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At VeeCon 2022 — the first-ever NFT-ticketed conference — music mogul Pharrell Williams shared with attendees his belief that Web3 could hold the power to create real global change. During an onstage interview with entrepreneur and event creator Gary Vaynerchuk, he said: “You come here talking to the people about the blockchain and Web3. What you should know is, this is a moment in time where everything is changing right now. “You all are looking at these old systems—you know that they’re antiquated, you know that they don’t work. And you

BYJU’S, the world’s leading education technology company, has just announced 2021 Scripps National Spelling Bee Champion Zaila Avant-garde as its first US youth ambassador. At the age of 15, Zaila’s constant pursuit of learning has made her the first Black American winner of the Bee and a three-time Guinness World Record holder: including one for the most bounce juggles in one minute with four basketballs. Even with all of these accomplishments under her belt, Zaila remains steadfastly committed to exploring new interests and the world around her. She is currently a

Nigeria’s Autochek has announced its acquisition of  KIFAL Auto, a Moroccan automotive technology startup, to drive its expansion into North Africa.  This announcement comes months after it acquired the Ugandan and Kenyan operations of Cheki, an online car marketplace. Autochek looks to bring Africa’s sales and servicing of cars online. It also aims to build the financial infrastructure to drive the penetration of auto financing across Africa. In October last year, the firm raised $13.1 million in a seed round and is backed by several investors, including pan-African VC firms TLcom Capital, 4DX Ventures,

In 2020, there was an outpouring of support for the Black community from the games industry, ranging from donations, and statements in support of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, to promotions of inclusion programs. And while some firms have undoubtedly taken these lessons on board to build a better workplace going forward, the discourse has quietly moved on; for some companies, the BLM movement was only performative. One of the most extensive studies of racial representation in games was a 2009 study that analyzed 150 of the most popular titles. Black characters comprised 10.7%

The gaming industry is set to reach $222 billion thanks in part to Gen Z consumers who are the biggest and most monetizable audience, according to a new report published by Data.ai. There are more than 2.7 billion gamers worldwide, and with a young demographic it’s scale and appeal is attracting luxury brands like Balenciaga, who became the first luxury brand to partner with Fortnite on four virtual outfits, or “skins”, alongside accessories, weaponry and a virtual Balenciaga destination in-game. And in November, luxury fashion brand Moncler followed with in-game

UK Minister for Women and Equalities Liz Truss has launched a task force chaired by Anne Boden, CEO and founder of Starling Bank, focused on supporting women-owned businesses. Black entrepreneur and investment manager June Angelides MBE is part of the force. She is best known for starting the UK’s first child-friendly coding school for mums, Mums in Tech, while on her second maternity leave from Silicon Valley Bank. Angelides is also one of a handful of Black women in venture capital.  Launching today, the task force will use its convening

Google and Visible Hands, a two-year-old venture capital (VC) firm dedicated to helping underrepresented founders, announced on Tuesday they would jointly conduct a program to help Latino entrepreneurs build new businesses. The program will make a considerable impact given that Latino founders accounted for only 3.9 percent of the venture capital invested in Boston between 2015 and August of 2020, according to a report by Crunchbase. While this percentage is higher than in California (1.2 percent) and New York (2.2 percent), it is still a long way from being representative. Yasmin Cruz

This year, Lupe Fiasco is set to teach rap at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The rapper has previously worked at MIT, running the programming competition Code Cypher. Fiasco will be one of three new teachers recruited as part of MIT’s MLK Visiting Professor Program for 2022-23. Alongside him will be theater teacher Eunice Ferreira and documentary maker Louis Massiah. “I been holding this for a while,” he tweeted. “I’ll put together something more sophisticated later that really captures the nuance and gravity but for now I’ll just say

Major beauty retailers are boosting small, minority-owned businesses in a bid to support Black women entrepreneurs. As of last year, 17% of Black women in the U.S. were in the process of starting or running new businesses, according to the Harvard Business Review. That outpaces the 15% of white men and the 10% of white women who reported the same. But only 3% of Black women reported running ‘mature’ businesses. And when it comes to the traditional workforce unemployment rate, it remains high among Black women, at 5.5% in March, compared with

Deborah Gladney and Angela Muhwezi-Hall are the sister duo and creators behind QuickHire, a hiring platform that connects workers to service and skilled-trade jobs. In November, QuickHire raised $1.41 million in an oversubscribed round of funding, making Gladney and Muhwezi-Hall the first Black women in Kansas to raise over $1 million for a startup, according to AfroTech. The round is a pretty big deal because Black female startup founders received just 0.34% of the total $147 billion in venture capital invested in U.S. startups through the first half of 2021, according to Crunchbase. QuickHire,

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