Timeless London-based watch and accessories company, Vitae, reached two major milestones last year securing $1million in sales and distributed 5,000 solar lamps to Sub-Saharan school children. The solar-powered lamps were distributed in partnership with Pen to Paper Ghana, a Ghanaian non-profit that works to deliver lamps to students so that they can complete their school work with efficient lighting. But now its founder William Adoasi has just announced that the brand is launching each limited edition watch with an NFT. Talk about innovative! In a video, Adoasi said: “It’s William
Parfait, an AI and facial recognition-powered beauty technology focused on providing custom wig products to consumers, announced today a $5 million Seed round led by Upfront Ventures and Serena Ventures. Millions of Black women waste exorbitant amounts of money and time on difficult-to-install hair products that don’t properly fit or match their skin tone. While the market for manufactured hair wigs is expected to grow to $13.3 billion by 2026 according to Arizton, innovations to the products and services remain stagnant—until now. According to its founders, Parfait is uniquely suited to
Floyd Mayweather has announced the drop of a new NFT Project called Mayweverse. The project will consist of 5,000 NFTs and is set to launch on Wednesday. Fans on Twitter, however, are not pleased with the announcement and accused him of scams, taking people’s money, and abandoning projects. There will be five different NFT cards with a quantity of 1,000 available for each. In a tweet on the official Mayweverse account, it tweeted: “The mint price will be 0.3ETH bringing you maximum profit and value.” Floyd had previously launched a
Wale Ayeni, the regional head of venture capital investments for the IFC in Africa, has left the International Finance Corporation (IFC), it was reported on Wednesday. Wale Ayeni wrote: “After 5+ thrilling years at the IFC, last week was my last. I cannot but be grateful for the years filled with purpose, joy, learning and growth working alongside extremely passionate and mission-driven colleagues focused on changing the narrative in emerging and frontier markets, with action, and through technology. “The wealth, breadth & depth of the experience was only possible by
ChainIDE, a firm helping develop company MVPs, and Conflux, a software delivery service for engineers, have teamed up to launch ‘The Hydra Developer Bootcamp’ for Web3 developers in Africa. The bootcamp aims to provide cohort members with hands-on blockchain 101 training, insight into the African blockchain, crypto industry, and a unique outlook on the future prospects of the Metaverse and Web 3. More than 200 people have reportedly already signed up for the event, according to TechCabal, while the first two modules have already attracted more than 500 views in
Clark Atlanta has announced that it has been awarded nearly $12 million in grant funding to establish a “Knowledge Metaverse” hub. The Knowledge Metaverse, according to a school release, “amplifies access and engagement in learning by combining the real world with digital information and extended reality (XR) similar to immersive experiences that have become increasingly popular in arts, gaming, and entertainment.” The grant was supplied by EON Reality, described by the school as “the global leader in augmented and virtual reality learning solutions.” Clark Atlanta is the first HBCU to
Churpy, a Kenyan fintech startup, has secured a $1 million seed round led by Unicorn Growth Capital. Also participating were Antler East Africa, Nairobi’s business angel network, and a group of Rally Cap LPs. The round will be used to support expansion to Egypt, Nigeria, and South Africa. The startup said it wants to transform how businesses manage the debt owed to them by their customers through its Software as a service (SaaS) product – which automates the labor-intensive processes of reconciling incoming payments and invoices that are still predominantly manual for most local
Founder and CEO at Seidea CIC, a career development platform with a social mission to diversify the cybersecurity industry, Stephanie Itimit sat down with us to discuss building a thriving organization, finding the right co-founder, initially balancing her mission with a 9 to 5, and more. The goal for Seidea is to break down barriers for Black and Minority Ethnic women and help them start their cybersecurity careers through cyber career programs and industry events. Itimit and her team also work with employers to develop virtual internships, strengthen their employee
Microsoft said this week that it had fired some employees and terminated partnerships in relation to allegations made public Friday of bribery in its sales efforts in the Middle East in recent years. The disclosure came regarding allegations of bribery and corruption in Microsoft operations in the region made public by a former manager for the company named Yasser Elabd, who worked for the tech giant throughout the Middle East and Africa from 1998 to 2018, when he says he was fired. In an essay published Friday on Lioness, an outlet that documents
Globally, women in tech make up about 28.8% of the tech workforce as of 2020. While this number is an increase from 25.9% in 2018 and 26.2% in 2019, reports still show it could take 12 years for women to have equal representation in tech. In Africa, it will take even longer. Some members of the Latino and Hispanic communities have long held prominent positions in the world’s largest technology companies, and it’s no surprise because of the talent they possess. But Hispanic women reportedly tend to have a more negative experience with workplace DEI efforts,
