When we first posted The Black Founder List during Black History Month, the world looked very different. Coronavirus was not being mentioned much in the news in the US, nor were Black founders. Fast forward to today, the Black Lives Matter movement has begun to affect how people see the Black experience across every industry, even tech. This movement is pushing people to go beyond short term solutions, as the country has begun a larger discussion around how to address racism and make the startup, tech, and venture capital industry
The importance of informal finance arrangements is a reverberating theme across Africa. Informal doesn’t necessarily mean bad or evil or dirty, it’s just that rather than rely on the heavy hand of the law, some communities prefer to place their trust in reputation and social networks for all trade commerce and financial relationships whether offline or online. Others, will turn to informal institutions of trade and finance when faced by adversity in an immediate harsh environment such as war, political instability, structural programs or lack of reliable services. For example,
A great career shouldn’t come at the expense of your identity, but this is a tradeoff many of us have to make. Written during Latinx Heritage Month, this article examines the role that remote work plays in preserving Latinx culture across the U.S. In life and in business, we talk a lot about trade-offs. We learn that we can’t have it all, that there are certain things we need to sacrifice to get ahead in life. And as a Latinx person, that often means trading off between two of the
At the start of Black History Month 2019, Google designed its daily-changing homepage logo to include an image of African-American activist Sojourner Truth, the great 19th-century abolitionist and women’s rights activist. But what would Truth say about Google’s continual lack of care and respect toward people of color? While bringing more attention to Sojourner Truth is venerable, Google can do better. As a professor and researcher of digital cultures, I have found that a lack of care and investment by tech companies towards users who are not white and male
This article is a snippet from the postgraduate thesis of Alex Fefegha, the amazing technologist and founder of Comuzi. Here he breaks down concrete examples of racism and sexism perpetrated by A.I. So here it goes: Suggestions have made that decision-support systems powered by AI can be used to augment human judgment and reduce both conscious and unconscious biases. However, machine learning data, algorithms, and other design choices that shape AI systems may reflect and amplify existing cultural prejudices and inequalities. While historian of technology Melvin Kranzberg (1986) constructed the viewpoint
Virtual Reality Virtual reality is estimated to be a multi-billion market, that includes gaming, automotive, architecture and real estate VR walkthroughs, schools and learning labs. While 25–30% of men experience motion sickness from headsets, 75–80% of women are affected due to “postural sway” — essentially the “physical differences between the sexes, such as height and center of balance.” The most attractive market for VR is the $100+ billion gaming market, where despite the stereotypes of teen boys as the main audience, a strong percentage of gamers are women. Women represent
No day goes by without the announcement of some new and amazing technological advancement. Flexible robots, bionic humans, crime detecting streetlights, to name a few. But we’re still stuck in the paradigms of a culture created by, and based on, the old rules of industrialization that led to the occupational restructuring in the 1950s-60s. Four books I’ve read in the last few weeks — including ‘Throwing Rocks At The Google Bus’ and ‘The End of Average‘ — have made me question a few things about the current nature of ‘work’. Thankfully, our technology is
While I’m a big fan of cool new technology like Artificial Intelligence (AI), Blockchain and VR/AR, I have to confess that I’m starting to get tired of these technologies sucking all the air and taking the shine from a lot of other cool technology being developed across the world. We have AI in art, in finance, healthcare. While these technologies are providing value, the hype is getting a tad bit too much. Here are 6 other trends that I’m hoping to learn more about. System-Scale Tech Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin
by Steve D. Amara (@amarast) Diversity is less discussed on the East side of the Atlantic, mainly because European countries approach the topic very differently from each other. Nonetheless, major tech hubs have seen some brilliant startups founded people of color, tackling a variety of issues from urban logistics in European capitals to financial inclusion in Emerging Markets. Below are some that really caught our attention. African Markets African Markets is a provider of information and data dedicated to African stock markets. A very comprehensive platform, launched by 30-year-old Cameroonian
