned by Kenya's Safaricom Plc, and Visa Inc launched a virtual payment card on Thursday in a bid to capture some of the continent's $40 billion-a-year subscriptions market.

The M-Pesa Global Pay Visa Virtual card will allow users to securely pay 100 million foreign merchants like Amazon and Alibaba from their mobile phones, without the need for credit cards or accounts with processors such as PayPal. The virtual card is also targeted at the fast-growing subscriptions markets in Africa for services like Netflix and Spotify, said M-Pesa Africa Managing Director Sitoyo Lopokoiyit.

The virtual card is initially available to more than 30 million M-Pesa users in Kenya and will be

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a large pool of social investors. In particular, AVPA is already rolling out: robust capacity building programs, curated networking opportunities, and expanded deal flow live sessions, designed to help investors, across the entire Continuum of Capital, deploy funds more strategically, at the scale and speed needed to meet the SDGs. The remaining years to 2030 will determine whether Africa will achieve its Pan-African vision of ‘an integrated, prosperous and peaceful Africa, driven by its citizens and representing a dynamic force in the international arena.’ (African Union, 2015). To do this, environmental, social and governance considerations must be at the heart of every investment decision if we are to finally realize the true African Renaissance. https://qz.com/africa/2124960/safaricoms-entry-intoethiopia-will-shake-up-mobile-money Image credit: customercarecontactnumber.in, inclusiontimes.com, News Ghana, ethio.news

rolled testing ll d outt to t Tanzania, T i where h t ti is i going i on, Mozambique, Congo, Lesotho and Ghana by April 2023, Lopokoiyit said.

M-Pesa launched 15 years ago as a simple money transfer service and now accounts for roughly half of Safaricom's revenue as consumers use it for purchases, savings, borrowing and insurance. Safaricom is partly owned by South Africa's Vodacom Group.

"A lot of M-Pesa customers today don’t have bank accounts… it (the virtual card) is a catalyst for e-commerce and digital payments,” said Visa official Alex McCrea.

Transactions will be subject to the M-Pesa platform's limits in the local Kenyan currency of 150,000 shillings ($1,285) for a single transaction and a daily limit double that. Users will be able to use the virtual card while travelling abroad.

Transactions on the virtual card will be secured with a unique security code sent to the user's mobile phone and the user's M-Pesa personal identification number. https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/ safaricom-s-m-pesa-visa-offer-virtual-card-for-globaltransactions/ar-AAY0Omp Image credit: metropoltv.co.ke

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Development

Africa’s Creatives are Promoting Sustainability to Combat Climate Change

By TMeron Demisse

Rwanda’s Gahanga Cricket Stadium-The greatest areas of innovation are being witnessed in building design, fashion and visual arts.

IN HER 2004 NOBEL PEACE PRIZE acceptance speech, Wangari Maathai, the late Kenyan activist, spoke of the “central role” of culture in the political, economic, and social life of communities. She also charged Africans and the rest of humanity with their responsibility to the Earth, saying, “Today we are faced with a challenge that calls for a shift in our thinking, so that humanity stops threatening its life-support system.”

With a population of more than 1 billion and growing, Africa contributes the least of any continent towards global carbon emissions, but stands to lose the most if the projections for climate change are realized. This is further compounded by the fact that since 1900, east Africa is estimated to have lost more than 80% of forest cover, while west Africa has lost more than 90%.

This trend will be accelerated as Africa is already undergoing rapid urbanization, resulting in more deforestation and polluted air and water bodies.

With the growth of Africa’s middle class, there will be a greater aspiration for convenience, including consuming disposable goods, resulting in greater pressure on the environment.

The coronavirus pandemic has shifted just about every metric on the planet. But chaos presents an opportunity for recalibration. This crisis has reaffirmed the need to create sustainable practices in spite of the constraints that are emerging from the pandemic. Those who have been able to utilize opportunities to produce more locally and take steps to strengthen local supply chains have fostered positive change during this tumultuous time.

Africa’s creative industries and cultural economy play an important role in staving off this future and ensuring sustainability. The greatest areas of innovation are being witnessed in building design, fashion, and visual arts. see page 38

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Development Promoting Sustainability

from page 37

How African creatives are embracing sustainability in urbanization The rapid urbanization process in African cities leaves room for local artistic and cultural influences to be harnessed. The cultural economy can facilitate the integration of sustainability into urban designs, ranging from the use of public spaces to the design of buildings.

Architecture’s most prestigious honor—the Pritzker Prize—was recently awarded to Diébédo Francis Kéré, a Burkinabè-German architect known for ingenious, climate-resilient structures, that draw on historic architectural best-practices from his country of origin, Burkina Faso.

Another example is, Rwanda’s Gahanga Cricket Stadium, which opened in 2017. It has been recognized for utilizing sustainable construction methods. It won awards for its distinct design that blends the stadium into the surrounding area and merges cricket with Rwanda’s famously hilly terrain.

In Ghana, the seat of the presidency, Jubilee House draws upon local culture for the design of the structure. In the quest for sustainability, solar panels are being installed as part of the government’s “Solar Rooftop Programme” to utilize solar energy to power government buildings.

African artists and designers lead the way in sustainability In textile and fashion, designers are increasingly using locally sourced, recycled items for production.

This is especially important as the continent tries to free itself of its heavy reliance on importing second-hand clothing, as its own textile industries with deep cultural significance are left in disarray.

This heavy reliance on second-hand imports has had a negative impact on local textile and apparel markets in countries including in Zimbabwe. This practice also contributes to waste generation from “fast fashion.”

Some critical steps are being taken to begin to reverse this trend. The demand for sustainable fashion in African countries already exists—and some designers and companies are stepping up to meet this challenge. They include the Senegalese fashion house Tongoro, which relies on local, ecofriendly materials and has been featured in major fashion publications.

Mitimeth, a Nigeria-based company, aims to make handcrafted products, using natural fibers from items such as corn husks that would otherwise be discarded. In 2018, IKEA partnered with South African designer Sindiso Khumalo for its Överallt furniture collection. Khumalo, a celebrated South African fashion designer and recipient of the prestigious 2020 Green Fashion Awards, combines sustainability, s o c i a l impact, and empowerment in her fashion.

She takes pride in using organic cotton and hemp for her textiles.

Africa’s And although projects of this nature have received visual mixed reviews, in Senegal, the $2 billion futuristic artists and how they are addressing Diamniadio Lake City that is under construction sustainability Visual artists can also be a source of inspiration is influenced by Senegal’s indigenous culture and landscape and is being constructed with locally for sustainability. A number of artists are using recycled waste to design compelling works sourced, sustainable materials. (see page 29) 38

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that have gained regional and global prominence.

Ugandan artist Ruganzu Tusingwire was inspired to reuse plastic bottles to design an award-winning recycled amusement park for Ugandan children, building on the works he and other artists have created from trash in the capital of Kampala. The Ghanaian sculptor El Anatsui, who is based in Nigeria, has a storied career combining arts, culture, and sustainability. His works, consisting of recycled wood, bottle caps, and iron nails, have been featured at the Venice around. African designers are leading in this realm and can continue pioneering new innovations that Biennale and at the Tate Modern museum. are both eco-friendly and have design appeal.

What’s the way forward for Third, creating works utilizing recycled materials sustainability in creative industries in while drawing upon local cultural influences can Africa? be a catalyst towards sustainability. One such Three main threads emerge to further cultivate example includes Sanusi Olatunji, a Nigerian artist and embed sustainability practices into the whose body of work includes “Waste is Wealth,” process of creativity. The first entails the design is focused on targeting a consumer market for of buildings. Architecture products made from recycled materials. But at the that infuses African cultural same time his work is desirable for both individuals elements (as seen at and galleries.

Jubilee House in Ghana) with eco-friendly standards The future of sustainability in Africa Most African countries do not have the financial in the design and building processes can provide resources that more developed nations in Asia, benefits that include the Europe, and North America have to mitigate preservation of local culture, the effects of climate change. African countries facilitating a greater diversity will need to find internal resources to support of structures, protection of sustainability initiatives.

Leaders across the creative community can the environment and boost facilitate behavioral change and can help reshape in economic activities.

As much as 75% of the inputs required for production across various the carbon footprint of all industries. Progress can emerge through the buildings in their lifetime comes from the materials ingenuity of everyday people; the long-cherished they are made from rather than the energy used cultural practices of nomadic communities; or the to power them for several decades. Concrete and innovation of artists, engineers, and architects.

The elements are already there for an African steel are the biggest culprits. Wood, which is now future grounded in sustainability. The right being used to build high-rise buildings in Canada leadership, persistence, and investment can foster and Norway, negates this problem.

Second, this approach can also apply to the a sustained appreciation for the environment on fashion world where waste is a natural by-product the African continent that serves as a model for of hyper consumerism. If the industry could use others. https://qz.com/africa/2157440/africas-creativesand champion the concept of recycling and upare-promoting-sustainability-to-combat-climatecycling in the design, sourcing, and production of change materials for consumption, it could yet turn things

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Development

South Africa’s Private Surveillance Machine is Fueling a Digital Apartheid

By Karen Hao This article is not presented in full. It is just too long for presentation in this media format. The DAWN Team urges you to read the full article at: https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/south-africas-privatesurveillance-machine-fueling-digital-apartheid. It is important to our future to be aware of both the benefits and challenges of advancing technologies.

THE CAMERAS ARE NOT there yet. But the fiber already is.

Thami Nkosi points to the telltale black box atop a utility pole on a street once home to two Nobel Peace Prize laureates: South Africa’s first Black president, Nelson Mandela, and the antiapartheid activist and theologian Desmond Tutu.

This is Vilakazi Street in Soweto, a historic suburb of Johannesburg—a sprawling megacity now birthing a uniquely South African surveillance model influenced by the global surveillance industry and set to influence it in turn. Civil rights activists say it’s already fueling a digital apartheid and unraveling people’s democratic liberties.

Five years ago, this wouldn’t have been possible. Neither the city’s infrastructure nor existing video analytics could support sending and processing footage at the necessary scale. But then fiber coverage expanded, AI capabilities advanced, and companies abroad, seeing an opportunity, began dumping the latest surveillance technologies into the country.

The local security industry, forged under the pressures of a high-crime environment, embraced the menu of options.

The effect has been the rapid creation of a centralized, entirely Outside of Vilakazi Street, the rest of Soweto, a predominantly Black township, is coordinated, privatized mass surveillance still poor and surrounded by hills formed from the toxic waste of the gold mining operation.

Vumacam, industry. Image by Madeline Cronje. South Africa, 2022. the company building the It always happens this way, Nkosi says. First the nationwide CCTV network, already has over 6,600 fiber; then the surveillance cameras. The cameras cameras and counting, more than 5,000 of which are useless unless there’s reliable connectivity are concentrated in Joburg. The video footage it to send their video feeds back to a control room takes feeds into security rooms around the country, where they can be monitored by humans and which then use all manner of AI tools like license algorithms. plate recognition to track population movement

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and trace individuals.

Over the years, a growing chorus of experts have argued that the impact of artificial intelligence is repeating the patterns of colonial history. Here in South Africa, where colonial legacies abound, the unfettered deployment of AI surveillance offers just one case study in how a technology that promised to bring societies into the future is threatening to send them back to the past.

Two streets over from Vilakazi, with its touristy polish, the rest of Soweto—a predominantly Black township—is still poor and surrounded by hills formed from the toxic waste of the gold mining industry.

Nkosi, a Sowetan born and bred, has spent 15 years fighting against all manner of injustices— gender-based violence, lack of water and sanitation, and, most recently, the mass surveillance that threatens civil liberties. He sounds more amused than bitter as we drive by the towering heaps that have leached chemicals into his community.

“I’m surprised I haven’t died yet,” he says.

Thus far Soweto has been spared the cameras, precisely because it is poor. Vumacam originally placed them where it could find paying customers.

As cramped streets give way to highway and highway to affluent areas, these installations come into view: steely gray poles with thick fat discs in the middle where clusters of CCTV cameras hang like bats, their gaze trained on the roads.

By the time we reach Rosebank, an upscale suburb of Johannesburg, the poles spring from concrete faster than we can count. Next to a mall, Nkosi, now on foot, stops and gapes at the latest fixture: a camera quadruple the size of all the others.

“That is the first time—that big, big, big thing— that is the first time I’ve seen it,” he sputters with growing animation. “This is definitely facial recognition,” he speculates, meaning that the camera could record video at high enough resolution for such technology to work. “Jesus Christ. No way, no way.”

Asked about that speculation, Vumacam says it doesn’t use facial recognition and will not consider using it until the technology is adequately regulated. “We don’t believe that facial recognition technology as it stands (from any provider) is 41

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reliable enough for ethical use,” says Cathryn Pearman, a Vumacam spokesperson.

NEC XON, the South African subsidiary of the world’s largest facial recognition provider, which says the companies had tentative talks over two years ago about adding that feature to Vumacam’s platform, adds that the cameras aren’t suited for the technology, which Vumacam confirms.

So maybe it’s coming. Maybe it’s not. That’s the thing about a privatized model of public surveillance. It’s really hard to know.

The first thing Rob Nichols wants to show off is the control room. Down the hall from a shared office space, the CEO of the private security company AI Surveillance opens the door to a cavernous room with screens plastered on the walls.

The screens stream footage from cameras around the city that the company has been hired to monitor. They’re also mainly for show. The real action happens below, on two rows of computers, where employees monitor Vumacam’s Proof 360 software platform.

Rather than display dozens of video streams at once, Proof 360 uses AI and other analytics to show only the footage that triggers security alerts.

These include systems for license plate recognition and detection of “unusual” activity.

The latter is provided by a company known as iSentry, which originally developed it for the Australian military. The software trains on 100 hours of footage so each camera can learn “normal” behavior, and then it flags anything deemed out of the ordinary. Each camera can also be configured with additional hard-coded rules. For example, it can be programmed with barriers that people should never cross and zones where cars should never stop.

At a monitoring station in the first row, the alerts appear one by one on a security worker’s screen.

In one a man’s been flagged for running, in another a woman for standing in the hall while texting, in a third a woman for walking too close to a car. The operator reviews each one and clicks a “Dismiss” button on all of them. There’s also a comment box and a button marked “Escalate.”

An escalated alert is kicked back to the second row, where a dispatch team coordinates a response see page 42 DAWN

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Development Surveillance

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based on the alert type and the client’s instructions.

Sometimes that means texting an onsite security guard to d i s p e l loiterers.

Other times it means calling the police to arrest a suspected criminal.

Nichols points to a wanted-car alert, which has pulled in information Image by Madeline Cronje. South from a Africa, 2022. database that the South African Police Service, or SAPS, maintains for vehicles linked to criminal activity. “It is very important that you take note of these vehicles,” he reads in the comments that SAPS wrote as a warning to security guards tasked with responding to the alert and apprehending the perpetrators.

“They are involved in multiple home invasions and murders and are very dangerous. Use high-caliber weapons and will not hesitate to shoot. Call your security company and SAPS IMMEDIATELY.” Vumacam uses a subscription-based model: entities registered with the private security industry regulator as well as SAPS and metropolitan police departments can rent access to whichever cluster of camera feeds they want within the Proof 360 platform. In 2019, the company charged 730 South African rand (roughly $50) a month per camera. It declined to give its latest pricing.

The bulk of Vumacam’s subscribers have thus far been private security companies like AI Surveillance, which supply anything from armed guards to monitoring for a wide range 42

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of clients, including schools, businesses, and residential neighborhoods. This was always the plan: Vumacam CEO Ricky Croock started AI Surveillance with Nichols shortly after founding Vumacam and then stepped away to avoid conflicts with other Vumacam customers.

Today a Vumacam subscription has become a de facto standard for security companies that operate in and around Johannesburg’s more affluent suburbs and commercial areas. “I don’t see a public space provider being able to effectively provide public security without the cameras,” says Ryan Roseveare, who lives in Craighall Park, one of the first suburbs in the country to adopt Vumacam.

These private security companies dominate duties usually associated with policing, even though they don’t have the same legal powers.

Whereas South Africa has just over 1,100 police stations with just over 180,000 staff members, there are 11,372 registered security companies and 564,540 actively employed security guards, more than the police and the military combined.

The imbalance is a remnant of apartheid. In the late 1970s, the ruling National Party deployed police to protect its political interests, controlling widespread unrest in opposition to the government.

These duties took precedence over actual police work, leaving an opening for private players.

Later, an already underresourced police force downsized further as a condition of post-apartheid reform. The private security industry ballooned alongside the country’s staggering rates of crime.

South Africa recorded more than four times as many homicides per capita as the US in the last fiscal year.

Government policy encouraged communities and the police to collaborate with these private agencies. But the result has been the evolution of an increasingly martial private security sector. On a drive around Johannesburg, you can see these paramilitary units everywhere: uniformed men in tactical vehicles, toting big guns. They are far more prevalent than the actual police. The difference is they serve paying clients, not the public interest.

Just as the government failed to provide boots on the ground, it also fell short on meeting the surveillance demands of private citizens and businesses. Johannesburg first installed cameras DAWN

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in 2009, and today they number 574, according to city officials. But the city’s been plagued by media reports of nonfunctioning cameras. Even the 25 installed on Vilakazi Street in 2017, part of a smartcity initiative, are now gone, Nkosi says.

Vumacam stepped into this gap in the market: its CEO, Croock, is a product of Johannesburg’s security industry, having previously operated a private patrol and monitoring service in the more affluent suburbs. With the introduction of fiber internet, he saw the opportunity to add internetconnected cameras and AI analytics to security companies’ offerings.

Vumacam partnered with the Chinese company Hikvision and the Swedish company Axis Communications to provide the hardware while iSentry and Milestone, a popular Denmark-based video surveillance management tool, provided the software. From there, it teamed up with private agencies patrolling wealthier residential areas and erected poles with high-definition cameras where they wanted on top of Johannesburg’s fiber network.

On its end of the bargain, Vumacam promised regular maintenance, high uptime, and storage of the footage for up to 30 days, during which officers and legal representatives could request a more permanent copy for use as evidence in crime investigations. By March 2021, 50 security companies were subscribed to its service.

Vumacam declined to say how many customers it has today.

Outside of Vilakazi Street, the rest of Soweto, a predominantly Black township, is still poor and surrounded by hills formed from the toxic waste of the gold mining industry. Image by Madeline Cronje. South Africa, 2022.

More recently, the company has sought adoption in malls, office buildings, and even people’s homes.

It doesn’t place its own cameras within these spaces, but customers can connect their existing CCTV feeds to Proof 360 for comprehensive security monitoring of public and private spaces.

Having achieved this market penetration, Vumacam is now pushing a new level of centralization and coordination to fight criminal activity. It pitches its solution as a way to track criminals, from the moment they commit a crime, 43

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to wherever in the city they try to escape.

Proof 360 users can add wanted vehicles— those reported stolen or suspected of being used to commit a crime—to their own private database on the platform or a shared database that allows all users to work together to track cars across jurisdictions; in car-dependent Johannesburg, this can be as targeted as facial recognition. “In essence, we could have an incident on one of our cameras, and the security companies are all now trying to intercept that same vehicle in a coordinated fashion,” Croock says.

Vumacam boasts that this approach is orders of magnitude faster than waiting for a police investigation. Users need not file a crime report and receive a case number from the police before adding a plate number to the system. “What if there’s an armed robbery that’s just happened?” says Kelly de Ricquebourg, Vumacam’s product software manager. “I’m going to be able to put this license plate in and catch them in the next 10 minutes. It’s not going to take me 10 minutes to get a case number from SAPS. It takes me up to 48 hours.”

After 48 hours, if a license plate in the shared database still doesn’t have a case number, it’s automatically deleted, she adds. But there’s no transparency or mechanism for public accountability about how thoroughly this cleaning is done; nor is the same process applied to plates stored in each user’s private database, meaning any plate number could be added without any vetting. As a result, cars could be monitored and pulled over for erroneous or illegitimate reasons.

Such apprehensions can be carried out by either security companies or the police, or during joint operations between the two. To avoid the bureaucracy of their own system, which entails opening an enquiry docket, police sometimes ask private security companies to use Vumacam’s network. “We had SAPS in this control room just last week checking it out and seeing what we’re…

This information is important. Please continue reading this article at: https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/south-africasprivate-surveillance-machine-fueling-digitalapartheid DAWN

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Development

Arizona-based Start-up Reinvents the Wheel

By Nick Thomas

Air suspension wheels for mining trucks and wheel loader.

G

lobal Air Cylinder Wheels (GACW), an Arizona-based startup, has literally reinvented the wheel. They developed a new type of wheel that ditches the need for pollutive rubber tires.

Many companies have tried to create new tire solutions, such as Tesla possibly moving toward airless tires on its Model 3, but none have succeeded so far.

The so-called Air Suspension Wheel (ASW) is the brainchild of serial inventor and structural dynamic engineer Dr. Zoltan Kemeny. The patented ASW is a mechanical wheel constructed mostly of steel with in-wheel pneumatic suspension through cylinders.

It is both environmentally friendly as well as costefficient. The ASW is engineered to have the same 44

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(CREDIT: GACW)

lifespan as the vehicle it is mounted on. After that, unlike rubber tires, it can be reconditioned or can be completely recycled.

GACW is currently focused on the $30 billion per year OTR (on-the-road) mining market. Rubber OTR mining tires are expensive: for example, a typical 13,000-pound tire can cost up to $75,000 for a useful lifetime of only 6 to 9 months. “That is a large expense for a product that does not last,” according to the company. On the other hand, the ASW lasts as long as the vehicle itself and therefore saves up to 60% in costs.

Another key feature of the ASW is the greatly reduced Rolling Resistance. This will make combustion engines more efficient and reduce emission gases. For electrical cars, like Tesla, DAWN

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this would mean that the driving range can be extended by up to 30% on the same battery, which is significant.

Rubber OTR tires are also a huge safety hazard with explosions being common. But with the ASW, overheated tires and explosions are a thing of the past.

Last but not least: OTR rubber tires are extremely pollutive. In the mining industry, most rubber tires are not recycled. At the end of their natural life, rubber OTR tires are typically burned or buried in the ground because recycling is complicated, dangerous, and expensive.

A study published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and

in the mid-sized market, it does not have any competitors in the global OTR sector.

In addition to this market, the ASW technology can be applied to all vehicles currently using traditional rubber tires, a $322 billion estimated value in 2022.

So far, the company has raised $3 million and has 4 patents with 13 others pending. It is also currently testing its ASW products with mining partners with an evaluation period of between 6 and 12 months. From 2022, it intends to ramp up its production of the ASW product with full commercialization expected in 2023.

“At this point, our plan is to expand our distribution network and really start taking the tire industry by storm,” the company said.

With governments globally putting increasing pressure on tire producers in terms of disposal, GACW said this is the time for its products to be adopted by the industry. Companies like Caterpillar (NYSE: CAT), Hitachi (TYO: 6501), or Volvo (STO: VOLV-B), Komatsu (TYO: 6301) could end up as partners or clients in GACW’s future.

“Our Air Suspension Wheels are an effective and viable option to rubber tires,” it said. “They are up

Public Health estimated that tires account for as much as 10% of overall microplastic waste in the world’s oceans.

A report by the International Union for Conservation of Nature raised that number to 28%.

ASWs on the other hand are 100% recyclable.

Ramping Things Up While GACW is initially targeting the OTR sector, which includes mining, the global tire market is much bigger, and the company has plans to enter that too.

That said, the initial focus on mining could raise in excess of $20 million in revenue per mine site given the significant numbers of vehicles involved in each mining project.

And while the company may have competitors 45

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to 60% more cost-efficient, safer and better for the environment than rubber tires.” https://www.thebrighterside.news/post/arizonabased-start-up-reinvents-the-wheel DAWN

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Agriculture

The World’s Food System is Too Dependent on Wheat

By Jessica Fanzo

STUNNED BY RUSSIA’S ASSAULT on Ukraine, Europe is scrambling to diversify its energy supply — from piped Russian gas to liquified natural gas, more renewable power and nuclear power.

In the same way, and for much the same reason, the ongoing war should push countries to shift and diversify their food supply — to make it more secure and, at the same time, improve nutrition worldwide.

Russia and Ukraine together supply 30% of the world’s wheat. This is why the war has caused wheat prices to skyrocket, along with the prices of many other food commodities. From February to March, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Association’s Food Price Index leapt 12.6% to an all-time high. This threatens people around the world with unprecedented food insecurity.

It also highlights the need to reform the global food system, which now leaves too many people dependent for nourishment on just a handful of mass-produced grains, including wheat, rice and corn.

To deal with the immediate shortages, farmers in the U.S., India, Canada and elsewhere will have to plant more wheat. And people worldwide will have to replace wheat with rice and other available grains. In the long term, though, this crisis provides an opportunity to change the face of agriculture and reduce the world’s dependency on wheat and other big staple crops.

Accomplishing this shift will be politically challenging. Many countries have entrenched agriculture subsidies that support big commodities including corn, rice, wheat, oils, sugar and soy, and ensure that they are grown at massive scale using uniform farm production practices. In the countries that grow two-thirds of the world’s crops, governments provide $540 billion a year in agricultural support. The U.S. alone spends $16 billion annually on farm subsidies, 80% of which 46

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goes to the largest 10% of farms.

This paradigm has many flaws. After all, there will always be risks in relying too heavily on one grain or just a few. It makes it difficult to address disruptions in supply caused by conflicts, protracted crises and fragile states — as the conflict in Ukraine makes clear. And in addition to geopolitical problems, there is the age-old but now growing threat of bad weather.

Heat waves, droughts, floods and cold spells can devastate wheat, corn, soy and rice crops.

Because of climate change, extreme weather has already reduced harvests enough to push food prices up to their highest levels in 40 years.

Climate change also increases the risk that such extreme weather events might occur at various locations in the same season. This phenomenon of “multiple breadbasket failures” stands to compromise billions of people’s access to food.

Subsidies for the big crops also neglect the need to promote healthy diets. Take wheat, for example.

Whole unrefined wheat is a major source of starch and energy, as well as protein, vitamins (notably B vitamins), dietary fiber and phytochemicals.

But demand for wheat has been rising globally because of its unique gluten properties, which make it also an ideal component of bread, noodles, pasta, cookies, crackers and many other baked foods and snacks. These highly processed foods, which now constitute a significant share of the world’s diet, are depleted of healthy nutrients and DAWN

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f a r m e r s d e p e n d on them to support their livelihoods, and many w o u l d consider it incredibly risky to make major changes in what they grow. But with climate change increasing and geopolitics unstable, change is becoming more and more necessary. And if people Fewer Food Choices Rice, corn and wheat have come to dominate are to avoid chronic health problems such as diabetes and heart disease, they need assistance agriculture To encourage a more diverse and resilient from the food system to adopt more nutritious food supply, countries should begin reorienting diets. The global disruption caused by the war in agriculture subsidies toward fruits, vegetables, Ukraine should prompt governments to reconsider nuts and legumes and other nutritious foods. A their efforts to influence the crops farmers grow recent study suggests that if half of all agriculture and move toward encouraging a more diverse subsidies worldwide were repurposed to support food supply. the growing of foods that benefit human health https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/ as well as the environment, it could increase the articles/2022-04-21/the-world-s-food-system-iscultivation of fruits and vegetables by as much as too-dependent-on-wheat 20% and reduce greenhouse-gas emissions from Image credit: forestwholefoods.co.uk, yolele.com, agriculture by 2%. iyafoods.com, Gardening Know How Shifting agriculture subsidies is no easy lift. Many contribute to poor health.

Over the past 50 years, farm subsidies, supported by complementary research and development efforts in agriculture-dependent countries, have made rice, corn and wheat the world’s most dominant crops, accounting for two-thirds of global food-energy intake. Alternative staples such as sorghum, millet, rye, cassavas, sweet potatoes and yams haven’t disappeared — at least not yet — but they have become steadily less important.

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Agriculture

Averting the Food Crisis and Restoring Environmental Balance with Data-driven Regenerative Agriculture

By George Anadiotis (this article has been edited by the Dawn Team. Read the full article using the link at the end of this presentation.)

UNILEVER IS ONE of the 10 companies controlling almost every large food and beverage brand in the world. Vandana Shiva is a worldrenowned environmental leader and recipient of the 1993 Alternative Nobel Peace Prize (the Right Livelihood Award).

Shiva, a prolific author, just published her latest book: "Agroecology and Regenerative Agriculture: Sustainable Solutions for Hunger, Poverty, and Climate Change". Unilever has recently published a new set of regenerative agriculture principles •

https://assets.unilever.com/files/92ui5egz/pr oduction/489410442380812907bc3d97be02 ccda1a44ab4b.pdf

•

https://www.unilever.com/files/a3f52ce322f7-4048-9c5b-55fa3a7895c4/ul-sac-v1march-2010-spread.pdf

•

https://www.unilever.com/files/2d469e4c7afe-4308-a580-c4b1d867e65b/unileverpeople-and-nature-policy.pdf.

There has to be something about regenerative agriculture. Let's take a look at what it is and why it's important, what the data tells us about it, and how analytics and AI may help going forward.

According to the Rodale Institute, Robert Rodale, J.I. Rodale's son, coined the term "regenerative organic" to distinguish a kind of farming that goes beyond sustainable.

Regenerative agriculture is about going beyond sustainability -- not only maintaining resources, but improving them. That may seem like a tall order in a world where even sustainability pledges are not being met. However, it is essential for a number of reasons.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), about a third of the world's soil has already been degraded. Unless new approaches are adopted, the global amount of arable and productive land per person in 2050 will be only a quarter of the level in 1960, the FAO reported, due to growing populations and soil degradation.

Experts identify the causes of soil destruction to include chemical-heavy farming techniques, deforestation which increases erosion, and global warming. Herein lies a paradox: Populations depend on agriculture for food, but the agricultural practices applied lead to soil destruction, which leads to food insecurity.

That's not all. Soils play a key role in absorbing carbon and filtering water, which seems more fitting and efficient compared to attempts at technological solutions. Soil destruction creates a vicious cycle, in which less carbon is stored, the world gets hotter, and the land is further degraded.

If current rates of degradation continue, all of the world's top soil could be gone within 60 years, according to FAO estimates.

Conventional agriculture is part of the problem The equation "Healthy Soil = Healthy Food = Healthy People" is attributed to J.I. Rodale.

Rodale was an entrepreneur from New York City who struggled with health problems all his life. In 1940, he bought a rundown farm in Pennsylvania and began to experiment with a way of growing food without chemicals that he coined "organic." There, he founded the Soil and Health Foundation in 1947, which today is known as the Rodale Institute. The principles of regenerative agriculture

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instead of growing only corn or only soybeans or only wheat, try to get more diverse crops growing throughout the season and over time.

The fifth principle is to integrate livestock. This mimics nature, by having livestock deposit organic matter to stimulate biological activity. Last but not least, Hora said, the sixth principle is that all of these practices and all of these systems need to be integrated into the proper context -- it's not a one size fits all.

Research indicates that regenerative agriculture has the potential to improve soil health, restore biodiversity, contribute to farm profitability, reduce pollution from agrichemicals, and improve resilience.

By implementing regenerative agriculture systems, we can create a lot of really positive environmental outcomes as well, like improving our carbon footprint, improving our water quality impact, and mitigating flooding," Michael Hora said.

Hora sees regenerative agriculture as something that emerged out of what he calls the soil health movement; the continual implementation of the principles of soil health. So what are the principles of soil health?

First, minimize disturbance of the soil. Minimize the application of chemicals, and minimize tillage to maintain armor on the soil. Second, keeping the crop residue to maintain soil moisture and protect against erosion. The third principle is maintaining living roots.

Hora offered the example of corn crops. Corn is planted in April or May, and then it's harvested in September, October, maybe November. In the period from October till the next April, typically there's nothing growing in those fields, as they are laying bare. In regenerative agriculture the idea is to have cover crops at all times, potentially integrating perennial crops too.

The fourth regenerative agriculture principle is fostering diversity instead of monocultures: 49

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Measuring benefits This is quite a departure from conventional agriculture; Hora claims it can lead to a 25% to 50% reduction in the need for fertilizer. Plus, the quality of the product with regenerative agriculture is significantly better, as protein and the other quality metrics in the crop are improved.

We asked Hora for his take on specific metrics to quantify the impact of regenerative agriculture.

That's the ultimate question, but one for which a solid answer does not really exist at this point, Hora said. There's no industry standard for defining soil health, although the principles Hora laid out seem to converge with Unilever's approach.

Scaling regenerative agriculture with data "The knowledge that's been passed on to most farmers today is the traditional way of doing things. And a lot of the information coming from universities or large agriculture companies is pretty outdated. We almost have to unlearn and relearn a lot of these things.

"It's a minority of farmers that are practicing regenerative agriculture today, but a large group now needs to come this direction. They see it, they're being pressured to be more sustainable, and those farmers need help.

"We also need a lot more consumers and supply chain companies and financial institutions and such. We need those folks coming to the table as well to enable this to scale. It takes a long time to turn a massive ship like agriculture, but we are moving in the right direction and there's a really bright future ahead for this space," Hora said. https://www.zdnet.com/article/averting-the-foodcrisis-and-restoring-environmental-balance-withdata-driven-regenerative-agriculture Image credit: ghanatalksbusiness.com DAWN

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Agriculture

Why This Chicken Coop was Built on Wheels

By Elissaveta M. Brandon

About a quarter-century ago, American farmer Joel Salatin pioneered a portable chicken coop that allowed chickens to graze on new pastures every day. At the time, most chickens were crammed in artificially lit sheds for 20,000 to 30,000 birds. Salatin’s coop hinted at a more sustainable way to raise chickens, but it could hold only 80 birds, and it had to be pulled by hand, limiting the scope of its impact.

Now one of the largest producers of pastured chicken in the U.S. has developed an automated mobile coop that can house up to 6,000 chickens.

Dubbed the ARC (for automated range coop), it resembles a semicylindrical floorless tent that sits on 32 wheels inspired by those of a Mars rover.

The entire structure is powered by solar panels, also on wheels, and can be moved with the push of a button.

The ARC has been in the making for six years, but the initiative got a boost—and funding—in 2020, when Pasturebird was acquired by Perdue 50

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Farms, the fourth-biggest U.S. chicken producer. The first ARC-raised chickens are about to land on your supermarket shelves this summer at a price point that is higher than that th h it organic i of industrial chicken but lower than its counterpart.

For years, Perdue was synonymous with lowcost chicken. Now the company is betting that automating a sustainable farming practice can help it meet increased demand for sustainably raised meat.

The poultry industry measures its success by how many pounds of meat a chicken can produce, and the more birds a farm has, the more profitable it is. That means chickens are often squeezed into horrifically cramped conditions where heating and ventilating systems are controlled by computers and the floor is littered with feces because the DAWN

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sheds are cleaned only once every two to three weeks. Pasture-raised chickens may be spared some of that trauma, but flocks are prone to predators and disease from wild animals.

The key benefit of a structure like ARC is that it puts a roof over the chickens’ heads while letting them roam a little more than usual. “Animals were never intended to stay stationary and live where they poop,” says Paul Grieve, Pasturebird’s cofounder and CEO. “We’re looking at nature as the real designer and we’re trying to replicate agricultural systems.”

Grieve says a mobile coop can also help improve the quality of the fields where the chickens graze, because the chicken’s poop is collected and used to fertilize the crops.

“People forget that plants feed animals, and animals feed plants, and we’ve broken the cycle so horribly and we’ve gone back to a crazy manmade system where you’re hearing about insane fertilizer shortages,” he says. “We have 9 billion chickens a year that are producing some of the best fertilizer in the world; the problem is it’s stuck inside their houses and not incorporated back on the crop field.”

It all started in 2012, when Grieve launched an 80-bird chicken coop in his parents’ backyard.

He was inspired by Salatin’s portable coop, but he describes it as an “extremely labor-intensive manual process,” so customers had to pay a significant premium for pasture-raised chicken.

“My mom couldn’t have afforded that type of chicken,” he says. “So how do we take the same principles but apply scale and industrial design to really change the way chickens are grown worldwide?”

The star of the ARC system is its motorized wheels, which Grieve says are designed to face similar challenges to those a rover faces on Mars’s rough and undulating terrain. The wheels can 51

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rotate a full 360 degrees and drive in any direction.

Without this feature, the coop would have to be wheeled manually.

The entire structure moves at a pace that mimics the natural pace of chickens: Every 24 hours, it rolls about 50 feet over the course of seven minutes. A rubber flap runs along the bottom edge of the tent, so when the coop rolls away to a new location the edges don’t butt up against the chickens inside.

This also means that the coop can hover over any chickens that may have died during the day (so no dead birds lie in the coop for longer than 24 hours). In the industry, this is known as a “dead check” and is performed by a farmer who needs to spot them in a sea of chickens, sometimes as many as 24,000.

Partnering with independent farmers, Grieve wants to place the chicken coops on cultivated land like corn, peanut, or cotton fields. The chickens would come in after the crops are harvested and fertilize the soil for the next round of crops. Pasturebird would give farmers an ARC system; the farmers would raise the chickens and get fertilized land in return.

“They get paid for babysitting chickens,” Grieve says. To date, Pasturebird has deployed between 10 and 20 automated coops, including on a hay farm in Georgia.

The upshot for consumers, Grieve says, is more nutrient-dense meat. According to a 2013 study, pasture-raised chicken is higher in vitamins A and E, as well as iron and omega-3.

An open question is whether a mobile coop results in a significantly better quality of life for the animals. At 7,500 square feet for 6,000 chickens, the ARC has a little more than 1 square foot per chicken. And as The Guardian has reported, most “humane meat” production is a myth.

But one thing is certain: The demand is there.

“For 50 years [people] asked for cheap chicken,” Grieve says. “In the last 10 years, you’ve started to see a real shift towards looking for animals that are treated better, in a way that’s better for the environment and human health.” https://www.fastcompany.com/90748641/whythis-chicken-coop-was-built-on-wheels Image credits: Pasturebird

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Agriculture

Seaweed Farming Has Vast Potential

By Alex Brown, Stateline.org (This article, focused on conditions in the USA, has been edited by the Dawn Team. We urge you to read

the full article using the link at the end of this presentation. Also view some of the videos on the subect also listed at the end of the presentation.

The Promise of Aquaculture Aquaculture advocates note that America's consumption of seafood is growing, but most aquaculture products are imported. Research suggests that the nation's ocean waters have great capacity to support farming operations.

Ocean farmers say their industry offers a sustainable method of food production. Kelp helps to sequester harmful nutrients, while oysters and other shellfish serve as natural water filtration systems. Proponents think farming of fish species can offer consumers protein with far fewer climate emissions than beef and pork production. And the growth of aquaculture could bolster climate resilience, as farms on land face changing weather conditions and scrutiny over their environmental effects. "[Ocean aquaculture] is nutritious and lowimpact," said Paul Dobbins, who helps lead the aquaculture team at the World Wildlife Fund and has operated both shellfish and kelp farms. "You're creating food without using arable land, freshwater, fertilizer or pesticides."

Seaweed also has potential as a fertilizer, animal feed, a packaging replacement for plastics and biofuel.

Supporters say ocean farming can offer economic opportunity to coastal communities that have lost jobs due to declining commercial offshore fisheries.

"We need to figure out how to transition all these people who have these ocean-based skills and culture and traditions of blue-collar innovation to this really important work of climate solutions," said Bren Smith, a former fisher who now farms seaweed and shellfish in Connecticut.

Smith is a co-founder of GreenWave, a nonprofit that supports aspiring ocean farmers. The group has trained 900 farmers and hatchery technicians, and it has a waiting list of 8,000 prospective farmers 52

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who want to join its training program.

Cutting Red Tape Some state leaders are seeking to reduce the regulatory roadblocks aquaculture faces.

"The core reason aquaculture is not occurring in our state in any meaningful way is the broken permitting process," said California Assemblymember Robert Rivas, a Democrat who chairs the Committee on Agriculture.

Rivas has proposed a pilot program that would task state agencies with identifying sites to lease for seaweed and shellfish operations. While the bill stalled last year, Rivas said he remains committed to changing regulations.

Florida created an Aquaculture Use Zone system in the 1990s, with 26 coastal regions in which shellfish farmers can apply for leases with a streamlined permitting process. In Alaska, legislators passed a law last year to speed up the lease renewal process for ocean farmers. The measure's sponsor, Democratic state Rep. Andi Story, also has worked with regulators to make more staffers available to clear a backlog in lease appeals.

"We're serious about trying to grow this industry," she said. "We're trying to clear regulatory hurdles, because it's got so much potential."

Alaska leaders are aiming to grow mariculture into a $100 million industry by 2040. The state's nascent industry totaled $1.4 million in sales in 2019. They're hoping to enable more entrepreneurs like Lia Heifetz, who co-founded Barnacle Foods in Juneau in 2016. Her company uses kelp to make products such as salsa and hot sauce.

"We really were motivated to grow a business that could provide a market for kelp farmers and harvesters," Heifetz said. "It's not a cultural norm to have seaweed on our plates in America, but there

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would be a big upside if that were to happen here."

Lawmakers in New York passed a law last year to allow commercial kelp farming in two Long Island bays, in waters that already had been designated for shellfish operations. Officials are likely to expand ocean farming to more state waters.

"This is an industry that's in its infant stages, but it has the potential to really transform the marine economies here," said Assemblymember Fred Thiele, the Democrat who sponsored the measure. Thiele said state leaders likely will need to streamline the permitting process as well.

Many aquaculture leaders cite Maine, which created the nation's first leasing system for farming in state waters in 1974, as having a well-developed industry and reasonable regulations. The 190 commercial farms in Maine generate $80 million to $100 million annually in sales, led by salmon, mussels and oysters. Many of the state's new ocean farmers come from commercial fishing or other maritime backgrounds.

The state offers a special limited-purpose permit for new seaweed and shellfish farmers, a oneyear lease for a 400-square-foot site. About 750 of those sites are in operation.

"It allows people to start small, to experiment ... and limit risks," said Sebastian Belle, executive director of the Maine Aquaculture Association.

"That's what's fueling the growth in the state, this lower barrier to entry."

Several aquaculture advocates said they hope more states will offer a similar small-scale permit for beginning farmers. Ocean farmers also would like to access the benefits available to their landbased counterparts, such as crop insurance and loan programs.

Competition for Waters Unlike farmers on land, who are limited to private property zoned for agriculture, ocean farmers see vast areas of unclaimed waters with robust growing potential. But because their prospective farm sites are in public waters, they must contend with other ocean users, including the military, shipping companies, recreational boaters, commercial and recreational fishers and shorefront property owners.

"The ocean is actually a very busy place," said Dobbins, with the World Wildlife Fund. "Permitting 53

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is never efficient or fast, and there's good reason for that, because these farms operate in the commons."

Ocean farmers say their biggest task is building public acceptance. In some areas, wealthy property owners have tried to block farms that alter their views. Farmers and conservationists will have to work out whether aquaculture can coexist in protected marine habitats.

Aquaculture also faces some environmental opposition to the farming of net-penned fish.

Opponents point to cases where nonnative fish species have escaped from fish farms, leading to concerns that they could out-compete native fish, spread disease or weaken the gene pool of wild stocks. They also point out the waste from pennedup fish increases nutrient loads in coastal waters.

"If you have regular escapes or large escapes, you're changing the ecosystem, and we don't know if that's repairable," said Marianne Cufone, founder of the Recirculating Farms Coalition, which promotes the use of recycled water to grow food.

Cufone's land-based farm in Louisiana produces catfish and other species on an aquaponic system, which she said is a more sustainable model.

Supporters of ocean-based fish farming acknowledge there have been some poorly run operations, but they say that better species awareness, improved gear, sustainable feed and smart siting locations can reduce the risk of environmental harm.

'Let Us Be the Stewards' Ocean farmers note that many Indigenous peoples have cultivated and harvested coastal resources for millennia. In Hawaii, islanders built distinctive rock-walled fishponds in tidal areas that contributed greatly to local food supplies.

In more recent years, Hawaiians seeking to restore historic ponds found that their cultural practice was now blocked by an overwhelming regulatory system. Locals working to restore one pond site spent 20 years trying to obtain the 17 different permits they needed.

"They had the community support, they had the grants, they had everything, and they just couldn't get through the process," said Michael Cain, acting see page 54

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administrator of the state Office of Conservation and Coastal Lands.

In 2011, Cain joined a team of state regulators tasked with streamlining that process, creating a single statewide permit to encompass much of the previous paperwork. Permits now are issued in about 17 days, he said.

Asuncion's group has about 60 fishponds in its network in various stages of restoration.

In Alaska, tribal peoples have long used kelp to harvest herring spawn, supplement meals and make nutrient cakes. The Native Conservancy, a Cordova-based, Indigenous-led land conservancy, is aiming to foster 100 Native-owned kelp farms over 2,000 acres of ocean within 10 years.

"A lot of people have left the villages because they just can't make a living," said Dune Lankard, the group's president and founder. "We hope this industry will help relocalize individuals that were lost to the seafood industry."

The Native Conservancy has helped seven private kelp farmers procure permits, and it's also set up a commercial farm and nine test sites of its own. The group is supporting another 10 farmers who are seeking permits.

Lankard said state officials should give priority to tribes and Native people seeking to restore traditional cultural practices. He cautioned that the fast-growing industry could create another "land rush," in which large corporations from out of state build massive farms in the waters surrounding Native villages.

"Honor the Indigenous people's right to the land and ocean near them," he said. "Let us be the stewards and guardians that we're capable of being." https://news.yahoo.com/seaweed-farming-vast-potentialgood-191600964.html Videos/Articles: https://flipboard.com/@truthseekers/ the-climate-and-biodiversity-crises-curated-by-marcenemitchell-sdbjdehg01uhr9q9, https://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/video/faroe-islandsfarmers-seaweed-underwater-solution-combatclimate-81249802,

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As Hunger Spreads in Somalia, Babies Start to Die

By Katharine Houreld

HACKED-OFF THORN branches encircle two mounds of earth heaped over the tiny bodies of Halima Hassan Abdullahi's twin granddaughters.

Babies Ebla and Abdia lived only a day.

Weakened by hunger, their mother gave birth tto the twins a month early, eight weeks after ttheir exhausted family walked into a camp for displaced families in the Somali town of Dollow. d "She is malnourished and her two babies died o of hunger," Abdullahi said at the Kaxareey camp which sprang up in January and now houses w 13,000 people.

They are among more than 6 million Somalis who need aid to survive. w After rains failed for four consecutive seasons, tthe worst drought in 40 years has shrivelled their beans and maize and dotted scrubland with the ccorpses of their goats and donkeys. (read more) With global focus on Ukraine, aid agencies and the United Nations are desperate to attract a see page 56

► Amina Hassan Aden sits with her children Yonis Saleban, 1, Abdulahi Saleban, 3, and Isnino Saleban, 9, inside their makeshift shelter at the Kaxareey camp for the internally displaced people in Dollow, Gedo region of Somalia May 24, 2022. REUTERS/Feisal Omar ► Abdia Aden Mohamed rests with her 8-month-old child Ayan Hassan and 5-year-old Iqra Hasan inside their makeshift shelter at the Kaxareey camp for the internally displaced people in Dollow, Gedo region of Somalia May 24, 2022. REUTERS/Feisal Omar DAWN

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attention to a calamity they say is shaping up to be comparable to Somalia's 2011 famine. More than a quarter of a million people died then, mostly children under five.

There is only enough cash for about half the people in the Kaxareey camp. Abdullahi's family is not one of the lucky ones.

She has not seen anything like it since the early 1990s, when a famine helped trigger a disastrous U.S. military intervention in Somalia that ended notoriously with the shooting down of a Black Hawk helicopter. Her family had never had to leave their land before, she said.

On good days, Abdullahi can support the 13 members of her family by washing clothes in town, earning about $1.50. That enables everyone to have a single handful of maize porridge.

But it is not enough. Her daughter-in-law needs medicine for typhoid that costs ten times Abdullahi's daily wages. The girl lies listlessly on a blanket, a skinny baby fretting at her breast. A high-heeled red shoe with a diamante clasp lies in the dirt nearby, one of the few possessions she carried from their sunblasted home. Now she is too weak to even say her name.

"Abdiya," Abdullahi says quietly, trying to rouse her.

The girl does not look up.

▲ Somali displaced girl Sadia Ali, 8, drinks water from a tap at the Kaxareey camp for the internally displaced people in Dollow, Gedo region of Somalia May 24, 2022.

REUTERS/Feisal Omar

▲ Kafia Noor, 5, stands near the grave of her twin sisters Ebla and Abdia who died of hunger at the Kaxareey camp for the internally displaced people in Dollow, Gedo region of Somalia May 24, 2022.

'SO MUCH PAIN' REUTERS/Feisal Omar Early intervention is crucial to staving off famine looming over six areas of Somalia, which is home "We need the cash to avert the risk of famine," to around 15 million people in a region highly said Rukia Yacoub, deputy director for the World vulnerable to climate change impacts.

Getting food out fast meant that a drought in Food Programme in East Africa.

In the camp, people make homes from orange 2017 - worse than the one that caused the 2011 tarpaulins and scraps of cloth and plastic stretched famine - cost under 1,000 lives.

But speed requires cash. And it is in short supply. over domes of sticks.

Hammering echoes as relief workers set up pit The U.N. plan to provide emergency aid is only latrines with corrugated iron sheets. New arrivals 15% funded.

So far, 2.8 million people have received aid. cluster around tents where aid staff tell them there Another 3.1 million could be helped if more money is no help for now.

Instead, many families end up begging a cup of came in.

The rest are out of reach, residing in parched food or a few pennies from those barely better off, hinterlands where an Islamist insurgency holds but who arrived early enough to register for help.

Hunger often weakens the children before sway.

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diseases claim them. Asha Ali Osman, 25, lost her three-year-old and four-year-old to measles a month ago.

Now she cradles her youngest, a baby, as she waits to secure the girl a vaccination in Dollow.

"I feel so much pain because I cannot even

breastfeed her," she said softly. "When my children are hungry, I can beg some sugar water from a neighbour. Or sometimes we just lie down together, and cry." https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/hungerspreads-somalia-babies-start-die-2022-05-25

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Health

What is Google's "Look to Speak" app and how does it work?

By Luke Baker

GOOGLE HAS AN APP, called Look to Speak, that lets users communicate using just their eye movement and their phone's front-facing camera.

It was recently promoted with a heartwarming advert that ran alongside the Oscars 2022 awards program.

But how does this app work, who is it for and how can you access it? Let's find out.

What is Google Look to Speak?

Look to Speak is an app that allows you to select from a list of phrases using only your eye movement, the app then speaks these phrases aloud. It is designed to help those with motor function impairments and speech difficulties to communicate more easily.

The app is a part of Google's 'Start with One' project on the 'Experiments with Google' platform.

Start with One is a collection of experiments that begin by working with one person to make something impactful for them and their community.

In this case, Google sought to help Sarah Ezekiel, an artist living with motor neurone disease.

Google says "The hope is that Look to Speak will be helpful to communities with varied types of temporary, permanent or situational disabilities."

via Look to Speak.

In short, you are presented with a collection of phrases split into two columns.

If the phrase you want is in the left column, you look to the left, off the edge of the screen, to select.

Then, all of the phrases from the left are split across two columns and you can repeat the process as before.

This continues until only your chosen phrase remains and then it will be spoken aloud.

How to access Google Look to Speak At any point, looking up above the screen will Look to Speak is an app that is available to Android users via the Google Play Store. It is free cancel an action. Looking up can also put the app into snooze mode. to use and there is no in-app sign in required.

In snooze mode, the app can be unlocked via • Download the Look to Speak app on Google a sequence of eye movements when you wish to Play continue communicating.

How to use Google Look to Speak https://www.pocket-lint.com/apps/news/ Using Look to Speak is nice and simple. Upon first google/160559-what-is-google-s-look-to-speakopening the app you will have to give it permission app-and-how-does-it-work to access your device's camera, as this is required Video: https://www.youtube.com/ to track your eye movement. watch?v=c3oNaq2Cugs&t=25s Once that's done, you'll see onscreen instructions that walk you through the steps of communicating Image credit: pocket-lint

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Health - New Technology

Kemisola Bolarinwa, Inventor of Cancer-Detecting Bra

By Oluwadara Idowu Kuola Kemisola Bolarinwa LinkedIn

AS A YOUNG GIRL, Kemisola Bolarinwa already had dreams of becoming an innovator.

Her favourite subjects in secondary school were Maths, Physics and Chemistry. Her interests in STEM spurred her to join the Junior Engineers, Technicians and Scientists (JETS) club in her school, St. Helen’s Unity Secondary School, Ondo.

JETS club was created to introduce students to the STEM field and help them get practical experience. As a club member, she represented her school in different competitions, one of which she remembers with pride. In 2006, Kemisola, alongside another student representing their school, built a radio transmitter and receiver, which won 3rd place at a national JETS club competition in Jos, Nigeria.

“The club deepened my interest in stem because I was able to get hands-on experience from what we were taught in school. Going out as a young girl and meeting my counterparts to test my knowledge deepened my interest in STEM.” In pursuit of her dreams, she studied Electrical and Electronics Engineering at the University of Ado-Ekiti. This course of study can be described as the launchpad for all her dreams that are now set to come through.

Kemsiola is now the CEO of Nextwear Technology, Nigeria’s first wearable tech startup.

Nextwear Tech designs and develops technology worn close to the body by embedding programmable electronics and sensors on clothing to solve societal issues such as health 59

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and communications.

STEM Gender Gap In an exclusive interview with Technext, Kemsiola reveals a pattern she observed. For most women, it is all too well known and that is the gender gap.

The CEO’s department in the engineering faculty, electrical and electronics engineering had only 11 girls as freshers. By the third year, some left to other departments and only 7 graduated.

Kemisola is an advocate for girls, as she is trying to bridge the gender gap and encouraging girls and women to seek careers in STEM. On education, she mentioned that the current educational system was not supportive of the practical system of learning. She attributed this to overpopulated schools with limited or archaic resources.

“It is impossible to forget hands-on learning.

Hopefully, the government will review the curriculum to encourage more hands-on learning. I believe that seeing real-life applications catches your interest more than paperwork, like what happened to me. I use myself as a model because hands-on opened my mind and interest to tech.”

Speaking of education, Kemisola is a self-taught robotics engineer. After graduating as an Electrical & Electronics engineer, she discovered that her career choices were limited by the environment she found herself. Another discovery she made was that she was not equipped with the skills see page 60

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Health - New Technology Cancer-detecting Tech

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necessary for the new wave of technology.

Kemisola describes the next step in her journey as a life-changing one and the bedrock of her career. This next step was joining Baun Robotics where she started her journey into the world of computing language and programming, all thanks to the support of her incredible boss.

‘My boss gave all of us the room to use his resources, money and internet to learn as this form of education was not readily available in the country. He was really supportive. I was able to learn the programming language C++ used in robotics which I had no idea of before. I was able to learn at my own pace using videos and texts’, she says.

She has further gone ahead to get certificates in order to validate the knowledge she learned.

Interestingly, Kemisola’s boss did not just give her the room to grow, he also exposed her to different areas of emerging technologies like wearable technology which she now operates in.

Researching is Kemisola’s hobby, so, when she knew about wearable technology, she deep-dived into it. Tragically, she lost her aunt to breast cancer and the idea of finding a solution took root in her mind.

In 2020, there were 2.3 million women diagnosed with breast cancer and 685 000 deaths globally. As of the end of 2020, there were 7.8 million women alive who were diagnosed with breast cancer in the past 5 years, making it the world’s most prevalent cancer.

Breast cancer is a threat to women globally regardless of status. I took it as a challenge. When I gained knowledge in wearable technology, I worked on it.

The best way to beat cancer is through early detection. So, Kemisola, alongside her team of five worked on a product that could detect cancer in the breasts simply by wearing it on the body for about five minutes. This product was named Smart Bra. An oncologist and a cancer researcher are on the team as they help to give insight on the medical aspect of ensuring product efficiency.

The team in 2021 came up with a working prototype and have conducted a local trial or 60

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“troubleshooting”, as Kemisola refers to it. They recorded 87% accuracy and are now working on getting it to to the Minimum Viable Product stage (MVP) so they can do a clinical trial.

Smart Bra Proto Nextwear Technology k t a has an existing product in th the market; necklace that doubles as a tracking device.

With the mobile app, a guardian can follow the journey of the wearer of the necklace.

This product was created in response to the state of insecurity in the nation. Since launching it last year, Nextwear Tech, has sold over 300 units. The mother of one says this is due to the fact that the startup has not done much marketing but that is about to change.

This change is due to the fact that the SmartBra innovation has brought them some publicity, so, people’s doubts about Nigerian made products are allayed.

‘The publicity from the smart bra has helped as now they don’t have the usual doubt of “Naija made ” products. The smart bra has shown that we are capable of making excellent products.’

All these brilliant innovations have come at a cost. When asked about the funding process, Kemisola says “I can tell you that I am exhausted”. The self-funded startup has spent about ₦4 million on SmartBra alone, a cost that arises from purchasing the hardware needed and visiting different teaching hospitals to meet with oncologists.

Hardware development is capital intensive and requires a lot of time. It takes time to get it right.

Funding has to be there because you have to come up with prototypes as you can’t get it on the first try.

Nextwear Technology is looking to raise some funds in a pre-seed round but is holding on until it has come up with a product that is ready for mass production. Kemisola was a recipient of a $10,000 grant in the Standard Chartered Women in Technology Incubator Programme (SC-WITI) in Nigeria.

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Health

investors to support the work as it hopes to have an international clinical trial and a mobile app for wearers of the bra to see their results.

Kemisola has gained recognition for her otype. [Nextwear] work from the Federal G t off Nigeria, after meeting with Government the Minister of Science and Technology for State, Abdullahi Mohammed.

She also mentions global recognition as people from all over the world express their interest in the work.

“We’ve been getting responses from all over the world as people are interested.

The market is there, people are waiting for us and we cannot disappoint them.

We are working on accuracy.”

The process of building the product has been slow as the parts needed are not available in Nigeria. Orders have to be made and then the delivery takes weeks or sometimes months to get to them which is a challenge for the team.

It is evident while talking to Kemisola that she is confident in her abilities. When asked about other challenges she faces, she says gender stereotyping used to be one of it but that she has conquered it by speaking up and believing in herself.

This is also her advice to young ladies. “The first thing is to believe in yourself, ability and potential. Without that, you might get discouraged.

She encourages other women to get into the tech space, regardless of age or educational qualifications.

The innovator is excited about the future.

Kemisola mentions that Nextwear Technology is set to launch more wearable technology products in communication and fashion.

“We want to come up with a runway show at GT Fashion week with our tech meets fashion wears.

People should look out for us.” https://technext.ng/2022/02/28/kemisolabolarinwa-inventor-of-cancer-detecting-braspeaks-on-wearable-technology 61

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New Ebola Outbreak in DR Congo, Contacts Traced-WHO

By Rédaction Africanews A NEW CASE of Ebola hemorrhagic fever has been confirmed in the northwestern Democratic Republic of Congo.

The case was detected in a 31-year-old male in Mbandaka city, the capital of Congo’s Equateur province.

The World Health Organisation confirmed this in a statement recently saying explaining that the patient’s symptoms began on April 5, but he did not seek treatment for more than a week.

He was admitted to an Ebola treatment centre on April 21 and died later that day.

“Time is not on our side… The positive news is that health authorities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo have more experience than anyone else in the world at controlling Ebola outbreaks quickly.” Dr Matshidiso Moeti, WHO Regional Director for Africa said.

Over 100 people came into contact with the new case, and are closely being monitored for symptoms and vaccinations are expected in the next few days.

This is the third outbreak in Congo’s Equateur province since 2018.

Previous outbreaks in Equateur Province were in 2020 and 2018, with 130 and 54 recorded cases respectively.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo is experiencing its fourteenth Ebola outbreak since 1976. The current outbreak is the sixth since 2018 alone – the most frequent occurrence in the country’s Ebola history. https://www.africanews.com/2022/04/25/newebola-outbreak-in-dr-congo-contacts-tracedwho

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Pandemic

Generic Drugmakers to Sell Pfizer's Paxlovid for $25 or Less in Low-income Countries

By Michael Erman

SEVERAL GENERIC DRUGMAKERS that will produce versions of Pfizer's (PFE.N) COVID-19 antiviral treatment Paxlovid have agreed to sell the medicine in lowand middle-income countries for $25 a course or less, the Clinton Health Access Initiative Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) treatment pill Paxlovid is seen in (CHAI) said on Thursday. boxes REUTERS/Jennifer Lorenzini CHAI said it could not disclose the names of the manufacturers who have agreed to the price ceiling, because they Paxlovid has become an important tool in the are still in the early stage of product development fight against COVID-19. In a clinical trial, it reduced and have not received regulatory approval. hospitalizations in high-risk patients by around 90% In March, 35 generic drugmakers around the when taken for five days shortly after symptoms world signed on to make cheap versions of Pfizer's begin. pills for 95 poorer countries through a licensing The results were significantly better than for Merck arrangement with the U.N.-backed Medicines & Co's (MRK.N) rival antiviral pill molnupiravir in its Patent Pool (MPP). read more clinical trial.

Pfizer sells Paxlovid to the U.S. government for Still, as Paxlovid has become more widely about $530 for a five-day course. used, some patients have reported a recurrence CHAI said the generic drugmakers would of COVID-19 symptoms after completing the dedicate capacity for 4.5 million treatment courses treatment and experiencing improvement. read a month for these countries. It said the $25 price more A generic course of molnupiravir is expected to ceiling would apply only if there is demand from the poorer countries for at least 1 million treatment cost about $20 in poorer nations, compared with the roughly $700 per course Merck is charging the courses a year.

In order to guarantee the price, orders need to United States. be for at least 50,000 courses, it said. https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcareThe Clinton Health Access Initiative said it also pharmaceuticals/generic-drugmakers-sellplans to work with donors and governments to pfizers-paxlovid-25-or-less-low-incomeraise funds for an advance purchase agreement countries-2022-05-12/ for the product to meet country needs.

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Pandemic

South Africa's Aspen COVID-19 Vaccine Plant Risks Closure After No Orders.

By Tim Cocks

AFRICA'S FIRST COVID-19 vaccination plant, touted last year as a trailblazer for an undervaccinated continent frustrated by sluggish Western handouts, risks shutting down after receiving not a single order, a company executive said on Saturday.

South Africa's Aspen Pharmacare (APNJ.J) negotiated a licensing deal in November to package and sell Johnson & Johnson's (JNJ.N) COVID-19 vaccine and distribute it across Africa. read more The World Health Organization (WHO) called the deal a "transformative moment" in the drive towards levelling stark inequalities in access to COVID vaccines.

With only a sixth of adults in Africa fully vaccinated, according to the latest WHO figures from the end of March, Aspen's agreement to sell an Aspen-branded COVID-19 vaccine, Aspenovax, throughout Africa seemed like a sure bet.

South Africa, which has vaccinated 30% of its population, also looks set to experience a fifth wave of infections.

Yet, "There've been no orders received for Aspenovax," Aspen senior director Stavros Nicolaou told Reuters over the phone.

"If we don't get any kind of vaccine orders, then clearly there'll be very little rationale for retaining the lines that we're currently using for production,"

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he said of the COVID-19 vaccine plant in Gqeberha, Eastern Cape.

African countries have struggled with logistical issues, lack of skilled staff, cold chains and other problems surrounding the distribution of vaccines.

Another issue is that, after initially leaving Africa out in the cold, donor countries have since paid up and the continent is now well supplied.

Nicolaou said that in the long run the aim was to shift to producing other vaccines but that the firm had banked on these initial volumes to buy it time to establish the operation.

"If you don't breach this short term gap with orders, you can't sustain these capacities on the continent," he said, at a time when health officials want to vaccinate three-quarters of the continent's population.

The African Union's goal is to produce 60% of all vaccines administered in Africa locally by 2040, up from the current 1%, and several such plants are being set up.

"If Aspen doesn't get production, what chance is there for any of the other initiatives?" Nicolaou said. https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcarepharmaceuticals/safricas-aspen-covid-19vaccine-plant-risks-closure-after-no-ordersexecutive-2022-05-01/ DAWN

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Governance - East Africa Community

The Democratic Republic of Congo Becomes the Biggest Country in East Africa’s Trading Bloc

By Priya Sippy

A cellphone stall in the DRC capital, Kinshasa.

TRADE IN EASTERN AFRICA is set for a boost after officially welcoming its seventh member, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), into the East Africa Community (EAC) on March 29th. Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda are the other members.

The DRC is the largest and most populous country to join the EAC, bringing a market of 90 million people and immediately upgrading the region’s GDP from $193 billion to $240 billion.

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the proportion of EAC exports to the DRC has averaged only 13.5%. The DRC’s top importers are currently China, South Africa, and Zambia.

But now, business and trading opportunities could grow in the region.

“From the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean” “The EAC has a population of about 175 million people with 15% intra-trade. The DRC has 90 million people. That’ll bring the bloc to over 250 million,” says Abdullahi Halakhe, an expert on African security. “That’s a huge market that will open the corridor from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean.”

Known for its minerals—holding 60% of the DAWN

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Governance

The Vice President of the United States of America, the Honorable Kamala Harris (r) greets the newly confirmed Associate Justice of the USA Supreme Court, the Honorable Katanji Brown Jackson during public recognition festivities.

April 2022. Evidence of governance improvement in the USA and the successes of the continuing struggle for equal rights in progress by minoirty populations in the USA. Facebook world’s coltan, with abundant reserves of copper, diamond, and tin—the DRC is a magnet for investment. With a global push towards renewable energy, Halakhe argues that the DRC’s reserves of cobalt, which is used to make batteries for electric vehicles, will be the most sought after commodities.

Kenyan firms have already shown interest in expanding investment in the DRC. Last year, Equity Group, East Africa’s largest banking group, sponsored a two-week trade mission as they announced plans to fund Kenyan businesses setting up shop or expanding into the country.

The DRC will additionally gain access to the two main ports in the region—Mombasa and Dar es Salaam—allowing goods to be imported and exported at a much faster pace, making it even more attractive to investors.

Security in eastern DRC remains unstable The move may also help bring more stability to the DRC, which has been riven by conflict for decades. On March 28, violence erupted in the east of the country when M23 rebels attacked the DRC army near the border with Uganda and Rwanda, Reuters reports.

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“Some of the member countries have better lessons of dealing with terrorism,” Halakhe tells Quartz. “Uganda, Burundi, and Kenya have their militaries in Somalia fighting against Al Shabaab.

That know-how could be invaluable in the DRC’s fight against the Allied Democratic Forces, and other groups.”

However, there are still questions about the EAC’s overall effectiveness. The regional bloc continues to grapple with unreliable funding, political disagreements, and trade disputes across borders. Additionally, not all partners have implemented the use of a national identity card to ease travel between countries.

Despite ongoing challenges, it is a step that has been celebrated by African leaders.

“DRC is part of the region. It is colonialism that brought problems,” tweeted Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni. “Now that Africa got its freedom, we should get out of the distortion.” https://qz.com/africa/2147718/the-drc-is-nowofficially-part-of-the-east-africa-community/

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Governance

It's Not Too Late to Fix the Climate Crisis & 5 Other Things to Know from the Recent IPCC Report

By Marthe de Ferrer

THE THIRD INSTALMENT of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report was been published on April 22nd, this time with a focus on mitigation.

It’s a dense document and a heavy read - as you might expect from the United Nations body responsible for assessing the science related to climate change - but it’s also an absolutely vital milestone.

The first IPCC report looked at what has caused climate change, the second looked at the severity of the situation, and today’s is all about how we can fix it.

We absolutely don’t expect you to read all 3,000 pages of the report, so we’ve collated the most important things you need to know.

3. Governments must move away from fossil fuels

“It will take a unite d ef from global leaders encouraged (and p erha forced) into action by individuals voicing the concern, in order to rea these goals. There also needs to be collabo ratio from all sectors, w ith technological inno vation the forefront.” IPC C

The IPCC report makes s it clear that we nee need eed d to move away from fossil fuels in order to reach our emission reduction targets.

There needs to be “widespread electrification, improved energy efficiency, and use of alternative fuels.”

There’s good news on this front though, as the paper notes that since 2010 there have been “sustained decreases of up to 85% in the costs” of renewable sources.

But the authors also emphasise that we can’t solely focus on energy, as…

4. Action needs to come from every This shouldn’t come as news to anyone, but it industry

1. Emissions have to be halved by 2030

always bears repeating.

The next few years are genuinely critical for the future of humanity. In order to limit global warming to 1.5°C, in line with the Paris Agreement, global greenhouse gas emissions must peak no later than 2025.

These emissions then need to be reduced by 43% by the end of 2030.

But unfortunately…

2. We’re not on track right now At the moment the planet is set to get warmer by 3.2°C Currently, with all the climate pledges made, emissions are still set to increase by 14%. This is a world away from the 43% decrease we need to see by the end of the decade.

In order to start moving in the right direction…

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This is a repeated message throughout the IPCC report: there needs to be truly substantial action taken in all sectors.

From travel to finance, agriculture to construction - every industry needs to be placing net-zero strategies at the heart of its operations.

And these changes are likely to have benefits far beyond just climate change mitigation.

Interestingly, the paper highlights that the kind of action needed to cut emissions is also likely to improve public health in a broader sense.

It points to things like liveable cities as an example of where changes that help reduce emissions, also help improve people’s wellbeing.

A move to net-zero, particularly on a global scale, is often accused of being too costly by critics.

However, the IPCC report highlights that…

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ffort s, aps y eir ach o on at

5. Mitigating climate change won’t be expensive A report last year from leading economists concluded that the cost of climate inaction will be far greater than a net-zero transition. That notion is supported by today’s report too.

Even without taking into account the financial benefits of avoiding total climate disaster, the suggested actions we need to take to reach netzero quickly enough would only reduce GDP by a few percentage points by 2050.

This leads to the most important point of all…

6. It’s not too late There is undoubtedly an urgent need for action.

It’s abundantly clear that we are far from where we

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need to be - but today’s IPCC report plainly states that limiting global warming to 1.5°C is not beyond reach.

It will take a united effort from global leaders, encouraged (and perhaps forced) into action by individuals voicing their concern, in order to reach these goals. There also needs to be collaboration from all sectors, with technological innovation at the forefront.

But it is absolutely not too late to stop the worst of the climate crisis. https://www.euronews.com/green/2022/04/04/ it-s-not-too-late-to-fix-the-climate-crisis-5-otherthings-to-know-about-today-s-ipcc-repo Image credit: iai.tv

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Governance

Vice President Kamala Harris in Historic Meeting with President Samia Suluhu Hassan of Tanzania From Associated Press U.S. VICE PRESIDENT Kamala Harris and Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan met recently at the vice president’s ceremonial office adjacent to the White House, a historic encounter between Tanzania’s first female leader and the first American female vice president.

Before their meeting, Harris outlined to reporters three areas of discussion: strengthening democracy, investment and economic growth, and global health.

“Our administration is deeply committed to strengthen the ties in Tanzania and to African countries in general,” Harris said. “This has been an area of attentional focus and priority for both the president [Joe Biden] and for me.”

Aviation pact The U.S. and Tanzania recently signed the Open Skies Air Transport Agreement, which establishes a civil aviation relationship between the two countries.

The two leaders welcomed the investment of nearly $1 billion from American companies in Tanzania’s tourism and energy sectors, according to a readout provided by the White House.

Suluhu, elevated from vice president when John Magufuli died in March 2021, has signaled she wants to steer Tanzania’s foreign policy from inwardlooking to one that draws more foreign investment.

To that end, she has met leaders in Beijing, London, Brussels, Moscow and the Persian Gulf.

She used her speech at the 76th session of the U.N. General Assembly in September — the first time a Tanzanian leader has addressed the body since 2015 — to market her country as a trading partner, promising business-friendly policy changes.

“My government would like to see our relationship grow further and strengthen to greater heights,” Suluhu told Harris. “My only request here is to call the U.S. government to encourage more of the private sector from the U.S. to work with us.”

Former Ambassador to Tanzania Mark Green, who is now president of the Woodrow Wilson International Center, said the meeting was a good 68

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sign for bilateral relations as well as U.S. interests in the continent.

“We know that the continent is looking for U.S. investment. We should pay attention, and we should look for opportunities to partner whenever we can,” Green told VOA. Under pressure from civil society, Suluhu is also trying to return Tanzania to the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, which would be another milestone in reopening her country.

Pandemic aid Tanzania is one of 11 African countries the U.S. is supporting through the Initiative for Global Vaccine Access, or Global VAX, to boost COVID-19 vaccination rates in developing nations.

U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator Samantha Power met virtually with Suluhu in March and announced an additional $25 million in aid for Tanzania. This was on top of the $42 million and the 4.5 million COVID-19 vaccine doses that the U.S. government had provided the country for its pandemic response.

However, without a single dollar of the $5 billion that the administration requested for its global COVID-19 response approved by Congress, by September USAID will no longer be able to finance Global Vax for countries including Tanzania.

Africa policy The Biden administration has laid out a set of priorities for its outreach to Africa, including working toward COVID-19 recovery, combating climate change, boosting trade and investment, and supporting democracy.

In a visit to Kenya in November, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Washington sees African countries as equal partners, as he outlined the administration’s policies toward a continent that receives much of its foreign aid from China, a U.S. rival.

“The United States firmly believes that it’s time to stop treating Africa as a subject of geopolitics — DAWN

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and start treating it as the major geopolitical player it has become,” Blinken said in Abuja, Nigeria.

However, beyond the administration’s effort to combat the pandemic on the continent, there has not been much movement in other areas. Build Back Better World — an infrastructure investment program that the administration has been touting as a better alternative to Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative, scheduled to launch this year — has been delayed.

Russia’s February invasion of Ukraine is likely to continue to be the focus of the administration in the months to come.

“Certainly there are a lot of fires burning right now and I think the Biden administration is spread thin,” Green said.

In September 2021, Harris met with President Akufo-Addo of Ghana and President Hakainde Hichilema of Zambia. Earlier this month, Biden spoke with President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa. https://mshale.com/2022/04/18/vice-presidentkamala-harris-historic-meeting-president-samiasuluhu-hassan-tanzania/ Image credit: todaynewsafrica.com Video: https://youtu.be/m2aWNjDufFs

Tanzania: The Royal Tour The Royal Tour Documentary: Emmy Awardwinning journalist Peter Greenberg travels with the President of Tanzania, Samia Suluhu Hassan. She’s the ultimate guide, showcasing the history, culture, environment, food and music. Information Studio PBS Genre Documentary Released 2022 Rated TV-G Original Audio English (United States) Languages https://tv.apple.com/us/show/tanzania-the-royaltour/umc.cmc.16ipp78ahwbgqkcb8azmxvy2l 69

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Governance

Grain Supply Tops Putin-African Union Head Talks

By The Associated Press

Russian President Vladimir Putin, far right, meets with African Union Commission Chairperson Moussa Faki M and Senegalese President and the Chairman of the African Union Macky Sall, center, in the Bocharov Ruche Black Sea resort. onenewspage.com

AFRICAN UNION HEAD Macky Sall on Friday urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to take into account the suffering in African countries from food shortages caused by Moscow's military campaign in Ukraine.

Putin hosted Senegalese President Macky Sall, who chairs the African Union, at his Black Sea residence in Sochi on the 100th day of Moscow's offensive in Ukraine, with global food shortages and grain supplies stuck in Ukrainian ports high on the agenda.

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Sall asked Putin to "become aware that our countries, even if they are far from the theatre (of action), are victims on an economic level" of the conflict.

He said it was important to work together so that "everything that concerns food, grain, fertiliser is actually outside" of Western sanctions imposed on Moscow after Putin sent troops to Ukraine on February 24.

Sall also said that due to Western sanctions "we no longer have access to grain from Russia and DAWN

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Agenda

Mahamat, far left, ei residence in the

especially fertiliser" that is crucial for Africa's "already deficient" agriculture.

"That really creates serious threats to the food security of the continent," Sall added.

In his remarks in front of reporters, Putin did not mention grain supplies but said Russia was "always on Africa's side" and was now keen to ramp up cooperation.

"At the new stage of development, we place great importance on our relations with African countries, and I must say this has had a certain positive result," Putin added.

"Our turnover is growing," he added. "This year, even in the first months of this year, it has grown by more than 34%."

Washington and Brussels have imposed unprecedented sanctions against Moscow, pushing Putin to seek new markets and strengthen ties with countries in Africa and Asia.

'Exhaustive explanations' The Kremlin said the two leaders discussed expanding "political dialogue" between Russia and the African Union as well as economic and humanitarian cooperation.

Speaking to reporters earlier Friday, Putin's spokesman said Putin would explain the situation with grain supplies stuck in Ukrainian ports to Sall.

"With a high degree of probability and confidence, I can assume that the president will give exhaustive explanations of his vision of the situation with Ukrainian grain," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

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He said Putin will explain "the real state of affairs."

"No one is blocking these ports, at least not from the Russian side," Peskov added.

Putin has said Moscow is ready to look for ways to ship grain blocked in Ukrainian ports but has demanded the West lift sanctions.

Moscow's military campaign in Ukraine and a barrage of international sanctions on Russia have disrupted supplies of fertiliser, wheat and other commodities from both countries, pushing up prices for food and fuel, especially in developing nations.

Cereal prices in Africa, the world's poorest continent, have surged because of the slump in exports from Ukraine, sharpening the impact of conflict and climate change and sparking fears of social unrest.

Ships loaded with grain remain blocked in Ukraine, which before February was a leading exporter of corn and wheat and alone accounted for 50 percent of world trade in sunflower seeds and oil.

The UN has said Africa faces an "unprecedented" crisis caused by the conflict.

In 2019, Putin hosted dozens of African leaders in Sochi in a bid to reassert Russia's influence on the continent.

Though never a colonial power in Africa, Moscow was a crucial player on the continent in the Soviet era, backing independence movements and training a generation of African leaders.

Russia's ties with Africa declined with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and, in recent years, China has emerged as a key foreign power on the continent. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/au-headtells-putin-africans-victims-of-ukraine-conflict/arAAY2zun

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Governance

Germany and Africa Forge Energy Ties

By Isaac Mugabi

GERMANY IS KEEN to ditch Russian oil and gas for good and find new sources of energy, while Africa has abundant fuel reserves. The GermanAfrica Energy Forum has helped delegates develop mutually beneficial partnerships.One of the big topics of conversation at the 2022 German-Africa Energy Forum in Hamburg was Africa's abundant reserves of oil and gas.

In 2017, the African continent reportedly had 148.6 trillion cubic meters of proven gas reserves -- more than 7% of the global reserves.

In 2019, Nigeria led crude oil exports in Africa, with more than 2 million barrels per day of oil sold on the international market.

In the same year, Africa's overall oil and gas production reached 327.3 million metric tons.

As of 2020, Africa's contribution to global oil exports reached nearly 9%.

in terms of, for example, gas, which is a source of transition, we can see its importance in Africa."

The forum came on the heels of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz's visit to Africa last month where he signed deals to support the necessary infrastructure to extract and export oil and gas to Europe.

Energy development projects are capital-intensive and require privatepublic partnerships, according to Ethiopia's energy minister, Sultan Wali.

"African governments cannot carry out these projects alone," Wali said.

"They need financial support from Germany and other rich western countries. This forum will create a strong ground for everyone."

Alternative to Russian energy With a sixth package of EU sanctions targeting Russian oil now in force, Germany is keen to ditch Russian oil and gas for good and is looking at African gas as alternative.

The June 1-2 Hamburg meeting was an opportunity for key players in the German and African energy sectors to create win-win partnerships.

Many German companies are keen to finance African initiatives to produce hydrogen energy for export to Europe.

And African nations are also keen to power up using gas. They see it as a transitional fuel because natural gas produces lower carbon emissions than fossil fuels like oil and coal.

Russian aggression "Because of the war in Ukraine, you can see at the moment the need to diversify energy sources," said Ndiarka Mbodji, a Senegalese-French national and founder of Berlin-based Kowry Energy.

"Africa holds the key to resolving Europe's energy crisis. And if we look at Africa's resources, for example gas, you cannot underestimate its importance," she explained.

Last month, the European Commission announced plans to import 10 million tons of renewable hydrogen annually to replace fossil fuels in several industries and vehicles.

African nations are keen to have a piece of that business.

The African Union Commissioner for Energy and Infrastructure Amani Abou-Zeid said that for Europe to overcome its current security challenges, it needs to deal first with the energy crisis. And this means building strong partnerships with Africa.

"Europe is not secure until we are all secure," Abou-Zeid said.

"And the security of Europe now is not just about the weapons. It's about fuel, it's about energy, it's

Exporting gas to Europe Gas shouldn't be overlooked, said Ndiarka Mbodji, the CEO of a Berlin-based company providing energy solutions to Africa.

"You can see at the moment, with the Ukraine war that we are going through that the need to diversify the source of energy," Mbodji told DW. " And if we look at the resource that Africa has 72

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Senegalese President and the Chairman of the African Union Macky Sall, left, with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz says Germany is interested in a major gas exploitation project in Senegal. © Robert Adé/DW

profit organization that advocates for GermanAfrica partnerships, said Africa needs innovative and integrated solutions to make energy poverty history by 2030.

In a press statement released ahead of Chancellor Scholz's visit to Africa last month, the AEC said that load shedding had become a daily occurrence despite holding significant natural gas and hydrogen potential.

Moreover, it is only expected to worsen unless proactive measures are taken to scale up generation capacity.

"900 million lack access to clean cooking solutions largely attributed to lack of adequate investment and energy transition trends," the about food," Abou-Zeid said.

"So, no one is safe in Europe or secure in Europe statement read.

In South Africa, however, the situation is until we are all safe and secure." different. Although President Cyrill Ramaphosa's Africa's energy deficit government has developed a hydrogen policy, Despite such a positiveoutlook for Africa to small companies that want to support its transition provide renewable hydrogen to Europe-- half of to renewable energy lack the necessary capital. its population lacks access to clean energy. As a result, many households depend on burning Funding growth Zanele Mavuso, the Bambili energy group biomass for energy. executive chairperson, based in South Africa, For example, 95% of Ethiopians depend on biomass fuels, which directly impacts land said, "it's not enough for her government only to production, according to Ethiopia's junior minister lay a strong foundation for renewable hydrogen energy."

Wali.

"It's about making sure you've got the capital to Nevertheless, Ethiopia is trying to shift from support the industry's growth. In addition, it would hydroelectricity production to renewable energy, help if you had the finance to ensure that renewable he told DW. "Currently, we are changing our energy mix energy projects can start and be sustainable over ratios from being dependent on only hydropower time," Mavuso explained.

While most African nations produce little carbon, to a diversified energy source like solar energy, they are most affected by the consequences of wind energy, geothermal and also other reliable climate change and, at the same time, are the sources," Wali said.

"Therefore, it is a vital forum for us to have key partner in the decarbonization of the global a robust discussion about private and public economy.

Observers are keen to see what an African-led partnerships. energy transition will look like and how African Ethiopia boasts of huge ground and surface water reservoirs and hopes to negotiate with nations will become exporters of green energy and hubs for green-powered production. financiers to produce hydrogen energy. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/germany-andLack of investment africa-forge-energy-ties/ar-AAY8Jvz The African Energy Chamber (AEC), a non-

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Governance

Barack Obama Urges 'Fight' Against Autocracies at Home and Abroad

By David Brennan

FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT Barack Obama called on democracies around the world to do more to push back the tide of authoritarianism, stressing the need to address "toxic" political discourse that is undermining democratic societies and institutions.

Speaking at the Copenhagen Democracy Summit in the Danish capital on Friday, Obama told attendees they will "have to fight" for democracy in an age of political upheaval and looming global crises.

"We will have to nurture it, we will have to demonstrate its value again and again in improving the lives of ordinary people," Obama said at the event, which has been dominated by discussions of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the future global role of China.

The war in Ukraine, Obama said, "weighs heavily on our hearts and minds." The former president— who has previously been criticized for a lackluster response to Russia's annexation of Crimea and fomentation of revolt in the eastern Donbas region in 2014—lauded the "heroic resistance" on display in the war torn country.

"They've united to defend not just their sovereignty, but their democratic identity," he said. "And their actions have rallied much of the world behind the values of self determination and human dignity."

Obama said the response of the West—in particular the sanctions offensive against Moscow, the imminent expansion of NATO, and the welcome of millions of refugees fleeing Ukraine—are all "signs of hope in the midst of despair."

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failing to achieve his aims inside of Ukraine and beyond."

"But make no mistake, this war is far from over," Obama cautioned. "The costs will continue to mount, the course of events...are hard to predict.

And our support for Ukraine must remain strong, steadfast and sustained until this conflict reaches a resolution."

Obama addressed the fifth instalment of the Copenhagen summit as lawmakers in the U.S. opened the public hearings of the committee investigating the events of January 6, 2022, when supporters of former President Donald Trump stormed the Capitol and attempted to overturn the results of the 2021 presidential election.

"In my own country, the forces that unleashed mob violence on our Capitol are still churning out DAWN

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misinformation and conspiracy theories," Obama said. "For those of us who firmly believe in the ideals of democracy, the question is how do we respond? And if nothing else, recent events should shake us out of complacency."

To stand a chance against the authoritarian currents spreading around the globe, Obama said, the world's democracies must be more proactive and more honest about their failings.

"We will also have to be willing to look squarely at the shortcomings of our own democracies," Obama said. "Not the ideal, but the reality of our own democracies. Only then will we be able to develop a better story of what democracy can be and must be in this rapidly changing world."

"Today, abstract appeals about democracy won't persuade the jobless youth on the outskirts of Paris may not persuade families in northern England struggling to pay the bills, or the displaced workers and the former factory towns of the American Midwest."

"And they barely register with the hundreds of millions of people trapped in poverty around the world."

The U.S. and other democracies, Obama said, are faced with a "contest of ideas" in which Chinese authoritarianism, in particular, appears "a model of orderly advancement and material improvement in people's lives."

"It won't be enough to just say what we are against," Obama said. "We have to describe clearly what we are for. It won't be enough to reaffirm a creaky status quo, to just put a new coat of paint on the existing order."

"That order has been shaken at its foundations by globalization, and financial crises, and social media. By rising inequality, and mass migration, and climate change, and a multipolar world."

"We are going to have to rebuild our democracies and their institutions," the former president said, "so they work better for more people for this new age."

"I don't have all the answers," Obama said, though suggested democratic systems must to a degree engage with "culture wars" and "identity politics" in striving to become more inclusive and 75

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more reflective of those they represent.

Advocates must also "develop models for a more inclusive and sustainable capitalism" that will more evenly distribute the prosperity that upholds such societies, Obama said.

"The version of capitalism that has come to dominate the global economy has also come to corrode democracy," the former president said, noting the "far-flung mega companies operating beyond the reach of national regulation or oversight for tax collection."

This economic system, he added, is exploiting and suffocating people in developing nations while having empowered authoritarian China, which he described as "the big winner" of globalization.

Political institutions, he added, need revitalization "so that people believe that participation is actually worth the effort." Obama mentioned the divisive Senate filibuster, which he said "has effectively made it almost impossible for either party, even when they have a majority, to get anything substantially through the Senate, and passed and signed into law."

Obama said democracies must also address the influence of "dark money" and expand civic education to better prepare young people for engaging with the democratic process, and being aware of movements seeking to undermine it and obstacles to its functioning.

One such obstacle, Obama added, is the toxic political discourse that has taken hold in the U.S. and abroad. "We have to take steps to detoxify our discourse, particularly the scourge of disinformation and conspiracy theories, of hate online that have polluted our political discourse."

To this end, he said, technology giants must "accept a degree of democratic oversight and accountability." The former president added: "Profit cannot be the only driver for platforms who require power that was once reserved for nation-states." https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/barackobama-urges-fight-against-autocracies-at-homeand-abroad/ar-AAYjJmY Image credit: therecount.com

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Investment

African Stock Exchange/Bourse • Algeria • Angola • Botswana • Cameroon • Cape Verde Islands • Cote de Ivoire • Egypt • Ethiopia • Ghana • Kenya • Libya • Malawi • Mauritius • Morocco • Mozambique • Namibia • Nigeria

Algiers Stock Market Angola Stock Exchange and Derivatives Botswana Stock Exchange Douala Stock Exchange Bolsa de Valores of Cape Verde Bourse Regionale des Valeurs Mobilieres UEMOA (Abidjan) The Egyptian Exchange Ethiopia Commodity Exchange Ghana Stock Exchange Nairobi Stock Exchange Libyan Stock Market Malawi Stock Exchange Stock Exchange of Mauritius Casablanca Stock Exchange Bolsa Valores de Mocambique Namibian Stock Exchange Nigerian Stock Exchange

• Rwanda • Seychelles • Somalia • South Africa

Rwanda Stock Exchange Seychelles Securities Exchange Somali Stock Exchange Bond Exchange of South Africa Johannesburg Stock Exchange

• South Sudan • Swaziland • Tanzania • Tunisia • Uganda • Zambia • Zimbabwe • Zimbabwe

Khartoum Stock Exchange Swaziland Stock Exchange Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange Tunisia Stock Exchange Uganda Securities Exchange Lusaka Stock Exchange Victoria Falls Stock Exchange Zimbabwe Stock Exchange

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www.sgbv.dz www.bodiva.ao www.bse.co.bw www.douala-stock-exc www.bvc.cv (in Portug

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change.com guese)

Dar es Salaam Tanzania Nairaland

fmauritius.com se.com o.mz

es/default.aspx

ange.so o.za aspx

Stocks S k M Mirror i the h E Economy Africa has around 29 stock exchanges representing 38 countries including two regional exchanges.

Africa has become the newest destination for emerging markets investors. From 2000, according to the World Economic Forum, "half of the world's fastest-growing economies have been in Africa." By 2030 one in five people will be African. Combine the continent’s soaring population with technology, economic growth, increasing demand from its growing middle class, improvements in infrastructure, political stability, health and education, and Africa could be the next century’s economic growth powerhouse. Nobody can predict the growth trajectory with accuracy, but Africa is poised for growth.

Profile: The Bourse Régionale des Valeurs Mobilières (BRVM) is the regional stock exchange of the member states of the West African Economic and Monetary Union, namely, Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Niger, Senegal, and Togo. The Exchange is located in Abidjan but maintains market offices in each of the affiliated countries. Being both an economic and political institution, the BRVM is governed by the provisions of the OHADA Uniform Act relating to Commercial Companies and Economic Interest Groups. The operations of the Exchange are entirely digital making it a technical success story on the continent.

Dealing members therefore need not be present on the premises of the central office but can engage from their own offices which the bourse guarantees equal access regardless of the economic operator's location. https://afx.kwayisi.org/

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Investment

Canza, an African NeoBank and DeFi On/OffRamp, Secures $3.27 Million Seed Funding By kodzilla

CANZA, AN EMERGING MARKETS NEOBANK that is building the world’s largest non-institutionalbased financial system, has secured funding of $3.27 million, led by Fenbushi Capital, to expand operations across the continent.

Canza is a DeFi solution portal founded in 2020

by Telecom experts Pascal Ntsama and Oyedeji Oluwoye to address a critical financial need for SMEs seeking foreign currency for transaction settlements and cross-border business.

Canza provides local Foreign Exchange (FX) traders valuable access to capital, process automation, and a high yield vault for deposits in exchange for their local currency.

Canza’s seamless crypto on/off-ramp services enable a wide range of DeFi services including staking, P2P, and cross border settlements aiming to contribute to the creation of an innovative and fully decentralized financial system.

The neobank seeks to leverage its large network of local money market operators to offer financial transaction services to customers across SubSaharan countries.

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According to Oyedeji Oluwoye, Co-Founder, Canza: “Our vision is to become leaders in decentralized finance and to spearhead this movement to offer financial freedom to millions of individuals.”

According to Colin Evran, Ecosystem Lead, Protocol Labs, Canza is expected to hugely impact the development of Web3 in developing markets.

“Given the early traction of Canza, we are delighted to help expand access to Web3 technologies like decentralized identity tools and KYC options to the sub-Saharan Africa region.

We’re excited to help the next cohort of African innovators turn their visions for Web 3.0 into reality.”

This funding will enable Canza to continue headcount growth and expand its service offering in Nigeria and other growth regions including South America and Asia. https://bitcoinke.io/2022/03/canza-neobanksecures-seed-funding/ Image credit: https://www.forbes.com/sites/ oluwaseunadeyanju/2022/03/23/nigerian-cryptostartup-canza-raises-327-million-for-its-internationalpayment-service/ DAWN

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Investment

Zepz, Formerly WorldRemit, Raises Cash at $5 Billion Valuation

By Amy Thomson

ZEPZ, THE COMPANY formerly known as WorldRemit Group, has raised $292 million in a fundraising round that values the money-transfer business at $5 billion.

The round includes new investors including Farallon Capital as well as existing shareholders LeapFrog, TCV and Accel, the London-based company said in a statement on Monday, Ismail Ahmed confirming an earlier Bloomberg News report.

Photographer: Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg The company created the Zepz brand after WorldRemit bought Africa-focused remittance app Sendwave in a $500 million deal announced last August. The Sendwave acquisition valued the combined companies at more than $1.5 billion, Bloomberg News reported at the time.

WorldRemit, a cross-border digital payments service, was created in 2010, inspired by founder Ismail Ahmed’s frustration at the high transaction fees other services charged to send money to his family in East Africa.

Zepz said it will use the funding to invest in its technology and platform as well as its “customer proposition.”

Co. and Barclays Plc are advising on the listing, Zepz is also considering seeking an initial public the people said. offering in the U.S. at a valuation of about $6 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/ billion, a potential blow to U.K. attempts to attract articles/2021-08-23/zepz-formerly-worldremitmore tech listings, according to people familiar raises-cash-at-5-billion-valuation with the matter. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/ The London-based money-transfer firm could articles/2022-02-02/money-transfer-firm-zepzlist in New York as soon as the second quarter. said-to-seek-6-billion-value-in-ipo Goldman Sachs Group Inc., JPMorgan Chase &

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Investment

The British Twins who set up a Black-founded $1bn 'Unicorn'

By Lydia Bernsmeier-Rullow

WHEN 29-YEAR-OLD TWINS Oliver and Alexander Kent-Braham decided to reinvent one of the most traditional areas of finance - insurance - all they had to go on was an idea and the foyer of a gym for an office.

"We were all members of Virgin Active gym. It had wi-fi, coffee and a location on The Strand!" says Oliver.

That's where Marshmallow insurance was born, with the help of co-founder and chief technology officer (CTO) David Goaté. They had no capital and no clients but they knew they had a strong idea.

Their hunch was right, in September 2021 the company reached unicorn status - meaning it is valued at $1bn (£727m) - making it the UK's second black-founded unicorn firm. Ismail Ahmed's firm, WorldRemit (now Zepz), a digital cross-border payment platform, became the first in August (page 71).

Oliver says when they conceived their insurtech firm ("insurtech" means innovating new products and services within the insurance sector) they wanted to turn the industry on its head.

The twins had a conversation with a friend who had recently moved to the UK and kept receiving expensive quotes for car insurance led them to their big question: how do you find reasonably priced insurance if you don't have a UK driving licence?

The key was smarter use of technology and data and they are able to specialise in products for "riskier" customers - migrants, young people and those with low credit scores.

"If we were going to start again we would look to raise capital sooner, because before you raise capital you don't have the confidence to take the next step," says Oliver.

"It was literally Tim Holliday (CEO of Marshmallow Insurance), David, Alexander and myself for nine 80

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Alexander and Oliver Kent-Braham, with th

months. Tim joined our company not taking a salary."

Their next step was to raise capital. Not an easy feat.

"Venture capitalists hold the keys to starting new companies. You have to have a mutual acquaintance to even speak to many funders and that needs to change," says Oliver.

Unicorn: What's in a name?

• Venture capitalist Aileen Lee coined the term "unicorn" in 2013 • Today over 800 companies globally have achieved unicorn status, 48% of those are from the US • The first black-owned unicorn was designated just a week before Marshmallow • A 2020 report by Notion Capital shows that just 21% of B2B unicorn tech companies across Europe and the US are led by women The most recent government statistics say blackowned businesses are four times more likely to have their business loan applications rejected than white or South Asian business founders.

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"We'd always had a bit of an entrepreneurial flair.

When we were 12, we were selling golf balls fished out of the lake and that sort of stuff.

"It was through our early 20s where we just got really into kind of the tech world and into FinTech especially, the whole space is exciting, and that's heir colleague and co-founder David Goaté (marshmallow) where we then started to think we wanted to start our own tech company."

But despite BAME communities (Black, Asian, and minority ethnic) comprising 14% of the UK In 2020, 10x10, a group of early-stage black founders and venture capitalists, found that just population, all-ethnic founding teams received 22% of black founders were able to secure funding just 4% of all venture capital investments between 2009 and 2019. from venture capitalists for their start-up.

And further analysis found that 90% of that "The first investor to really believe in us was a money went to teams with white entrepreneurs guy called Bernard Kantor, who was the founder of Investec bank, and no one really believes in you and just 0.24% went to black entrepreneurs.

The latest research from KPMG suggests that, until one person believes in you," Oliver. thanks to the UK's Covid vaccination programme But just getting to this stage puts the KentBraham brothers in a rarefied position. Just 6% of and a greater business confidence in the postsmall medium enterprise companies in the UK are Brexit environment, global Venture Capital Investment into UK companies has continued to MEG (minority ethnic group)-led. grow, with £6.7bn being invested in the second So how exactly do you create a black quarter of 2021. unicorn?

Back at Marshmallow, Oliver Kent-Braham The twins have always been driven, being offered has some advice for anyone looking to set-up a a scholarship at the prestigious Reed School on business: "To begin with, no one believes in you. the strength of their skill as sportsmen. That drive Your parents say, 'Oh my god, don't quit your job!' has carried them to the top of their field, they say.

They don't want you to take that risk. So take the "We played a lot of elite-level tennis and what risk and be bold in your approach. we took from that was persistence. I think that is a "Start small, but go after really big problems." skill set needed in businesses; no matter if you're https://www.bbc.com/news/business-59051679 knocked down, you need to get up and try again," says Oliver.

Image credit: marshmallow

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Investment

SVB Financial Group Launches Fellowship Program to Foster Future Black Women Venture Capital Leaders

By Jasmine BRrowley

VENTURE CAPITALISM has long been a white male-dominated industry in the US on both sides of the aisle. Not only is there a small number of female founders (2%) raising venture capital, but there is an even smaller number of Black women VCs offering it.

SVB Financial Group (SVB) is putting their money where their mouths are to change this.

The financial partner of the innovation economy and parent company of Silicon Valley Bank recently announced the SVB Fellows Program, a fellowship program for Black, Latinx and women professionals looking to get into the VC industry.

The program is backed by the Black Venture Capital Consortium (BVCC), an organization working to increase diversity within the venture capital and entrepreneurship ecosystem, and the largest provider of specialized venture capital programming for Historically Black College and University (HBCU) students.

“SVB and our partners designed the Fellows Program to create pathways for a new generation of investors to succeed in the VC industry and benefit VC firms by helping them find talent with diverse backgrounds, experiences and ideas,” said Courtney Karnes, Managing Director of SVB’s Access to Innovation program in a news release.

“Our aspiration is that this program will accelerate the flywheel effect of innovation investing while increasing representation in the industry.”

The SVB Fellows Program connects talented emerging professionals with distinguished VC firms, where they will serve in salaried entry-level

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investment roles for 1-2 years–General Catalyst, Collab Capital, Material Impact and 3×5 Partners are alreadly aligned with offering mentorship.

“The SVB Fellows Program is connecting us with talented young professionals who not only have strong foundational VC training, but also bring much-needed diversity of thought and experience to a fairly homogenous industry,” said Arum Lansel, VP of Learning & Development at General Catalyst.

“We are excited to be a founding partner in the SVB Fellows Program, connecting our network of talented young professionals with some of the top VC firms in the country and setting them on a path toward personal success and a more equitable venture capital ecosystem,” said Malcolm Robinson, Executive Director of BVCC.. https://www.essence.com/news/money-career/ svb-financial-group-fellowship-black-womenventure-capital-leaders Image credit: Freepik/ DAWN

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Investment

European Union Plans to Court Africa to Help Replace Gas Imports

By CGTN Africa

An image of a liquified natural gas tanker. /African Business Network THE EUROPEAN UNION (EU) is stepping up efforts to wean itself from Russian natural gas by increasing imports of natural gas from African countries.

According to a draft EU document seen by Bloomberg News, the EU plans to increase liquified natural gas imports by 50 billion cubic meters and boost shipments of pipeline gas from countries other than Russia by 10 billion cubic meters.

Collectively, Nigeria, Algeria, Senegal, and Mozambique sit on close to 600 trillion cubic meters of natural gas. Nigeria is already the fourth biggest liquified natural gas supplier to Europe. There are several other countries in Africa with large gas reserves.

The EU also wants to work out a deal to secure 15 billion cubic meters of natural gas from the 83

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United States. If the bloc’s plans come to fruition, the EU could reduce its dependence on Russian gas by nearly 67 percent in 2022.

The EU’s draft energy strategy also seeks to prepare the region for imports of 10 million tons of renewable hydrogen by 2030 to help replace gas from Russia, in line with the ambitious EU Green Deal to walk away from fossil fuels and reach climate neutrality by mid-century.

The EU is trying to shift away from Russian sources of gas in response to the current military action in Ukraine. It is also concerned about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s demand to pay for the fuel in rubles. https://africa.cgtn.com/2022/05/03/europeanunion-plans-to-court-africa-to-help-replace-gasimports/ DAWN

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Investment and Innovation

2022 World Changing Ideas Awards

See the 39 inspiring winners, and hundreds of honorees, of Fast Company’s 2022 World Changing Ideas Awards by clicking on the link here.

EVERY YEAR, Fast Company’s WorldChanging Ideas Awards honor the innovative ways businesses and organizations are tackling the biggest challenges of our time. Amid the seemingly endless stream of disastrous news, these awards provide more than 1,000 reasons to feel some hope. One thousand fifty-three, to be exact. That’s the total number of honorees that our judges chose to recognize from the nearly 3,000 applications we received.

This year’s honorees are a reminder that, every single day, countless indefatigable problem solvers are addressing the world’s most urgent challenges.

They are devising new ways to improve healthcare, to cultivate food, and to fight misinformation.

They are electrifying more vehicles, including the best-selling truck in the U.S., off-road ones like jet skis and snowmobiles, and the rickshaws that help drive local economies in much of the world. They are decarbonizing urban buildings, expanding the reach of renewable energy with solar panel shingles that can be nailed onto a roof, and devising a lamp powered by seawater that can charge electronic devices. They are building a movement to divest pension plans 84

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from fossil fuels and creating campaigns to urge climate action.

Some are elegant technical innovations, like a 2-nanometer chip that could quadruple cellphone battery life and cut the carbon footprint of data centers. Others are new strategies that aim to improve the way society functions: rectifying overly harsh prison sentences; helping workers fight for rights; providing a basic income to financially strapped mothers. Every one of this year’s honorees represents an idea that can help change the world for the better.

The ideas we’re honoring this year are as varied as the problems we continue to face—from income inequality to the proliferation of false information— but what these bold new solutions share is a refusal to accept that our big problems are intractable.

The 39 winners and hundreds of other finalists— selected by Fast Company’s editors and reporters— are more than just distinct and random glimmers of hope: Taken together, they illuminate a path to a better future. https://www.fastcompany.com/world-changingideas/list DAWN

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Investment

Who can Compete with Airbnb in Africa?

By Quartz Africa

BONGALO WAS FOUNDED as a way to book and pay for travel accommodations using mobile money, which is increasingly popular on the continent. In many African countries, getting paid on other major platforms is far from straightforward.

“For an average host on Airbnb in Africa, they [have] one way to get paid out, which is Payoneer Prepaid Debit Card,” explains Bongalo founder Nghombombong Minuifuong. “They need to buy a Payoneer card, which gets shipped to them, and they attach it to their Airbnb account. Each time there is a booking, they get a deposit on that card and they need to go to an ATM, slot the card, and withdraw the money in local currency, which gets exchanged in the foreign currency. They pay at least three fees to get their money—exchange fee, card fee, and Airbnb charge. [That’s part of] what we are trying to stop.”

Bongalo is meant for both guests, who can book their preferred accommodation on the platform, and hosts, who can list their rental properties.

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avoid multiple fees using mobile money wallets and USSD confirmation codes. Minuifuong calls it “Africa’s Airbnb.”

Bongalo is currently made up of a nine-person team of developers, travel specialists, and marketers, and in 2020 pegged its valuation at around $2 million. It has so far listed over 6,000 properties in Cameroon and Rwanda, where it has operations, and has processed 2,000 transactions.

The company says reservations have grown by an average annual rate of 60% over the past three years, a number that jumps to 80% for listings.

For now, Bongalo’s only funding is through Google’s Black Founders Fund Africa, but Minuifuong is keen to expand the startup’s reach to Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal, Kenya, Ghana, and Uganda.

How the Bongalo App Works The app helps to provide information about houses to let in the towns and cities of Cameroon.

Someone in search of a house sits in the comfort of their homes and scrolls through a variety of houses and chooses which one to take based on price factors, locations, type, accessibility, etc.

This is impressive, isn’t it? The Bongalo App takes away all the Stress. It serves time and avoids that old way of moving from one-quarter to the other looking for houses to let.

With this app, a landlord can upload his facility to it with no sweat for exposure to tenants see and contact him if interested. This approach may sound more romantic to landlords as it offers greater exposure to houses (advertising).

As opposed to the traditional way of putting up signposts and notices which are not seen by everyone since not all tenants pass that way make Bongalo a call for attention. We are in a digital era filled with innovations. Let’s embrace the change and have a stress-free life. Let us all go digital with Bongalo.

Download Bongalo for Free Now! https://www.afrohustler.com/bongalo-app Source 2: This article was from a recent Quartz Africa Member Brief. To have it delivered right to your own inbox, sign up for a free trial of Quartz Africa membership.

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Investment

Top Africa Pension Fund to Invest $1.6 Billion in Private Firms

By Loni Prinsloo

SOUTH AFRICA’S GOVERNMENT Employees Pension Fund will invest about 25 billion rand ($1.6 billion) in unlisted companies across the continent, according to people with knowledge of the matter, renewing a contract with its adviser more than a year after it initially expired.

The Public Investment Corp., which manages more than 2.1 trillion rand in assets, will decide on the investments, according to a joint statement the two companies released on Tuesday, without giving financial details. GEPF may set aside more money for investing in unlisted securities later, the people said, asking not to be identified because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly about the matter.

The size of the initial allocation is much less than 70 billion rand that the pension fund had set aside in the previous contract. The reduction comes in light of a judicial inquiry against the PIC that concentrated on its Isibaya Fund, which makes investments in unlisted assets and focuses on Black economic empowerment transactions and social infrastructure projects.

Isibaya is key to the strategy of both the GEPF and PIC in terms of tackling South Africa’s social inequality and environmental challenges. The 86

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unit “provides finance for projects that generate financial returns, while also supporting positive, long-term economic, social and environmental outcomes,” according to the PIC’s website.

GEPF and the PIC didn’t immediately respond to requests for comments on the amount.

Investment plan: • Invest 300 million rand and 500 million rand per entity, although attractive investments starting at 100 million rand “will be considered,” according to the statement.

• The so-called Rest of Africa development portfolio will mainly comprise of investments between $20 million and $40 million. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/ articles/2022-05-03/top-africa-pension-fund-toinvest-1-6-billion-in-private-firms Image credit: southafricatoday.net, xpressionassist.com

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Technology/Science

The Space Economy is Ready for Lift-off: First into Orbit, and then to the Moon

By Stephanie Condon

2022 IS SET to be a major year for the space economy. According to the Space Foundation, 15 new launch vehicles are set to debut this year, more than any other year in space history. Last year, US spaceports had more launches than any year since 1967, and the number is climbing.

Meanwhile, employment in the core US space industry employment is at a 10-year high.

The momentum is there for a flourishing space economy that, according to NASA leaders, could in 20 years take public and private missions beyond low Earth orbit (LEO), with services and infrastructure on the lunar surface and in cislunar space. It's a fast-growing economy, NASA leaders said at the 37th Space Symposium, that offers promising opportunities for young people who want to get their foot in the door.

The space economy is already a $400 billion industry "and on the way to $1 trillion, and I suspect it'll get there faster than we think," James Reuter, associate administrator for the Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) at NASA, said during a panel this week at the 37th Space Symposium in Colorado Springs.

"It's not just venture capitalists that are geeks for space" that are bringing this economy to life, Reuter said. "It's also much more conventional people looking for opportunities. There's a lot more opportunities for capital investment."

And while investments in LEO are a mainstay, he said, "there's a strong push towards cislunar space... We're seeing a lot of investment we can take advantage of."

What exactly is the space economy?

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Simply put, it's "the production of goods and services in space, for all kinds of reasons," explained Kenneth Bowersox, deputy associate administrator for NASA's Space Operations Mission Directorate. "For amusement, for scientific knowledge, to go further than we've ever gone before. There are lots of ways we can develop it, but the best way is to bring in more and more participants and watch more and more missions proliferate, both government missions and nongovernment missions." Bowersox said that in the decades to come, he expects to see private missions that go to the lunar surface, for scientific missions and to explore for resources.

Reuter said he hopes to see "a rough parallel with the airline industry." There should be services that NASA uses, he said, while "we set our attention on the next great thing... And I don't think in 20 or 40 years we'll run out of the next great things. We'll go further and further in exploration."

For people who want to play a role in the industry, "the most important thing is a passion for the work and some great, creative ideas," Bowersox said.

While there are several major private sector entities already involved in the industry, that shouldn't be a deterrent for smaller players, he added.

"In our contracting efforts, we've got requirements that big companies have to include small companies," Bowersox said. "So if I were a grad student with a neat idea, I wouldn't let the fact that I'm a one-person company frighten me away from doing the business. If you've got the passion and you've got the ideas, you can find a way to get built into the system and become part of what we do in low Earth orbit and what we'll do beyond low Earth orbit." https://www.zdnet.com/article/what-will-the-spaceeconomy-look-like-in-20-years-nasa-leaders-weigh-in Image credit: Planetary Society

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Technology/Science

Tiger Steaks and Lion Burgers: Lab-grown Exotic Animal Meat is on the Way

By Luke Dormehl

“LION IS ONE of the most — no, not one of the most — the most popular wild, exotic animal in the world,” said Yilmaz Bora. “I mean, everybody watches The Lion King. I think everyone’s enthusiastic about trying cultivated lion meat.”

As If This Then That statements go, this doesn’t totally track. Sure, The Lion King is one of Disney’s best-loved, most widely watched movies. However, by the time you’ve watched heroic big cat Simba (spoilers) introduced as a cute cub, taught about the Circle of Life, sing a handful of big Broadway numbers, lose his dad, befriend a lovable warthog and meerkat duo, fall in love, battle his villainous uncle Scar, restore peace to the Pride Lands, and continue the line with a baby of his own, your biggest takeaway probably isn’t: “Yes, but how would he taste with the right marinade?” At least, not in this household.

But Bora, the co-founder of a food tech company called Primeval Foods, thinks different. He thinks that even if you might balk at chowing down on Simba, there are plenty of others who wouldn’t. In fact, he thinks they’d be more than willing to throw down their hard-earned money for the opportunity.

And in an age of lab-grown meat possibilities, he wants to let them.

“We’re focused on [all the popular wild animals],” Bora told Digital Trends. “Like big cats, elephants, giraffes, and zebras – but the main purpose right 88

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now is to focus on the big cats. They are the sexy ones.”

From zoo to table (with a stop-off at the lab) Primeval Foods, established in 2022, is one of a growing (no pun intended) number of food tech startups seeking to engineer cellular meats in labs. Not to be confused with the plant-based meat substitutes created by companies like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods, cellular meat companies are working hard to create and, ultimately, sell vast quantities of lab-grown flesh that’s indistinguishable from the real thing. That means the same appearance, texture, and taste profile, only without the animal suffering and death we associate with present-day meat manufacturing, as well as the negative environmental impacts that accompany it.

The idea of growing meat the way you’d grow yogurt or beer in a giant tank sounds crazy.

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What it has is its unique selling point – hence Bora’s description of “sexy” meat, by which he means the kind of provocative messaging that makes headline writers drool. The fact that labgrown meat companies already have to resort to niches and gimmicks is proof positive of the gap between the bleeding edge (again, no pun intended) of technology and where the rest of us are. It doesn’t matter that very few of us have sampled lab-grown meat just yet; if you’re going to make your arrival in this space mean something, you’d better have a way of standing out from the crowd — whether it’s artificial big cats or lab-grown foie gras.

However, it’s not all that different in concept from the way you grow new plants from cuttings in a greenhouse: Take a small initial sample of the subject you want to replicate, then provide it with the right artificial conditions needed to cultivate new cell growth.

Big players such as Memphis Meats and Mosa Meat have already been at their mission for the best part of a decade, and attracted tens of millions of dollars in funding in the process. Primeval, which is currently bootstrapping its edible safari, doesn’t (yet) have those same Scrooge McDuck-style vaults of venture cash driving it forward.

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Beyond domestication “Our elevator pitch is based on the [premise] that the reason we consume traditional species is not because they are the tastiest, healthiest, or most nutritious, but because they were the easiest to domesticate,” Bora explained. “Since now we can cultivate any species in the world, why do we keep going back to traditional species? Why do we not explore beyond domestication?”

But it’s not just about grabbing headlines. While there will certainly be people attracted to lab-grown lion steaks because they’re lab-grown lion steaks, Bora genuinely believes lesser-known meats like this have something genuine to offer. Even if, previously, they’ve been largely viewed as socially unacceptable to eat.

“Big cats are carnivores with a distinct mobility pattern, and this is the reason behind their unique amino acid and protein profile,” Primeval’s website states. Meanwhile, “elephants are colossal herbivores who travel long distances, and the fattiness in their muscle tissue exposes an exceptional umami experience.”

This is something that Primeval’s tech should allow it to tweak. Lion steak not tender enough?

Elephant not sufficiently umami? No problem: Make the appropriate changes and you’ll be able to create something recognizably, err, lionesque or elephantine, only reconfigured to provide a better taste and nutrition experience. The Wagyu beef of the safari set, if you will. see page 90

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Technology/Science Exotic Meats

from page 89

Until we reach that point, Bora said, many exotic animals available to eat around the world (and, despite the social stigma, items like lion tacos do occasionally pop up on menus) will otherwise provide a disappointing eating experience. “If you … just hunt a wild animal [or] an exotic animal and consume that, I can guarantee that it will be the worst meat experience from a culinary perspective,” he said.

It’s enough to turn you vegan. Which, incidentally, Bora is.

The ethics of vegan lion steaks Five years ago, Bora bought a puppy, a cute little French Bulldog with a square head, dark expressive eyes, and bat-like ears that stuck up from its head.

He bought him from a pet shop, and named him Ace. The little dog was Bora’s best friend. He even called his investment company Ace Ventures after the little French Bulldog.

“He was a wild soul,” Bora said. “One time, he had a two-hour surgery for his eye. [He] woke up from anesthesia at the vet, and immediately tried to mate with a female dog, barked and showed his teeth to another male dog, and then brought me a tennis ball to play fetch. And he did all those with [a] patched … eye and a funnel on his head.”

Ace triggered a change in self-described “alpha male” Bora. “After spending time with him, I started to think, like, why do I treat him differently to other animals?” he said. “Why is this one a friend, and why is [this other animal] ending up on my plate?

I started questioning things. After a few weeks, I started to watch the videos from PETA.” Soon, Bora began to invest in meat substitute companies like Meatless Farm, AKUA, Moku Foods, and others. When Ace prematurely passed away from lymphoma, Bora took to having an empty seat present at Ace Ventures, borrowing a page from Amazon’s playbook where board meetings have a vacant chair to represent the allimportant customer – but in this case reminding Bora that every decision must be made to positively contribute to animals’ lives.

Discovering that the man who wants to bring the zoo to your dinner table is a vegan is, admittedly, a bit of a swerve. The Venn diagram of “men 90

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who dream about making lions a food group” and “guys who will get into long conversations about the top 10 dishes to include lentils” would seem to be two entirely non-touching circles, like a pair of headlights.

But, to Bora, cellular meat is a critical part of weaning the planet off its animal-slaughtering ways. While he’s full of admiration for plant-based alternatives, he also thinks that the majority of people are going to want the real thing, rather than the equivalent of an Impossible Burger. Even if the real thing is grown in a lab rather than running free on the African plains.

On one level, lab-grown meat does exist as a fascinating loophole in the vegetarian or vegan ethical code because, as Bora notes, no animal has to suffer to bring us nourishment.

Not everyone’s necessarily in full agreement, though. In a 2019 paper published in the Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, New York City College of Technology professor and vegan moral philosopher Carlo Alvaro argues that this debate has, so far, only been argued with regard to the environment, animals, and humans – not deontic logic.

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Alvaro points out that while it’s true that animals don’t have to die for lab-grown meat, they must still be exploited by being reared for the taking of cellular samples. Furthermore, there is an “unvirtuous motivation” to a vegan denying themselves animal flesh, only to hop on the first opportunity to eat it with impunity. Why, Alvaro asks, “are we humans even contemplating eating food that is produced synthetically in laboratories, given the abundance of naturally grown plant-based food? By framing the question of lab-grown meat in terms of virtue, creating meat in a laboratory just seems obstinate and evinces lack of temperance and a misunderstanding of the role of food in human flourishing.”

What’s the answer? That, as with many of the ethical questions prompted by new technologies, is far from decided. But they’re questions that, chances are, humankind is going to get to grapple with sooner rather than later.

Lion burger or nothingburger?

It’s tough to gauge exactly how far along Primeval is with its mission. Currently, Bora said, the company has successfully cultivated meat samples weighing around 1 to 2 grams: an amount so tiny it wouldn’t 91

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even qualify for haute cuisine portions. While he wouldn’t specify which animal they were modeled on, he said that, “I can tell you they are considered wild in every culture or geography.” (The company plans to make more announcements about these proof-of-concept samples soon, and Bora said that he will be visiting Africa “from the middle of this month” to source samples from wild animals.)

However, Bora acknowledges that this is still very early days. “Proof of concepts should be different for cultivated meat startups, especially for Primeval,” he said. “We focused on ‘making something people want’ as a proof of concept, and we are pretty successful about it up to the present.”

As to what “something people want” looks like, Bora explained that his company aims to combine the fresh and the recognizable for its first product: Good old, new-fashioned lion burgers. “We will first start with burger patties to balance novelty and familiarity,” he said. “Burgers are the mostconsumed food in the U.S. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Americans eat an average of 2.4 hamburgers a day. We know what makes meat good — tenderness, superior flavor, melt-in-your-mouth texture — and to achieve this, we’re working to have a product that has evenly distributed fat in every bite.”

Is Primeval simply a publicity stunt looking to drum up headlines? Bora assures me that it’s not. Does the company have a shot at becoming a unicorn (an even more revered –and tasty?– animal than the lion) in the cellular foodie space? This remains to be seen. Will the ethical questions it ponders be increasingly important ones in the years to come?

Absolutely they will.

And, finally, would Bora eat a lab-grown French Bulldog? “Instinctively, no,” he said, sounding faintly horrified. “I didn’t think about it before. I’ve [thought about the question of] cultivated human meat. But as for the Ace, the French bulldog? My initial response is no. Just no. I don’t want it.”

But someone probably would. All’s fair in love, war, and lab-grown meats. https://www.digitaltrends.com/news/primevalfoods-lab-grown-wild-animal-meat Image credit: Primeval Foods, Nat Hab, uniquesafaris.com

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A Cameroon-born Entrepren to Make African Soccer More

By Carlos Mureithi

SOCCER IS AFRICA’S most popular sport, but finding comprehensive data on the game in the continent to help in decision making is often a challenging task. Sometimes data are not available, or they are fragmented.

Rainbow Sports Group, a US-based company that provides management, marketing, and media solutions for sports agencies and African soccer players, on March 14 launched an interactive data platform for African soccer.

The African Football Data Center surfaces information about player valuations, sponsorship deals, broadcasting revenue, stadia, and the social media performance metrics of players, federations, and competitions. It has, its Cameroon-born founder asserts, the potential to turn subjective opinions into hard facts. It may also increase transparency in a debilitatingly corrupt industry.

Soccer stakeholders need insights “When you don’t have a scientific opinion, it becomes very subjective,” Kingsley Pungong, CEO of Rainbow Sports Global, tells Quartz. “And when it’s subjective, it becomes a subject to varied interpretations. That’s why our football is mainly not appreciated because everybody has a subjective opinion.”

Pungong adds that lack of proper data on African soccer leads to undervaluation of the continent’s detailed numbers on players, clubs, and leagues.

The websites may be unreliable too, says Michael players, clubs, and other sports assets.

Mwebe, a Dar-es-Salaam–based consultant at African soccer’s data problem Siyavuma Sports Group, a South African sports Getting in-depth data on African soccer can be management company. In January, for example, arduous. he was trading a soccer player to a Ugandan club Agents, marketers and other stakeholders in but couldn’t ascertain how many goals the player the continent can use global soccer websites had scored the previous year. One website said 11 that provide updates and results, but these are goals, another 13, and the player himself said he’d not Africa-focused and rarely go beyond general scored 14. numbers like game scores. They need more 92

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neur is Trying e Transparent

◄ Kingsley Pungong. ◄ Statistically the best.

Center work?

Such shortcomings force soccer agents and other stakeholders to use “informal” channels to get insight into the sport in the continent, Mwebe says.

There are exceptions on data availability though, as statistics for soccer players who have played for their national teams or in the CAF Champions League, the highest level of African club soccer, are more readily available for example.

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The African Football Data Center has a research team that collects primary data from the internet and it works with soccer federations, leagues, and players around the continent. It was developed in partnership with KPMG Football Benchmark, which offers tools for analyzing operational, financial, and digital performances of soccer clubs.

Rainbow Sports Group plans to also partner with clubs in Africa to be able to collect data on their players.

“If you wanna say this guy is good enough for Bayern Munich, you just don’t say it as being subjective opinion, you say it based on a scientific assertion,” Pungong says. https://qz.com/africa/2146397/can-better-datamake-african-football-more-transparent Image credit: REUTERS/MICHAEL REGAN DAWN

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Africa’s Fourth Industrial Revolution Hinges on Fast, Reliable, Affordable Internet

By Quartz May 8, 2022

CASSAVA TECHNOLOGIES is one of many local and global companies creating infrastructure for fast, reliable, and affordable internet in the continent.

The company built off the success of African mobile telecoms pioneer Econet Global, wants to increase internet access in Africa by building an expansive network of data access points around the continent.

Dubbed the “Africa Missing Network”, the project is leveraging the digital Cassava Technologies is creating infrastructure for fast, reliable and affordable internet in Africa. infrastructure backbone of Cassava Technologies’ subsidiaries.

“The intention is to make technology affordable subsea cables, the data storage market, Cassava and universally accessible across Africa and drive Technologies’ plan to digitally transform the this vision of a digitally connected future that continent, and challenges ahead. The conversation leaves no African behind,” president and CEO has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Hardy Pemhiwa tells Quartz.

Why did the Econet Group reorganize its Cassava Technologies comprises digital entities? infrastructure and digital services brands, We just announced a reorganization of the group encompassing fiber broadband networks, data in November [2021]. The businesses that form centers, renewable energy, as well as cloud and Cassava Technologies go way back to 2004. cybersecurity, fintech, and digital platforms. The Our (Econet’s) heritage is in telecoms. businesses were originally part of Econet Global, For the first time, a data packet doesn’t have to a telecommunications group founded in 1993 by leave the African continent…Ordinarily, that traffic Zimbabwean Strive Masiyiwa. would have had to go to Marseille in France before Pemhiwa describes the “Africa Missing Network” it comes back to the African continent. as a “ubiquitous wifi network.” In 2020, Econet Our very first network business was the business Global launched a network of wifi hotspots in we have in Botswana: Mascom wireless. We went Kenya, Uganda, Zambia, and Rwanda to provide on to build networks in Zimbabwe, in Kenya, in people with affordable internet access as part of Nigeria, in Burundi, in Lesotho. And from that the project. heritage, we then built fiber networks, built a Quartz spoke with Pemhiwa, who was previously fintech business, built a power business. the group chief executive and managing director In November last year, we decided essentially of Econet Global for six years, about Econet’s to reorganize the group and keep the telecom reorganization, the Fourth Industrial Revolution, business as Econet Wireless.

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Connectivity

The Econet Wireless brands from now on really just refers to our mobile networks business. And Cassava Technologies now refers to our digital infrastructure and digital services businesses.

The digital infrastructure piece is Liquid Intelligent Technologies, which is our fiber broadband networks business. But we’ve got Africa Data Centres, and we’ve got Distributed Power Technologies. Those three form our digital infrastructure business.

And then we have our digital services businesses, which are built on top of that digital infrastructure, essentially leveraging over that well-invested platform. That’s our cloud and cybersecurity business, our fintech business—Sasai—and our digital platforms business called Vaya.

The thing that has been missing across Africa is really a ubiquitous wifi network that you find in most European cities.

The intention is to make technology affordable and universally accessible across Africa and drive this vision of a digitally connected future that leaves no African behind.

DRIVING AFRICA’S DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION Cassava Technologies plans to enable Africa’s digital transformation. How does it intend to do this?

We’ve got just over 100,000 km of fiber today, literally from Cape Town, through every one of the cities in between all the way to Cairo [spanning 14 countries.]

But more importantly now for us is that we’ve got cables that cross Africa—East to West—from Port Sudan, all the way through Chad down to Cameroon to Lagos. And now from Dar es Salaam 95

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to Rwanda on the West Coast of DRC. For the first time, a data packet doesn’t have to leave the African continent. We have interconnected Orange’s fiber network in west Africa to ours. That essentially allows any traffic that’s coming from any of those 13 countries that are served by Orange to now hit any of the eastern and southern African countries. Ordinarily, that traffic would have had to go to Marseille in France before it comes back to the African continent.

And we are connected to every undersea cable.

At a backbone level, that’s how we’re enabling digital transformation. But backbone is one thing.

The challenge in Africa is always the last mile. You can have all the backbone that you need. But if the fiber isn’t getting to my house, if the internet is not available in my house, you can’t tell me about the information superhighway five km away from my village.

So that’s why we’re building what we’re calling the “Africa Missing Network.” The thing that has been missing across Africa is really a ubiquitous wifi network that you find in most European cities.

No teenager in New York or in London, or in Singapore, watches a Netflix movie on their Verizon or AT&T plan. They get into a Starbucks, and they’ve got a free wifi network.

And building this “Africa Missing Network” for us, is really what we believe is going to drive a digitally connected future that leaves no African behind.

So, it really is about three components. The backbone we already have built. We’re using free space optics (FSO) technology, which was initially developed by Google, that essentially see page 96

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allows us to beam fiber-like speeds for up to 10 km. In fact, now we can do it for up to 20 km.

So, if you think about what we’re doing in Nairobi, for example, where we’re beaming 20 gigabyte into Umoja. Once that point to point fiber broadband link is established, using FSO, we then essentially distribute it with point to multipoint wifi blanketing that area.

So, if you were to go into Umoja, or into Eastleigh, or into some of those places, where we’ve been testing, where we’ve been doing our proof of concept, you now have families that are routinely consuming 10, 12 GB of data every month, from less than a gigabyte a month, before we started.

And for us doing that and driving down the cost of access, to make sure that it’s more or less at this 10 to 20 cents mark, in terms of US cents, is what’s going to drive the digital transformation across Africa.

Women in Githurai were proudly displaying their carrots, their vegetables now on their Facebook pages. And for me, that’s digital transformation.

That’s what’s going to enable SMEs to come more into the cloud. And we have seen with the pandemic that no matter how small the business is, they need the cloud. They just couldn’t get an engineer to come and look after their server in the office. And so we have seen a huge uptake of cloud services, across the board, really, from two-person businesses to businesses that employ more than 500 people.

AFRICA AND THE FOURTH INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION Will this digital transformation work eventually help Africa leapfrog the Fourth Industrial Revolution?

Yes. Because the Fourth Industrial Revolution is a couple of things. The access to the real internet is the foundational piece. And what do I mean by that access to the real internet? It’s not just about checking an email. It’s not it’s not about sending a WhatsApp message. It’s being able to sit there [having video calls], which most of our people have not been able to do.

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I remember on a market visit in Kenya, where these women in Githurai, where we have built this “Africa Missing Network” were proudly displaying their carrots, their vegetables now on their Facebook pages. And for me, that’s digital transformation.

IMPORTANCE OF DIGITAL INCLUSION You’ve mentioned projects in densely populated Kenyan areas of Umoja, Eastleigh, and Githurai. Why did you choose these places?

I always say that there are more people who live in Githurai than in Karen (an affluent Nairobi suburb). So I always laugh when companies say we have built fiber to the home in Karen. “Well, that’s very nice”. There are people there, but people don’t live there.

Same thing in Johannesburg. We can put all the fiber—and we have—that we need in Sandton.

But all the people are living in Diepsloot, and in Alexandria.

And what is the biggest challenge in those places? You can’t get fiber in, because of the way that you can’t get wayleaves, It’s difficult for you to dig. You have to be smart about how you bring connectivity into those places.

So we have deliberately chosen those highdensity informal settlements in Nairobi to trial this. Because if it works in Githurai, Umoja, and Eastleigh, guess what? It’s going to work in Limete in Kinshasa, in Alexandria. And we’re now starting to scale that in those places—in Lusaka, in Kinshasa, in Accra, in Lagos, and in Johannesburg.

What we’re really saying is, going back to our foundation. If you were to read the founding affidavit by our chairman in 1993, when he challenged the monopoly of telecoms in Zimbabwe, it was based on the principle that communication is a fundamental human right.

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And so we continue to espouse that principle that if we can’t allow a child in Kibera during the pandemic to have the same resources— classroom resources—that [some children] are having access to, purely because they’re in a different geographical area, then we can’t we can’t sit in boardrooms and talk about human rights.

thought was going be our biggest challenge, hasn’t been a challenge at all.

I think we have found regulators very open to digital inclusion, and really, almost laying out the red carpet to say “Look, if you’re going to go into these areas, where we have always been told that, it’s marginally, the economics don’t work, the unit economics of getting into these areas with fiberWhat are some of the challenges that you’re like speeds don’t actually work, then by all means, experiencing or foreseeing in this work to get in there, and transform.” digitally transform Africa?

Success for us looks like when people start to The challenge is we can’t roll it out fast enough.

(There’s) an interesting challenge that we faced follow what we’re doing. Because we don’t think initially in Kenya, when we launched for the first that we can do this by ourselves. I think it’s going to time and we said 20 bob ($0.17) per gig. People require a lot more capital from many other players said, “Ah, this must be a gimmick. It means it in the industry in order to get it fully done. doesn’t work.” Or “This must be a promotion that’s THE RISE OF DATA STORAGE AND DATA going to end once I have signed up.”

CENTERS IN AFRICA We said “No, you don’t sign anything. You Africa’s data storage market is growing. download the Sasai app. It’s pay as you go, and Investors are pumping money into it and it’s really up to you when you want to use your data centers have been expanded. Cassava data.”

Technologies itself has Africa Data Centers, I think there’s a bit of the usual thing around a large network of data centre facilities. education. But the fantastic thing is that What’s the importance of a strong data center Africans have shown that if you give them the environment for the continent? tools and the tools work, and they’re easy to Africa accounts for only 1% of the data center use, they will adopt. capacity in the world. That is miniscule. This is the If you think about the adoption of WhatsApp for second largest continent in the world—1.3 billion example, even people that we, by global standards, people. That’s why we are building data centers. we may have considered illiterate, are still able to We currently have nine data centers in seven download or have somebody download for them countries. We’re building another 10 across the WhatsApp. And they know what they want to use continent. it for. They wanna receive a message, they want But really the importance is that as we start to send a message, they want to speak to their to build data centers in every city, you’re really loved one. bringing the internet edge closer and closer to the In terms of challenges, it’s been the traditional customer, and allowing access to the real internet challenges that we have had to surmount. But and allowing businesses to really come on to the given our heritage in telecoms and in mass market cloud without facing the latency issues that we transformation, it’s things that we were prepared face. for. see page 98 Fortunately, I must say, regulation, which we 97

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But also there is the issue of data residency rules.

One of the things that African countries have faced.

Yes they want to impose data residency rules, but the question is, if you say that data doesn’t leave, and you don’t have data centers, where is that company going to keep the data? You’re making it costly for a company to then establish itself in your market.

So building data center infrastructure for us is about bringing the cloud to the edge, which is near to the customer, but also reducing the cost of setting up businesses in Africa.

Because all of a sudden, if a Unilever or a Nestlé is thinking about establishing themselves in Togo, they now don’t have to worry about IT infrastructure.

Because all that, they can rely on us to be able to provide them access to their cloud infrastructure, which is in Europe or the US or wherever it is, and yet allow their local operation to operate visually as if they were sitting in the same location as their colleagues anywhere else.

There’s a lot of investment in internet subsea cables too, and Liquid Intelligent Technologies, one of Cassava Technologies’ subsidiaries, has a cross-border fiber-optic network that offers connectivity to subsea cable systems that link Africa to the rest of the world. What’s the significance of the subsea cables for Africa?

Subsea cables are great. And I think they are reducing the cost of data. If you can believe it, it’s now almost half a cent, on the subsea segment, to carry a gigabyte of data.

But without our inland cable, the subsea cables are, I’m sorry to say, useless. Because you can have as much capacity as you like. All you can do is to land the capacity in Mombasa, or in Dar es Salaam. What happens to the guy sitting in Nairobi? You need to bring that capacity inland.

So for us this is an incredibly powerful endorsement of our model. We realized a long time ago that the real competitive advantage for us as Cassava Technologies was built terrestrially.

Others with much bigger pockets will build undersea. But guess what, they will need us in order to access the continent.

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So it’s a fantastic opportunity for us. It is additive to our vision of a digitally connected future for Africa. It continues to drive down the cost of data.

And I think that the real issue for us is now that that undersea mile has been dealt with, the middle mile.

The first mile is the undersea mile. The second mile is the backbone mile, which we have built.

The next mile is the middle mile, which we’re using FSO, and then the last mile we’re using wifi So that’s how we’re driving down the cost of data.

But making sure that that first mile of undersea cable is almost commoditized, and allowing us to get access to cheap internet at that level means that we can be able to pass on those benefits.

What is it like to be the chief executive of a digital services and digital infrastructure company in Africa today?

I think the real joy for me is when we can bring the internet to a hundred schools in the Eastern Cape in South Africa. And just the joy of these kids when open their laptops or their computers, and they type something and, almost like magic, there is an answer that comes back in their language.

You can see the bewilderment.

Or getting—as we have done in Zimbabwe and Zambia—the Internet to some of these small dispensaries, where now a nurse is able to speak in real time to a doctor that’s in the city, send results of the diagnostics that they have of this passion and get advice. For me that’s really the high point DAWN

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of my day.

The hard parts are, we’re building infrastructure in the Congo forests. We were the ones that took fiber from northern Uganda into Juba. And all the challenges of putting fiber on that route, as you know, with insecurity.

But also the beauty of employing thousands of young people that would otherwise be unemployed when we build those routes In Congo today, we have 5000 young men and women that are digging this 2400-km fiber cable from Goma, hopefully to reach Kinshasa by the middle of this year. That’s what makes my day.

What are you reading for inspiration?

I have always read one particular book for inspiration. I think most of my inspiration is in the Bible. It’s amazing for me how relevant it is every day, I don’t know if you are aware, but the very first recording in history of division of labor was first recorded in the Bible—when Moses’ father-inlaw, Jethro, says “What you’re doing is not good.

You actually need to appoint people that will look at smaller cases.” That’s a management lesson.

That’s where I get most of my inspiration.

What keeps you up at night?

Our central banks are still very insular. If you go to the Busia border post (between Kenya and Uganda) or you go to Beitbridge (between South Africa and Zimbabwe), those people are not waiting for us. They’re not waiting for us but yet

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they’re waiting for us. They are trading every day, they are finding ways.

And I think the day that we can really allow cross-border informal trades that is enabled with Fintech technologies. If you were to wake me up at 3am, I am thinking about what would it look like, if I could bring blockchain to Busia and have those cross-border boda boda (bike) guys almost trading frictionless. Because that’s what they’re looking for. All this other stuff, they are bewildered by.

If you go to the border of Benin and Nigeria and you look at the number of trucks that cross and the number of the ways in which people have to carry currency. Technology can enable this. We just have to remove the non-tariff barriers and get our central banks to be a bit more outward looking and say look, there is technology now. Why are we stopping our people from trading with each other?

Anything you’d like to add?

The last thing that I would really [talk about] is Africa’s demographic dividend, which I think can really be turbocharged by technology.

When people speak about the fourth industrial revolution, I feel there’s been a lot of focus on the hard infrastructure, which is important. But even with all that, if we don’t have the skills, and we’re not skilling these young people for jobs of the future, then the fourth industrial revolution will pass us just like the other revolutions.

It’s an opportunity but it will be an opportunity unrealized.

I think spending time thinking about, how [to] make sure that these young people are gainfully employed and employable and are trained for jobs of the future, is really what’s going to make sure that there’s security across Africa. Because they become very vulnerable if we don’t do this. https://tribunecontentagency.com/article/africasfourth-industrial-revolution-hinges-on-fastreliable-affordable-internet-connectivity/ Source: https://qz.com/africa/2162322/ africas-fourth-industrial-revolutionhinges-on-internet-connectivity/?utm_ source=email&utm_medium=africa-weeklybrief&utm_content=186646d8-cd40-11ec-b03856b9265f05f6 Image credit: dj.linkedin.com, halberdbastion.com DAWN

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Technology/Science

Ethereum Founder is Backing Zambia’s Bid to be Africa’s Tech Hub

By Matthew Hill

ZAMBIA MAY BE BETTER known for mining copper than crypto, but a group of young entrepreneurs are looking to reinvent the country as an African technology hub -with support from Ethereum cocreator Vitalik Buterin.

Startup founders from the southern African country and abroad are talking to the government about creating the regulatory and business environment that would attract more tech firms and capital. The group is in the process of organizing a conference in Lusaka, the capital, in May to draft detailed policy proposals that they believe will see Zambia succeed where previous African tech hubs have stuttered.

“Ultimately it comes down to being welcoming,” said Mwiya Musokotwane, an early champion of the project and the son of Finance Minister Situmbeko Musokotwane. “If the policy doesn’t really live up to people’s expectations, noone’s going to be there.”

Buterin, who helped create the world’s second largest cryptocurrency in 2013, expressed his support in a virtual meeting with Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema earlier this year. That followed a 2019 visit to the country as a guest of Mwiya, who wanted him to view a new charter city outside Lusaka that is also positioning itself to attract businesses.

“I was impressed by everyone I met’s willingness to go and do big things,” the crypto pioneer said in an interview.

The talks are a further sign of Africa’s recent and burgeoning role as a hotbed for startups, particularly in the fintech and e-commerce sectors. Businesses providing financial services to the continent’s millions of unbanked yet online 100

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people are attracting the attention of foreign investors particularly from the U.S., and African firms raised a record $5 billion in 2021.

Companies including Nigerian payments firm Flutterwave Inc., whose i i round d valued l d it att latest $250 million fund-raising more than $3 billion, are also interested in growing a presence in Zambia, Mwiya Musokotwane said.

Employment Drive For Hichilema, attracting tech firms could be a means of delivering on one of his key election pledges -- boosting employment. More than one in four Zambians under the age of 24 have no income, according to data from the International Labour Organization, and the ratio has been worsening since 2013. The President’s commitment to resolving the issue played a major role in his August election victory after five previous failed attempts.

He has since created the Ministry of Technology and Science as part of a drive to support the sector and help ease dependence on copper, which accounts for 75% of export earnings. The government is eager to consult with entrepreneurs on attractive policies for the tech industry, including tax incentives, according to Jito Kayumba, Hichilema’s special assistant for economic and development affairs and a former director at Kukula Capital, which invests in young Zambian companies.

“We want to have a much more open-minded

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(l-r) H.E. Paul Kagame, President of Rwanda with H.E. Hakainde Hichilema, President of Zambia

approach,” Kayumba said in an interview from Lusaka. “You can’t milk a cow that isn’t fully developed.”

Early Mover Perseus Mlambo, originally from neighboring Zimbabwe, was one of the early movers. He started payments platform Zazu Africa Ltd. in Zambia five years ago, a firm that now accounts for half of Mastercard Inc. transactions in the country.

He went on to raise $3 million last year from investors led by U.S. fund Tiger Global LP for a new venture called Union54, a firm that allows companies to issue their own debit cards without going through a bank.

Tiger, the investor firm of billionaire Chase Coleman, has also backed Flutterwave and been involved in talks on the Zambia hub.

“Copper is old and boring,” Mlambo said in an interview from Belluno, north of Venice, Italy.

Governments “risk missing the proverbial boat by over-investing in extractives and under-investing in software. Tech uplifts multitudes of people and the barrier to entry is very, very low.”

But ultimately the success of the project will come down to legislation.

Zambia must improve the ease and cost of getting work permits,

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according to Malawiborn Wiza Jalakasi, vicepresident of global developer relations at Chipper Cash, another Africa-focused fintech startup. And Mlambo said he’s been waiting for a residence permit to be approved since September.

Still, the nation that’s changed the ruling party three times in thirty years already has progressive financial services regulation, making it attractive, Jalakasi said.

“It’s not the biggest market in the region, but you can test things very easily,” he said. “That’s only going to get better with time as these policies are implemented.” https://www.bloomberg.com/news/ articles/2022-03-27/ethereum-founder-is-backingzambia-s-bid-to-be-africa-s-tech-hub Chipper Cash Marketing Video: https://youtu. be/0eFUMAIoVNY Image credit: Facebook

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More Than 5 Billion People Now Use the Internet

By Simon Kemp

DATAREPORTAL’S NEW Digital 2022 April Global Statshot report – published in partnership with We Are Social and Hootsuite – reveals that more than 5 billion people around the world now use the internet.

This impressive total marks another important milestone on our journey towards universal internet accessibility, and means that 63% of the world’s total population is now online.

There’s much more to this story than a headline user figure though, and this article offers extensive analysis to help you understand the implications of this milestone.

Executive summary You’ll find a handy summary of this quarter’s top stories in the video embed, but read on below for the full report, and for my in-depth analysis of this quarter’s data.

Digging deeper This is by far the biggest Statshot report that we’ve produced to date, and – in addition to our usual quarterly insights – you’ll also find a wealth of new data.

At almost 300 slides and more than 10,000 words, there’s a lot (!) to digest in this update.

Full report The SlideShare embed contains the complete Digital 2022 April Global Statshot Report, but read on past that to understand what all these numbers If your busisness depends on the mean for you.

Internet, this report is for you!

DAWN Team Comments: The links to the full report, the SlideShare deck and the article discussing the Unlike many reports that seem to overlook contents of the report may be accessed by using Africa, there are many references to and statistical the link at the end of this report or oy clicking the statements on the use of the Internet across the link here. continent.

If your business depends on the Internet, this https://thenextweb.com/news/more-than-5-billionreport is for you. Anyone doing business now or people-now-use-the-internet designing a business to launch in the future can Image credit: africaw.com make use of this data.

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SpaceX's Starlink Satellite Internet is now Available to Order in 32 Countries

By S. Dent

STARLINK'S INTERNET SERVICE is now available in 32 countries around the world, the Elon Musk-owned company tweeted. Countries and regions marked on its map as "available," including parts of Australia, Brazil, Chile, the US, Canada and most of Europe, can have their equipment shipped "immediately." The service has steadily expanded since exiting beta last year, with availability in 12 countries as of September 2021 and 25 countries last February.

Starlink's map shows areas marked as "available" (light blue), "wait list" (medium blue) and "coming soon" (dark blue). The service has a potential near-global reach at latitudes below around 60 degrees north, but availability is granted on a country-by-country basis.

The kits recently rose in price and now cost $549 for reservation holders or $599 for new orders, and include a satellite antenna dish, a stand, a power supply and a WiFi router. Service prices also shot up from $99 to $110 per month. Users can also now add a portability feature, letting them take the kit while traveling, for an additional $25 per 103

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month fee.

The company is primarily targeting remote regions that can't get connected otherwise, to start with.

It offers very respectable speeds of 104.97/12.04 Mbps (download/upload) in the US as of Q4 2021, nearly up to fixed US internet speeds. In theory, speeds climb as the company adds more satellites and ground stations. Latency is slower than fixed broadband (40 compared to 14 milliseconds) but far better than other satellite options including HughesNet (729 milliseconds) and Viasat (627 milliseconds).

Starlink has not been without controversy.

Astronomers have complained that the thousands of satellites in its constellation have interfered with Earth telescope observations, and the company recently lost 40 satellites to a geomagnetic storm.

In addition, Starlink's license to operate in France was temporarily cancelled by the nation's regulator ARCEP, with a final decision expected soon. https://www.engadget.com/space-xs-starlinksatellite-internet-is-now-available-to-order-in-32countries-102003489.html DAWN

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Meet the Plastic-Eating Enzymes that can Fully Break Down Garbage in Days

By Adele Peters

OF THE 10 BILLION metric tons of plastic that humans have produced so far, only a small fraction has been recycled. Most of it sits in landfills or in the environment, where it could take centuries to degrade. But new plastic-eating enzymes could help begin to clean it up—and make recycling greener.

At the University of Texas at Austin, researchers created a new enzyme that can efficiently break down PET (a type of plastic commonly used in packaging and in materials like polyester) in days, even hours. Other scientists, including a team at the France-based startup Carbios, have worked with another version of the same enzyme; they recently built a pilot plant to biologically break down plastic to the molecular level so it can be remade into new products.

But the research from UT Austin, published in Nature, shows how it could happen at low temperatures, making the process more sustainable. “It means you have a much greener process, less energy intensive, and quicker,” says Hal Alper, a chemical engineering professor at UT Austin and one of the authors of the study. It also means that the enzyme could potentially be used for environmental remediation. “You can’t take plastic around the planet and heat it to hundreds of degrees Celsius at will,” he says. “But you can use something that works at ambient temperatures and pressure.”

The researchers started with an enzyme called PETase, which naturally evolved to make bacteria degrade PET plastic. Then they used machine learning to discover which mutations would make it possible for the process to happen faster and at relatively low temperatures. They tested the mutated enzyme on dozens of single-use plastic containers and several different polyester fabrics to demonstrate that it worked. In some cases, the enzymes fully degraded the plastic down to the

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monomer level— the basic building blocks of plastic— in less than a day.

In a recycling system, plastic that’s broken down in this way can be remade into new plastic that’s identical to the virgin material.

“At traditional recycling plants, you’re essentially melting things down and then reforming [them],” Alper says. “Here, we’re actually breaking it back down to the original monomers, and then having the ability to rebuild it from there. So it has a huge advantage in that you don’t have the challenges that you have with normal recycling, where you lose some of the integrity of the plastic each time you go through a recycling process.” Unlike some other “advanced” recycling technology, it can happen with relatively little use of energy.

Solving the plastic waste problem will involve finding real alternatives to single-use plastic, like reusable packaging, so that plastic production dramatically drops. But the enzymes could potentially begin to tackle the huge volume of plastic that already exists and to theoretically create a truly circular system for the plastics that are still made. That will be a challenge, as it would involve building new infrastructure. (Because the first enzyme only works with one type of plastic, others will also have to be developed.)

But the researchers hope to commercialize their technology, which has been patented. They’re in talks now with potential corporate partners. “I think this is a multi-industry problem,” Alper says.”And it’s gonna require a pretty large alliance and consortia to be able to solve this.” https://www.fastcompany.com/90747006/meetthe-plastic-eating-enzymes-that-can-fully-breakdown-garbage-in-days Image credit: Phys.org DAWN

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Google Unveils New 10-shade Skin Tone Scale to Test AI for Bias

By Paresh Dave

ALPHABET INC'S (GOOGL.O) Google on Wednesday (May 11th) unveiled a palette of 10 skin tones that it described as a step forward in making gadgets and apps that better serve people of color.

The company said its new Monk Skin Tone Scale replaces a flawed standard of six colors known as the Fitzpatrick Skin Type, which had become popular in the tech industry to assess whether smartwatch heart-rate sensors, artificial intelligence systems including facial A Google employee speaks at the company's annual I/O developer recognition and other offerings conference in Mountain View, California, U.S., May 11, 2022. Google/ Jana Asenbrennerova/Handout via REUTERS show color bias.

Tech researchers acknowledged that Fitzpatrick underrepresented responsible AI team, called the Monk scale "a people with darker skin. Reuters exclusively good balance between being representative and reported last year that Google was developing an being tractable."

Google is already applying it. Beauty-related alternative. read more The company partnered with Harvard University Google Images searches such as "bridal makeup sociologist Ellis Monk, who studies colorism and looks" now allow filtering results based on Monk. had felt dehumanized by cameras that failed to Image searches such as "cute babies" now show photos with varying skin tones. detect his face and reflect his skin tone.

The Monk scale also is being deployed to ensure Monk said Fitzpatrick is great for classifying differences among lighter skin. But most people a range of people are satisfied with filter options are darker, so he wanted a scale that "does better in Google Photos and that the company's facematching software is not biased. job for the majority of world," he said.

Still, Doshi said problems could seep into Monk through Photoshop and other digital art tools curated 10 tones - a manageable number for products if companies do not have enough data people who help train and assess AI systems. He on each of the tones, or if the people or tools and Google surveyed around 3,000 people across used to classify others' skin are biased by lighting the United States and found that a significant differences or personal perceptions. number said a 10-point scale matched their skin https://www.reuters.com/technology/googleas well as a 40-shade palette did. unveils-new-10-shade-skin-tone-scale-test-aiTulsee Doshi, head of product for Google's bias-2022-05-11/ 105

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Lebohang Kganye is the Winner of Foam Paul Huf Award 2022

Lebohang Kganye

By Condé Nast

LEBOHANG KGANYE, from Johannesburg, South Africa, is the sixteenth winner of the internationally renowned Foam Paul Huf Award.

Recently a jury of five industry specialists chose this year’s winner, out of around 100 nominees selected by 23 nominators from 21 countries.

The Foam Paul Huf Award is presented annually to an upcoming photography talent to encourage photographers in their artistic development.

Kganye’s work explores themes of personal history and ancestry whilst resonating with the history of South Africa and apartheid. The jury states: “Reflecting on personal narratives, memory, family, loss, displacement and dislocation while questioning photography’s indexicality as a marker of truth, Lebohang Kganye’s work impressed us for its clarity of vision, complexity and ambition. Spanning photography, collage, film, installation and sculpture, Kganye’s performative and visually sophisticated work draws on both family and collective archives to shed light on name added to an the fabricated nature of history and memory. impressive list of Located in the specificity of her South African alumni. Last year context, Kganye’s multivalent work resonates with John Edmonds her nation’s traumatic history of colonialism and (1989, US) was apartheid, and her work often takes literature, the winner of theatre and oral histories as their point of departure. the Foam Paul From her debut series Ke Lefa-Laka: Her Story, Huf Award. His 2013, in which the artist appears as a spectral solo exhibition A presence in found photographs of her mother Sidelong Glance is who passed away a few years earlier to her more currently on show at Foam and can be seen until recent theatrical, photographic dioramas where 19 June 2022. silhouettes of her family and other figures have The next Foam Talent Call will be organised in been cut-out to create shadow puppets, Kganye’s 2023. work goes beyond being a simple testimony of https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/pritzkerpast events but rather utilises the photographic prize-2022-francis-k%C3%A9r%C3%A9medium to narrate and imagine a new history.” becomes-first-african-to-win-nobel-ofLebohang Kganye will receive a cash prize architecture/ar-AAV5bCk of €20,000 and a solo exhibition at Foam Image credit: Vogue, W24.co.za Fotografiemuseum in Amsterdam. She will see her 106

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First-Ever Black-Owned Animation Network Set to Launch in Summer 2022

By The Animation TV Network

ANIMATION HAS NOT been traditionally a representation for people of color. Welcome, husband and wife duo Jermaine and Whaketa Hargrove who plan to launch the first-ever Blackowned streaming animation network, Animation TV, in Summer 2022. Animation TV is the first and only animation streaming platform that streams all aspects of animation culture.

Animation TV will become the sole medium that can introduce viewers to the versatility of animation and all it has to offer. This platform will allow viewers of all ages and nationalities to experience the beauty of animation culture.

Animation TV will offer its content with a subscription and linear channel model for ease of access to viewers. Animation TV will work in collaboration with Small Town Animation Studios to deliver original, exclusive animation content such as the highly anticipated diabetic superhero movie Gumshe: The Type 1 Protector, or faithbased series The Sunday Schoolers, and other originals like Animate My Life, Welcome to Gamerville, Princess Tatenda and the awardwinning series Shelly: The Dancing Spider.

Animation TV is intentional about giving back and makes it a part of its business model. Animation TV is the only animation streaming platform that creates opportunities for future animation industry professionals by using a portion of its revenue to provide animation scholarships for students from under-served communities.

In line with this initiative, Animation TV has partnered with some of the biggest names in animation, including Kit Bash 3D and The Animation School in South Africa. The Director and Co-founder of The Animation School, Nuno Martins, has this to say about the initiative, "The

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Animation School continues to drive diversity through partnerships such as Animation TV. These [partnerships] highlight the importance of building a diverse community within the international animation industry."

CEO/Founder of Animation TV, Jermaine, states, "We are using Animation TV and exclusive content to bring awareness to the lack of diversity and inclusion in the animation industry. By offering distribution to global animation creators, we will amplify the voices that sometimes go unheard.

Structuring a theatrical partnership with a major film Studio for some of our stronger animation IP's is also a goal of Animation TV. We are currently looking to finance, develop and distribute all forms of animation content(2D/3D) from creators all over the world." Please send all submissions here.

Animation TV is poised to be a platform that translates animation culture into real-world value by tapping into the Metaverse and NFTs as features of the platform. Animation TV will also be distributed globally for users of all operating system interfaces, including iOS, tvOS, Android, Android TV, and the worldwide web.

About Animation TV Animation TV is a Black-owned, streaming, Animation Network located in South-East Georgia. Owned by husband and wife Jermaine & Whaketa Hargrove it is the first and only streaming platform in the world that distributes all aspects of animation culture. For more information, please visit Animation TV. https://www.wfmz.com/news/pr_newswire/pr_ newswire_entertainment/first-ever-black-ownedanimation-network-set-to-launch-in-summer-2022/ article_3f43e2b0-d004-5ca0-b08a-c40ab68b2288. html Cision View original content to download multimedia: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/first-everblack-owned-animation-network-set-to-launch-insummer-2022-301533792.html

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818 Tequila Brand is Turning Agave Wa into Bric

By Elissaveta M. Bran

FOR EVERY LITER of tequila bottled, the fermentation process generates about 11 pounds of agave pulp. Consider this at scale. In 2021, tequila sales in the United States amounted to about 27 million nine-liter cases. That’s a mindboggling 2.7 billion pounds of agave waste pulp.

Or 2.7 billion pounds of waste material that could be used for something else—like making bricks.

Last October, 818 Tequila company partnered with Mexican nonprofit SACRED, which works to support the rural Mexican communities that produce agave spirits. Together they started the 818 Bricks Program, using 818 Tequila’s postproduction agave fibers to create adobe bricks.

The first batch of bricks has just been completed and will be used to build a school library and a tasting room for a family-run distillery—145 miles away from 818’s distillery in the Mexican region of Jalisco.

“To me, it’s so beautiful that they’re thinking both about, how do we decrease our footprint on the planet and at the same time, how do we improve the communities that are helping us build our business,” says SACRED founder Lou Bank, who was introduced to 818 Tequila through 1% for the Planet, an international organization with members like 818 Tequila, Patagonia, and Honest Tea that contribute at least 1% of their annual sales to environmental causes.

Both the buildings and the bricks were designed by local architect Eric Gómez Ibarra, whose firm, Tierra Cruda, specializes in bioclimatic architecture that uses local materials. Ibarra says that agave has been used to make adobe bricks for “thousands of years”—it can even be found

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in the bricks that make up some of the region’s ancient pyramids.

But as modern technology and concrete became more prevalent, traditional practices fell out of favor: Adobe bricks can’t be manufactured industrially because the formula varies, based on the agave batch and the kind of clay or soil available for each project.

In this case, Ibarra says the bricks are made of 10% to 15% of agave fiber, which works a bit like a binder. The rest consists off soilil ffrom the th buildings’ excavated foundations, clay sourced in the region, water, and about 5% of another byproduct of tequila-making called viñaza. Ibarra says that this highly acidic distillation waste helps make the adobe bricks more water-resistant.

Everything is mixed the day before, then poured inside wooden forms where it sets before it’s removed and left to sun dry for about three days, depending on the season. Unlike conventional bricks, which are fired in kilns at an average temperature of 1,900 degrees Fahrenheit, this process requires no energy, in some cases resulting in a net-zero carbon footprint for the building. And because adobe bricks absorb heat during the day and release it at night, their cooling properties help further cut down on a building’s emissions by reducing the need for AC. Adobe bricks are one of the oldest and most common building materials known to man, and they can last for 400 years if properly maintained and protected from rain. To improve their durability,

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aste cks

ndon

however, Ibarra has designed a sinuous pattern on the surface of each brick. “When you have a very flat surface drying in sun, it’s going to crack if it dries too fast,” he says. “The main reason [for the pattern] is to prevent crackles on the surface, but it also helps to give more grip once they’re laid on the wall.”

This isn’t the first time that bricks have been infused or made with waste material. In 2012, the startup Biomason started growing bricks out of bacteria (and urea). Since 2013, Dutch company Stonecycling has been developing bricks with as much as 80% of industrial and construction waste (these recently found their way into a residential complex in Manhattan). And after years of R&D, Los Angeles-based startup ByFusion is now turning nonrecyclable plastic into building blocks fit for construction.

In Mexico, agave bricks are slowly making their way back into construction, too. In Oaxaca, where most of the world’s mezcal is produced, local architecture firm COAA recently created adobe 109

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bricks using waste from the mezcal brand Sombra Mezcal. This methodology is now being perpetuated in Jalisco, where the 818 Bricks Program is helping revive the tradition and create jobs. “We want them not only to have money but also know that what their grandparents did is also good now,” says Ibarra. “They can relearn these skills and if they want, repeat them for their houses.”

The library is breaking ground in the next few weeks and will be complete by January 2023, followed by the tasting room, which will take about five months to build. For now, Bank says that SACRED is only working with 818, but he’s hopeful that the initiative will inspire other spirit companies to follow in their footsteps. “If somebody else comes to us, we’re more than open to continuing our mission,” he says. https://www.fastcompany.com/90744482/kendalljenners-818-tequila-brand-is-turning-agave-wasteinto-bricks Image credit: joplinglobe.com, courtesy 818

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The Chefs Shaping African Cuisine

By Lutho Pasiya Lebohang Kganye

AFRICAN CUISINE is splashed with a complex array of influences, ingredients, and inspirations.

But, as with much of history, the contributions of some groups are under-appreciated, or overlooked.

We look at some of the chefs who are shaping the narrative of African cuisine. Africa’s contemporary chefs need no wordy introduction.

Across the continent, from South Africa, Kenya to Congo, down to Zambia, professional chefs are plating Africa’s traditional flavours at home and on the international table.

You have probably heard of Bertus Basson or Zola Nene, but here are six other chefs you may not know, but definitely should – big names in the game that help shape African cuisine.

Raphael King

from the garden of my dreams”.

Raphael King’ori

Born in Kenya, Raphael King’ori grew up fascinated by how simple ingredients turned into great meals in his mother’s kitchen.

Naturally, after his high school education, he signed up at the renowned Kenya Utalii College in Nairobi, and interned at the Carnivore Restaurant in Kenya and, from there, he never looked back.

Chef Raphael loves to share knowledge on all matters of food. This led him to publish recipes on social media, through the now popular step-bystep images and videos on recipes.

His greatest strength is curating “home-made food” recipes, using locally available products and ingredients. King’ori says by developing recipes Mokgadi Itsweng Raised in Mamelodi in Pretoria, Mokgadi Itsweng that are easily incorporated into Kenyan and African studied law, then advertising. But it was while households, increasing utility becomes organic. working a catering job, as a side hustle, that she Vusi Ndlovu realised her true passion.

Vusi Ndlovu gained local and international Following her dreams, Itsweng packed her bags recognition when he ranked among the top seven and escaped to New York, where she worked at at the San Pellegrino Young Chef finale, in 2018. the legendary South African restaurant Madiba, Ndlovu now co-owns a restaurant called in Brooklyn, and studied at Peter Kump’s cooking Edge Restaurant. With a focus on underutilised school. ingredients and recipes passed down over She returned to Johannesburg in 2001 and cut generations, the restaurant is a holistic celebration her teeth as a chef, ultimately opening her own of Africa. restaurant, Lotsha Kitchen and Cocktails, four The menu, conceptualised by him and inspired years later. by his own heritage, is an ever-changing curation Itsweng has recently released a cookbook called of dishes that highlight indigenous ingredients, “Veggielicious” in which she has reworked South reimagined in a contemporary, minimalist, and African recipes with plant-forward passion. She respectful way. describes the cookbook as a “plant-based offering 110

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Lillian Elidah Vusi Ndlovu

g’ori

Dieuveil Malonga

These dishes pay homage to Ndlovu’s past Mick experience and curiosity, as well as the rich history Élysée of this great continent.

Mick Élysée is a LondonDieuveil Malonga Malonga is a Congo-born, Rwanda-based chef based chef, and entrepreneur. Malonga specialises in afro- specialising n fusion cuisine, a culinary art he describes as “a i Congolese subtle blend of tradition and modernity” (a culinary bridge between African flavours and Western French and African food. cuisine). Élysée’s He says, every day, he aims at transcending African cuisine. At thirteen years, Malonga’s love for the fortune took him to Germany where he was warmly culinary arts started when welcomed.

There began a new life and also a very different he was very in one. Cooking and music soon became his tools of young, his home choice to express himself. country of Mick Élysée Lillian Elidah Congo. Now, Lillian Elidah is a Zambian chef, who is a he is a reference in the field of gastronomy in the graduate of the Cesar Ritz Culinary Arts Academy UK. in Switzerland, and now owns and runs her In 2018, Mick joined the Smart Food campaign restaurant Twaala, in Lusaka, Zambia. and contributed two millet and sorghum-based Twaala Restaurant is a modern fusion restaurant recipes that he is now promoting through various that radiates customised vibrant decor and channels. atmosphere, with an everyday mission to serve He says he is an artist and a chef, and diversity beyond the boundaries of taste. is what makes his art interesting.

Twaala Restaurant is founded on the basis of https://www.iol.co.za/lifestyle/ great food, extraordinary decor, and gourmet food-drink/africa-month-the-chefsculinary skills. shaping-african-cuisine-a7457197Elidah says, in its intimate and exclusive hall, 769f-429d-8295-34a9cad3949f?ct=t(EMAIL_ they aim to grow into a brand and an experience CAMPAIGN_6_06_2019_COPY_01)&mc_ that goes beyond the boundaries of your ordinary cid=4c17069ffd&mc_eid=36c676fe93 culinary experience.

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A Bold New Design Journal is Upending th Status Quo: ‘Design Should Feel More Like Jaz

By Elissaveta M. Bran

WHAT IS DESIGN? And who gets to decide what it means?

Since 2019, the founding trio behind Deem Journal has been pushing for a more equitable understanding of design. Rooted in the belief that design is everywhere, the biannual print publication and online platform has been exploring the role of design as a social practice that’s less preoccupied with aesthetics and more interested in the process.

Now, Nu Goteh, Alice Grandoit-Šutka, and Marquise Stillwell have been granted an award by the American Institute of Architects in New York. The New Perspectives Award celebrates individuals and collectives who take critical positions that help broaden our understanding of architecture; Deem Journal is the inaugural recipient.

I took this opportunity to join the founders on Zoom and discuss Deem’s evolution. We talked about the narrow definition of design and how it perpetuates inequity; how nontraditional designers can make design more inclusive; and how design should take more cues from jazz.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

Fast Company: What inspired you to start Deem Journal?

Nu Goteh: Deem is a resolve of three different design practitioners coming together and trying to solve for a problem that we all saw in the world of design: that [it] was hyper-focused on specific things and very much excluded different perspectives.

Design often gets codified within objects and outputs, and the issue with that is we’ve been trained to look through the lens of fidelity—so how beautiful, finished, and polished is said design?

But the trap there is that fidelity is restricted by resources, and resources aren’t evenly distributed.

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And so oftentimes what happens is that the people who get to be designers are the people who are resourced to be designers.

We actually call bullshit on that. There are many more opportunities to look at design beyond outputs. For us, design is a process of adding value, and that process isn’t exclusive to just designers. So we set out to start to open up more conversations and invite many more perspectives into the world of design.

So much focus today is on the look of an object, and this obsession with aesthetics is only made worse by Instagram. How do we bring back the idea that intention and process are just as important and valuable as the final output?

Goteh: For us, it’s really starting to look for inspiration outside of the practice and to look at different people who are participating in the process, whether they acknowledge it or not.

So, it’s not necessarily going to the same well of designers—with a capital D—and asking them, “What’s your process?” It’s more looking at the process holistically and finding different practitioners who are in design, or are adjacent to design, who are facilitating and participating in the process of adding value.

Alice Grandoit-Šutka: A lot of that really comes from just demystifying design. A reason why a lot of the conversations tend to move toward the output is because it’s something tangible that people can see, and maybe they don’t have to overintellectualize it. A lot of what we’re trying to do with Deem is build evidence for people to see themselves within these processes, and to see that they actually do participate in them regularly, whether they believe it to be design or not.

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he zz’ From left: Deem Journal founders Marquise Stillwell, Nu Goteh, and Alice GrandoitŠutka

don

On the cover of your very first issue, Designing for Dignity, you featured someone who isn’t a designer. What does the writer and activist Adrienne Maree Brown bring to the design conversation?

Marquise Stillwell: I guess I would counter that she is a designer. And I would say that’s the reason why we put her on there, because she does represent the challenge within design in the way that we actually call out who are designers and who are not.

Grandoit-Šutka: I think everybody who you will see on Deem, maybe in a larger context to traditional gatekeepers, they might not see these people as designers, but I think that’s exactly what we’re trying to do is open up the conversation. And Adrienne Maree Brown felt like a perfect person to highlight—a Black woman “design doer.”

What’s your definition of design?

Stillwell: I mean, what does it mean to be beautiful? It means that I see myself as beautiful.

Does that mean that Vogue or Elle tells me what beautiful is? Well, they have, and they’ve [also] challenged that. It’s the same thing we’re doing with design, and I think that design has been held

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hostage by a few gatekeepers who continue to either over-theorize what design is, or overly add this essence of fidelity that says design looks like this.

Are you shying away from a more concrete definition because it doesn’t exist?

Stillwell: No, the concrete definition of beauty is how you see yourself. The concrete definition of design is the way you see yourself. Design is about adding value, but we create artificial speed bumps by not allowing individuals to deem themselves as part of the design world. And that’s the challenge when you look at these other gatekeepers or design firms who refuse to hire people who don’t fit in this very narrow definition. I wouldn’t even call it narrow. It is not a real definition.

In your first issue, you explored the idea that design is so pervasive we often fail to notice it. Is that necessarily a bad thing? Or maybe it’s a bad thing when it goes unnoticed intentionally?

Stillwell: I think that’s when design goes unnoticed in regards to the process. Life is not a microwave. For a lot of us, particularly in the design see page 114

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space, we believe that we can solve quick problems with these tools, and therefore we create shiny objects that don’t last and we don’t build in the social factors of what it means to be human.

To be human requires patience, and that requires a process that can be repeated, but added on to, similar to the way that we listen to jazz. Jazz has these initial standards, but the beauty of jazz is that it improvises and continues to add value for each note and each sound. In many ways, design should feel more like jazz as a social practice—coming together to add value together.

Your most recent issue, Envisioning Equity, talks about equity as a design challenge. How can design address this?

Grandoit-Šutka: In this context, I think design can at least help us acknowledge that the distribution of ownership within our current social system didn’t occur naturally. It is actually a product of design. And if things were designed to perpetuate inequality, then how do we use design to reconfigure that concept of equity, and even challenge if it’s something that could help repair the harm that has been made?

In the third issue, you have a section called Partner Pages where you highlight organizations, businesses, and initiatives that model how design can add value to communities, and you note that these placements are not paid. Why did you choose to highlight these organizations in that way?

Stillwell: We’re not going to have paid partners that are just advertising a widget. If we work with a partner, we really want the partner to highlight how it’s doing the work versus, again, the fidelity of the work. So, Herman Miller just putting a chair in for us isn’t the type of communication that we like to express. It’s more about highlighting the people

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and the process for how that chair manifested itself.

What’s your ultimate hope for Deem, and where do you envision it going next?

Grandoit-Šutka: I would love to see Deem continue to become resourceful in terms of supporting communities of practice, and really pushing for a lot of this wider representation. And I think most specifically trying to maybe remap—I don’t really like to use this word, but it is a word that we use—a new canon for design. I’ve been thinking about it more as constellations, [and] maybe something that is pluralistic.

Goteh: For us, design doesn’t just live between pieces of paper or on a screen; it’s a lived experience that we all share every day. So our goal is to really start to expand our philosophy beyond print to different types of experiences, whether they’re IRL, with us convening together, or even trying to find ways of leveraging other mediums.

And we’re going to continue pushing that, bringing in many different perspectives as well. https://www.fastcompany.com/90746483/a-boldnew-design-journal-is-upending-the-status-quodesign-should-feel-more-like-jazz Image credit: Deem Journal DAWN

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‘Top of the World’: Black Climbing Team Makes History as First to Scale Mount Everest

By Guardian staff

Members of the all-Black team to climb Everest at the Yak and Yeti hotel in Kathmandu on Wednesday, May 18th. Photograph: Niranjan Shrestha/AP

THE FIRST ALL-BLACK climbing group to reach the summit of Mount Everest was recovering back at the bottom of the mountain on Thursday and celebrating a journey to the “top of the world”.

Seven members of the US-led team made it to the top of the mountain in one expedition, greatly increasing the number of Black people who have summited the world’s highest peak from 10 to 17, out of about 10,000 in total.

Manoah Ainuu, a professional climber from Spokane, Washington, was among the group and said he exceeded his high expectations in getting to the summit of Everest for the first time.

“Up there, it’s a little cold,” he told the NBC Today show on Thursday morning, eliciting laughs from the hosts, as he beamed in by video with a drink in hand from Kathmandu, Nepal, where the successful team was resting.

“Down here, and on the journey to the top of the world, every place is amazing, everyone is amazing, so, yup, it’s all good,” Ainuu said.

The group calls itself the Full Circle Everest expedition. On their website they write: “In 1963, the first American expedition reached the summit of Everest. That same year Dr Martin Luther King delivered his historic I Have A Dream speech. It took 40 more years for the first Black climber to summit Everest. Still, there has never been an 115

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all-Black team to summit the tallest mountain on Earth.

“This expedition will showcase the tenacity and strength of these climbers, and highlight the barriers that continue to exist for Black communities in accessing the outdoors.”

Members of the group climbed the tough Mount Rainier in Washington last year, then after intense training they set off for the Himalayas. With a team of Sherpa climbers they reached base camp, then departed on 2 May for the summit. Some did not make the top, but seven did, on 12 May. “This is a huge accomplishment … now we’re able to take this experience and take it back to our communities and tell the stories, share what we’ve learned of this beautiful place and culture and hopefully inspire a future generation of outdoor enthusiasts,” successful summiteer Rosemary Saal told Today on Thursday.

Teammate Phil Richardson has been working in the climbing and mountaineering industry for almost three decades.

“When I came into it, there weren’t folks like myself that I had to look to for guidance and mentorship and so on,” he said, adding that he was now in a position to mentor others. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/19/ black-climbers-mount-everest DAWN

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Lifestyle/Culture

The Jordan Brand Prese 'The Women's Collective' Full of Black

By Iman N. Milner

ON THE HEELS of cries for gender pay equality and an increase in high-ranking leadership roles for women, many brands made promises to level the playing field. The conversation then turned to how many of those changes would include women of color and how important it is to note that white women, though not represented amongst their male counterparts, are often still much more likely to have access to resources that are unavailable to women of color, specifically Black women. Some brands kept their word and have implemented real change in both diversity of hiring as well as pay while others seemed to be all talk and no action. One of the brands that has seemed to truly double down on their promise is Jordan Brand.

The legendary sports apparel brand named after Michael Jordan, has been on the forefront of using its access to shine a light on women who are doing their thing. And with their newest venture, The Women’s Collective, Jordan Brand looks poised to continue leading the way.

The group is made up of 33 women from all different industries brought together by Jordan to coordinate and participate in retreats, panels another events over the course of six months.

They will also be given grants to use for further advancing in their respective disciplines. In a conversation with Teen Vogue, Vice President and General Manager of Women’s Jordan Andrea Perez said, “It is Jordan Brand’s priority to prepare the now and next generation for their future. In doing so, we’ve selected a group of leaders, from 116

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diverse spaces of influence already equipped to change the world and many of whom had connections to the Brand already, whether that was through participating in a photo campaign, being an illustrator for a project, leading community work, and even sneaker collecting.” Among the group of women are visual artists, skaters, photographers, designers, stylists and business owners who are currently making waves in their fields and communities. The group boasts women from all DAWN

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nts k Women Creators

over the world including Shanghai, Los Angeles, New York, London and Chicago.

“So much of what we do is rooted in the community which in turn necessitates that we listen to the community and acknowledge that there are learnings to be had,” Perez shares. “The Women’s Collective is particularly exciting as it will give us an opportunity to learn from the women in our community while they simultaneously learn from one another.” With this project, Jordan aims to 117

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address an age old issue in the world of basketball.

Perez explains, “While there has been gender equity advancement in the world of professional sports, basketball culture is lagging and remains a male-dominated and elitist space, perpetuated by brands and collectors alike. Women continue to fight to be seen, heard, and too often are pitted against one another for a seat at the table.” This collective is the first of its kind for the brand but after this 6-month program, Jordan will choose their next group of women, the plan is for this to be another part of their legacy.

Perez continues, “While much of the work that Jordan Brand does is proudly rooted in basketball culture, our Jordan Family extends beyond those who ball. Basketball culture as we see it is about community, it’s about legacy, it’s a reflection of culture as a whole, and basketball is one conduit, an important one surely, to accessing that. The Women’s Collective and its members represent these sentiments, expanding the reach of the Jumpman to be a symbol for opportunity, connection, and equity across a diverse range of cultures, genders, and socioeconomic backgrounds.”

We love to see new faces who are dominating and changing the world. https://www.msn.com/en-us/lifestyle/lifestyle-buzz/thejordan-brand-presents-the-women-s-collective-full-ofblack-women-creators/ar-AAVLeqb Image credit: Jordan Brand, nicekicks

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Lifestyle and Culture

Somali-French Gallerist Mariane Ibrahim

By Jacqui Palumbo, CNN

W h e n Mariane Ibrahim opened h e r elegant, n e w threestory art gallery in Paris

last lastt September, Septtember b she h b became ecame one off th the ffew ew Bl Blackk gallerists to set up shop in the French capital and dedicate the space to contemporary art from Africa and its diaspora.

Located in the 8th arrondissement of Paris, among other noted galleries and close to landmarks like the Arc de Triomphe and the Louvre, the space has featured the otherworldly mixed-media figures of Haitian American artist M. Florine Démosthène and found-image collages by

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Afro Latino artist Clotilde Jiménez. In April, Ibrahim debuted the European show of Ghanaian painter Amoako Boafo, who captures the beauty of Black skin in swirling, lush brushstrokes.

The gallery's setting, in a crisp, airy new space, housed inside a historical building designed in classic Haussmann style, was particularly meaningful to her to underscore the importance of the lesser-seen work. "It commands a certain contemplation, when you come in," she said in a phone interview. "I really intended to have a space that is prestigious, that is able to host the art of the future."

Before her homecoming to Paris, Ibrahim has spent the past decade building her US presence through eponymous galleries in Seattle and Chicago, with a focus on African diasporic art.

Over the past few years, American museums and galleries have made significant strides in representing Black artists, she said, while art market interest has surged as well. But in Paris, despite France's extensive colonial history with the continent, there are few galleries dedicated to artists of African heritage.

"It's troubling, because we are in 2022, (in) France, a country with such a strong connection to the world in general, but (especially) to Africa, and the Indies, the Caribbean," she said. "There are more African artists who have received museum attention...in the US in the past five years than there has ever been in France in the past 50 years."

In the forthcoming CNN Originals show "Nomad with Carlton McCoy," in which sommelier Carlton McCoy explores the lesserseen side of famous cities and countries, Ibrahim joined him and artist Raphaël Barontini for a home-cooked meal in Barontini's studio in Saint-Denis, a suburb, or "banlieue" of Paris.

McCoy said in the episode that he had noticed "a distinct lack of Black and Brown perspectives" in the capital's famed museums.

"In France you're exposed to art, but you're exposed to the domination of a culture over others," Ibrahim told him in the episode. "What you are seeing are works of them by them about people like us."

Ibrahim began collecting Barontini's work in 2019, DAWN

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drawn to the personal connection she felt to his work. Barontini is French, Italian and Caribbean, and Ibrahim felt a kinship to the "hybridity" of his practice, in which he silkscreens heroic African figures into regal compositions redolent of art historical European paintings.

"Constantly people are asking you to choose: What are you? Are you French, are you African?"

Ibrahim said. "I refuse to do that. I don't want to choose. I want to be everything."

Though Ibrahim is a pioneer in bringing contemporary African diasporic art to Paris, she believes that others will soon follow.

Paris has "the right audience," she noted. "That's why I'm very, very optimistic about France. I do think Paris is going to be the capital of diversity."

Here, we asked Ibrahim to share five works of art that stayed with her.

Mariane Ibrahim's most impactful artworks Seydou Keïta "Untitled" (1958-59)

gallery."

Tamara de Lempicka "Young Lady with Gloves" (1930) T h i s sumptuous, highly stylized painting by Polish Art Deco painter Tamara de Lempicka is one of Ibrahim's f a v o r i t e s © Elena Aquila/Pacific Press/ because it LightRocket/Getty Images relishes in the Tamara de Lempicka, "Young Lady simple pleasure with Gloves." of beauty.

De Lempicka was also a rare female perspective in figurative painting, and Ibrahim appreciates the clarity of her gaze. "I am haunted by this image of the drapery and this woman in the green dress," she said. "Everything is charged...It's overcharged."

Arthur Jafa "Love is the message, the message is death." (2016)

© Seydou Keïta/SKPEAC/The Jean Pigozzi African Art Collective Seydou Keïta, "Untitled, 1958-59."

When Ibrahim spotted a poster in a Parisian bar https://www.moca.org/ promoting an exhibition that featured the work of 20th-century photographer Seydou Keïta, who Set to Kanye West's gospel-infused track ran a portrait studio in Bamako, Mali, as the city transformed after colonial rule, it set her on her "Ultralight Beam," this seven-and-a-half-minute track to becoming a gallerist. She reflected: "That video by artist and director Arthur Jafa is a tribute image affected me to a point to want to start a see page 120 119

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Lifestyle/Culture Ibrahim Gallery

from page 119

to the creative power of Black Americans amid violence and bigotry. Weaving together found video footage, Jafa creates a narrative of both collective elation and despair.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/somalifrench-gallerist-mariane-ibrahim-on-the-fiveartworks-that-changed-her-life/ar-AAWK3Qi? Image credit: Cultured Magazine,

Maimouna Guerressi, "Surprise" (2010) The photographs of Italian Senegalese multimedia artist Maimouna Guerressi, who will be exhibiting at Ibrahim's Chicago location later this year, are tinged with mystery, influenced by Islamic mysticism.

In "Surprise," a levitating woman in dramatic but austere black and white garb gazes down at two young children in white robes, the image exudes a sense of holy reverence.

Gustave Courbet, "L'Origine du Monde" (1866) Ibrahim was a teenager when she first encountered an image of French artist Gustave Courbet's cropped, close-up oil painting of a reclining woman's vulva, and she said she felt like she "couldn't hide" from the artwork. "I've never seen any body displayed that way," she said.

"Art is supposed to make you feel slightly uncomfortable," she said. "But you keep looking for that again and again and again."

DAWN Team: This story has been edited. Read the full story at the link below.

© Courtesy Mariane Ibrahim Maïmouna Guerresi, "Surprise."

www.africadownunderconference.com/contact-us

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History Revisited

Amanda Gorman Will Write the Foreword for a New Edition of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream”

By Hamilton Cain

AS THE WORLD’S oldest continuous democracy, the United States draws on indelible speeches as signposts toward a more perfect union, among them President Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and Second Inaugural. And then there’s Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream,” delivered with a kind of holy passion on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on a sultry August afternoon in 1963, and now an icon of American oratory and a benchmark for human rights around the world.

In June a sumptuous hardcover edition of I Have a Dream will launch Harper’s Martin Luther King, Jr., Library imprint, a collaboration with the MLK Archives, destined to carry the torch of his writings to future generations in an array of formats and across the globe. The Dream Journal—a guidebook for reflection inspired by Dr. King—will come out simultaneously, enhancing an ambitious, aspirational project that’s been percolating for

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years. As Judith Curr, president and publisher of Harper One and its sister imprints, Amistad, Harper Via, and HarperCollins Español, notes, the imprint is modeled on a similar reimagining of Zora Neale Hurston’s oeuvre, 10 classics repackaged with striking original designs by artists of color, representing the author at different moments in her singular career. Impressed by the look and feel Harper had created for Hurston, the King Estate approached the Harper, already the literary and “spiritual home” for Dr. King’s A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches.

Amanda Gorman, who electrified us all with her poem at President Biden’s inauguration, has contributed a soaring foreword to the series’ début, lauding Dr. King’s command of evangelical cadences and rhetorical devices, echoed in her see page 122

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History Revisited "I Have A Dream"

from page 121

own bestselling work. As Gorman observes, the speech is itself a monument, “albeit made of sentences and not stone”—a foundation for reckonings past, present, and future, captured in thrilling language: the fierce urgency of Now; the content of their character; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia, let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.

The publication of I Have a Dream will commemorate the Juneteenth holiday, which Harper is observing for the first time; Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German translations will appear later this year, and the audio version features Gorman, the actor Blair Underwood, and Dr. King’s original 1963 presentation.

The imprint’s colophon is an incomplete circle, suggesting Dr. King’s vision for a just and equitable society remains unfulfilled. The volume’s interior design is both intimate and innovative: Each page spotlights a line or lines beautifully tailored to his Dr. King’s cadences, compelling readers to see and hear it anew, in its totality.

Five more speeches are in the pipeline, targeted for the MLK holiday in January— “The American Dream,” “Our God Is Marching On,” “Beyond Vietnam,” “The Other America,” and “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop”—along with a guide to reading and mulling these canonical speeches. As with I Have a Dream, each hardcover will include a foreword by a younger, contemporary writer.

Clear your shelves for this reimagining of a preeminent American life.

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https://www.msn.com/en-us/travel/tripideas/amandagorman-will-write-the-foreword-for-a-new-edition-of-drmartin-luther-king-jr-s-i-have-a-dream/ar-AAXcPCZ?o cid=msedgdhp&pc=W069&cvid=cc59bfbdcc8f4edd93 601e32af8651ad Image credit: HarperCollins, https://www.amazon.com, Live Action

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Celebrations

African Diaspora Independence Days J 26, 1960 R DJIBOUTI - J 27, 1977 R CAMEROON - J . 1, 1960 R SEYCHELLES - J 29, 1976 R HAITI - J . 1, 1804 R CONGO D R SUDAN - J . 1, 1956 D (KINSHASA) - J 30, 1960 F MOROCCO (I ) - J 30, 1969 G GRENADA - F 07, 1974 J R T GAMBIA - F . 18, 1965 R BURUNDI - J 1, 1962 SAINT LUCIA - F 22, 1979 R RWANDA - J 1, 1962 DOMINICAN REPUBLIC - F . 27, 1844 D R SOMALIA - J 1, A R EGYPT - F . 28, 1922 1960 WESTERN SAHARA - F . 28, 1976 D P R M ALGERIA - J 3, 1962 K MOROCCO - M 2, 1956 R CAPE VERDE - J 5, 1975 R GHANA - M 6, 1957 F I R COMOROS S MAURITIUS - M 12, 1968 -J 6, 1975 R TUNISIA - M 20, 1956 R MALAWI - J 6, 1964 R NAMIBIA - M 21, 1990 C THE BAHAMAS - J 10, A 1973 R SENEGAL - A 4, 1960 D R SÃO TOMÉ AND S N Z MOROCCO PRINCIPE - J 12, 1975 (M )-A 7, 1956 R LIBERIA - J 26, 1847 R ZIMBABWE - A 18, 1980 A MOROCCO (S S Z , R BENIN - A . 1, 1960 M )-A 27, 1958 R NIGER - A . 3, 1960 R SIERRA LEONE - A . 27, 1961 P D R BURKINA R TOGO - A 27, 1960 FASO - A . 5, 1960 M JAMAICA - A 06, 1962 P ' D R ETHIOPIA - G R CÔTE D'IVOIRE (I C )M 5, 1941 A . 7, 1960 R CUBA - M 20 ,1902 R CHAD - A . 11, 1960 S ERITREA - M 24, 1993 C R GUYANA - M 26, CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC - A . 13, 1960 1966 R CONGO (BRAZZAVILLE) R SOUTH AFRICA - M 31, 1910 A . 15, 1960 J GABON - A . 16, 1960 NIGERIA (B C N )-J 1, R R TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO - A 1961 31, 1962 A A ' R V S (J )-J 19, 1865 K SWAZILAND - S . 6, 1968 R MOZAMBIQUE - J 25. 1975 F S C ST. KITTS D R MADAGASCAR -

J

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AND NEVIS - S 19 1983 G BELIZE - S 21, 1981 R MALI - S . 22, 1960 R GUINEA-BISSAU - S . 24, 1973 R BOTSWANA - S . 30, 1966

O CAMEROON (B C S )O . 1, 1961 F R NIGERIA - O . 1, 1960 R GUINEA - O . 2, 1958 K LESOTHO - O . 4, 1966 R UGANDA - O . 9, 1962 R EQUATORIAL GUINEA - O . 12, 1968 R ZAMBIA - O . 24, 1964 G ST. VINCENT AND THE GRENADINES - O 27, 1979 MOROCCO (I Z ,T )O . 29, 1956

R i t ti O Registration Opens ffor 2022 Afreximbank Annual Meetings REGISTRATION IS OPEN for the 2022 Annual Meetings of the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank), which will be held in the New Administrative Capital of the Arab Republic of Egypt from 15to 18 June 2022.

The 29th Afreximbank Annual Meetings with the theme “Realising the AfCFTA Potential in the post COVID-19 Era—Leveraging the power of the youth”, will include Advisory Group Meetings and the Annual General Meeting of Shareholders, complemented by seminars and plenaries.

Afreximbank Annual Meetings are open to banking industry professionals, trade and trade finance practitioners and other parties involved in economic development from across Africa and beyond. They are also attended by business and political leaders and have been ranked among the 124

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N G ANTIGUA AND BARBUDA 01 N 01, 1981 C DOMINICA - N 03, 1978 P ' R ANGOLA - N . 11, 1975 R SURINAME - N 25, 1975 I R MAURITANIA - N . 28, 1960 BARBADOS - N 30, 1966

D U R TANZANIA - D . 9, 1961 R KENYA - D . 12, 1963 LIBYA (S P ' L A J ) - D . 24, 1951 www.thoughtco.com/chronological-list-of-africanindependence-4070467 www.caribbeanelections.com/education/ independence/default.asp

mostt important i t t gatherings th i off economic i decisiond i i makers in Africa.

To register, please visit: https://2022. afreximbankevents.com, regularly updated information about the venue, programme, hotel accommodation and visas is also available.

For more information, visit: www.afreximbank. com and follow us on Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn | Instagram.

Black Tech Week Cincinnati, Ohio USA July 2022 www.blacktechweek.com www.blackenterprise.com/kimberly-bryant-detavio-samuelsarlan-hamilton-and-more-are-set-to-headline-black-tech-week-incincinnati Image credit: wlwt.com

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"Awakening the African Giant Within" The Africa Business Association (ABA) is pleased to invite you to be an integral part of our publication the DAWN - Awakening the African Giant Within. DAWN is a voice through which public and private entities and people share pertinent information and market business and investment opportunities in Africa and the African Diaspora. Gain access to these trillion dollar markets via ABA DAWN outreach and advertising opportunities.

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