Guetto Institute, a Rio de Janeiro-based non-profit organization is enabling access to cutting-edge technology and a brighter future for Black Brazilians while tackling systemic racism. It’s focused on equipping its target audiences with skills for the new economy and fostering black entrepreneurship. How did the organization begin? It started from a Facebook group created in 2016 by sociologist Vítor Del Rey. At the time, Del Rey was studying at the prestigious business school Fundação Getúlio Vargas with a scholarship provided by Educafro, an organization focused on education inclusion for black
Since its launch in 2009, WhatsApp has intensified instant messaging and made communicating easier for families, friends, and companies. But in most recent years, particularly during the pandemic, it’s being used for much more. Teachers in Africa took advantage of the platform during the lockdowns when schools were shut. Data from a study conducted by Sabinet analyzed a WhatsApp group of 24 economics teachers and three lead teachers (heads of departments) from 15 schools in Kwazulu-Natal province, South Africa and a focus group interview was thematically analyzed to present findings.
Back in April 2021, João Gualberto, the district mayor of Mata de São João, held an in-person auction letting Brazilian technology companies bid for a contract to supply facial recognition technology for the public school system. The $162,000 tender was won by PontoiD, and in July that year, two public schools — João Pereira Vasconcelos and Celia Goulart de Freitas — began secretly rolling out the facial recognition system, without informing parents or students in advance, according to research by Rest Of World. Students were registered on the system, which
As Latin America pushes to build a robust tech sector, the language barrier will remain a major obstacle, especially for high-quality positions, according to some in the industry. This is largely because the English language remains the predominant foundation for coding and an in-demand skill required by tech companies in Mexico and abroad. According to a recent study by the Spain-based IT services firm Everis, 55% of companies in Latin America said that finding the right employee was difficult, while experts estimate that the region will see 10 million new IT job openings by
Brazilian companies have started to explicitly seek out Black and Indigenous workers to diversify their ranks, a step to reverse the deep inequality that has racked the country since the area was first settled centuries ago. The country is LinkedIn’s third-largest market, after the United States and India, with 55 million users, or one in every four people in Brazil. So naturally, employers would advertise jobs there. But in February, a think tank in São Paulo was looking for a financial coordinator that would be willing to take on the
In 2020 none of the $4.4 billion in venture funding raised in the region went to female founder-led startups. The lack of support in the early stages of entrepreneurship, poor access to capital, and the lack of women investors in venture capital funds are among the main reasons. Of the more than 800 companies recently surveyed by Endeavor and Mastercard for a whitepaper on bridging the gender gap within tech companies in Latin America, only 23% had at least one woman on their founding team, and only 9% had one or more all-female founders. Racial and
More than half the country’s workforce identifies as Black or mixed race in Brazil, yet less than 30% of these workers occupy managerial roles. Beyond the scarcity of Black professionals in IT departments in Brazil, a study by diversity initiative Preta Lab in partnership with consulting firm ThoughtWorks in 2020 found that 50.4% of teams do not have “non-heterosexual” staff. The inclusion of indigenous people and people with disabilities is also nearly absent in Brazil: 85.4% of the participants reported no disabled people in their team, and in 95.9%, there were no
According to sources who spoke to the ‘Rest of World‘ and compiled salary data, demand for tech talent is skyrocketing, but supply remains relatively scarce, fuelling fierce competition between startups and established tech companies. The publication’s report comes after research we published several weeks ago showed that over the past five years, tech and science jobs in the United States have outnumbered qualified workers by roughly 3 million. And according to the recent study we quoted – the next decade could see a global shortage of more than 85 million
Since its launch, AfroSaúde has helped 2,000 patients to find and book consultations with nearly 1,000 black professionals in Brazil, including medical practitioners, dentists, and therapists. Payment for the consultations is made through the AfroSaúde platform, which takes a commission. Igor Leo Rocha, a journalist, who suffers from folliculitis, a bacterial condition whereby hair grows back into the skin when it is cut, causing painful inflammation, launched the platform in 2019 with his partner Arthur Lima. Their reasons? Rocha told the FT that many doctors he saw prescribed “strong medication
A migrant rights group has condemned a US tech startup’s video pitch that shows a stun gun-armed drone attacking a migrant crossing the US-Mexico border. At the same time, Twitter users called the scenario depicted “atrocious”. CEO Blake Resnick recently appeared on Fox Business News to celebrate a venture capital coup: $25 million from Silicon Valley A-listers like Sam Altman and ex-LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner’s Next Play Venture. He told Fox Business’s Stuart Varney that Brinc’s quadcopter drones are helping police defuse dangerous hostage situations on a near-daily basis. The
