In the face of seemingly insurmountable challenges, the 300 visionaries featured on the 2022 Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe list have persevered, innovating and collectively raising more than $2 billion in funding for their ventures—more than double the amount raised by last year’s honorees. Aasiyah Abdulsalam, Ngoni Chikwenengere, Agnus Mwakatuma, Josephine Phillips, Malone Mukwende, and Nigel Matombo were just some of the Black people featured on this year’s list for their amazing work across tech, fashion and mental health. Aasiyah Abdulsalam Aasiyah Abdulsalam is the 26-year-old founder of The Renatural, a brand offering innovative products
Sojo, the British clothing alterations app, has been making strides for a while now but this time it’s hit a big milestone after raising $2.4 million in a pre-seed funding round led by CapitalT and Ascension, with Mustard Seed Maze and Vertex Albion Capital also in participation. Launched by 24-year-old Josephine Philips, the recent graduate first recognized a lack of easy and accessible clothing repairs after she became a top seller on Depop in 2018, buying and selling one-off vintage garments. To fix the issue, Philips launched Sojo, an app
OnePort 365, a platform that claims to solve problems by providing end-to-end digitization of freight management for stakeholders, is building an operating system for cross-border trade in Africa. It says its platform covers air freight, ocean freight, inland haulage (trucking, barge, and rail), pay-as-you-go warehousing, marine insurance, and customs brokerage. Traders can connect with shipping and inland transportation vendors and manage the entire process (from booking to payments), including real-time visibility of their shipments. When it comes to payments, OnePort 365 claims to aggregate different methods enabled by the Pan-African
A federal judge said last week that Tesla Inc was liable to a Black elevator operator who said the electric car company ignored racial abuse at the factory where he worked but the judge has now reduced a nearly $137 million jury award to $15 million. William Orrick, US District Judge in San Francisco, ruled after jurors found that Tesla subjected Owen Diaz to a hostile environment at Tesla’s factory in Fremont, California by allowing and failing to stop the racism he faced. Diaz, first hired through a recruitment agency, worked
Madona is an Android Engineer III at Streem-Frontdoor, a Women Who Code Mobile Lead, and a developer who enjoys sharing her Android knowledge and teaching women how to make Android applications. “As an Android Engineer, I work on implementing new features that transform the ARCore experience into the Streem SDK. Also, work on fixing reported bugs from clients, analyze, optimize, and improve the codebase,” she wrote on her Linkedin, adding, “I Work closely with iOS and back-end engineers to discuss implementation detail and architecture.” Why did you decide to join
Google has opened its first product development center in Africa. Located in Nairobi, the center is designed to build “transformative” products and services, company officials have said. It comes after the tech giant revealed plans to invest $1 billion over the next five years in October last year. The center is Google’s second major research and development investment in Africa after the tech giant set up an AI and research center in Ghana in 2019. The firm will reportedly hire more than 100 tech talent including software engineers, researchers, and
Emmanuel Okeleji is the co-founder and CEO at SeamlessHR, a cloud-based HR and payroll technology company that recently announced its $10 million series A. His work and entrepreneurial experiences span multiple industries, including healthcare, agriculture, and education. By the end of medical school, Okeleji had gone through a Goldman Sachs investment banking internship and kicked off an incorporated software development company alongside his current co-founder, Deji Lana. One of the tools they built back in the mid to late 2000s, a software tool for cooperatives, is still in use today.
Insurtech Etap is now on a mission to expand its services across the West African country following a $1.5 million pre-seed funding round led by Mobility 54; the venture capital arm of Toyota Tsusho and CFAO Group. Founder and CEO Ibraheem Babalola started building Etap last year when he found himself frustrated by the complexities and delays involved in purchasing insurance. “The idea itself is from being a frustrated customer; my insurance would expire and I wouldn’t get a notification to renew it…I always had to make a call to a guy
Karat, the world’s largest interviewing company, has just announced a strategic investment from Serena Williams to significantly scale Brilliant Black Minds, a program that improves access and inclusion across the technology industry. Brilliant Black Minds was launched to close the Interview Access Gap that disproportionately impacts Black software engineers. The scope for the initiative was realized after Black engineers Karat and Howard University surveyed said their confidence levels increased with more interview practice. There’s no doubt that Black software engineers face multiple barriers to entry for jobs in the tech
daba, an abbreviation for “Democratizing Access to Business in Africa” is set to launch soon and aims to give individuals interested in investing in exclusive markets in the continent of Africa the chance to do just that. The waitlist, which is reported to have quietly opened in the fall of 2021, has reportedly grown to more than $2.5M USD in capital pledges toward promising African investment opportunities. Established as Africa’s first social investment application, daba’s mission is to make investing in Africa possible for investors of any level. To elevate their commitment
