News — black excellence

In life, there is a second chance for everyone who wants to do something meaningful and purposeful with their lives. Often, the environment we grow up in turns to shape and define who we are and what we become in the future. In other cases, the problem is systemic and attempts to break the barriers have often proven daunting or fruitless.

In America, Black people face system-wide challenges such as racism, inadequate housing, severe jail sentences, low access to credit facilities to start a business, police profiling, among others.

Despite these challenges, the Black community has seen some emerging entrepreneurs defying all odds to make it in a political-economic system that has been designed against them. One of such persons is Bun Bydaway, who was in juvenile detention for possessing a firearm when he was 16 years old and has now become a serial entrepreneur.

Bydaway grew up in Wilmington, Delaware, which has been nicknamed “murder town” owing to the widespread gun violence in the community. Owning a gun appears to be a tradition but it also made the community dangerous, according to Bydaway.

Wilmington has consistently ranked among the most violent small U.S. cities on the FBI list. According to one report, young people between ages 12 and 17 are more likely to be shot than in any other city in the U.S. These stats confirm the nature of gun violence in Wilmington. 

While in prison, Bydaway knew he had to chart a new course if he wants to make an impact in his community. The majority of males in his family were either in prison or dead. His father has been away for over six years as well as his uncles. 

His dream of becoming a business owner crystalized after his last time in prison in 2018, he says. “I can’t go back to jail so I had to put my hundred percent efforts into just what I wanted to do for long-term,” he tells Face2Face Africa. While on probation, Bydaway started with his real estate business and later vending machines. “I just started with them and then everything else just came after. I never looked back since,” he says.

He has added other businesses; he co-owns a female clothing brand and has a car rental company where he rents exotic cars. He is also an artiste manager with a music studio. Bydaway is hoping to scale up his business and employ more people in the summer. He is also in the process of getting into the tech space as he is currently working on an app.

What’s more, Bydaway has taken up the mantle of advocating for prison reforms. He is advocating for less jail time and more reform programs for Black teens. He also believes being assigned to therapists could yield a more desired outcome than being jailed.

Bydaway’s journey to becoming an entrepreneur has not been smooth sailing for him. He recalls how he was finding it difficult to reintegrate into his community after his jail time. “I think prison turned me into a man but I think it [kind of] made it worst for me to adapt to society. I lost a lot of time in prison for things I could have been corrected on…Maybe a program or something in society,” he says.

He also remembers making a “lot of mistakes” when he started his business. Nonetheless, he says, “I learned from my mistakes sooner than later but [the] mistakes were costly. I wasn’t really making huge profits, sometimes none at all.”

Reflecting on his journey and his past mistakes, Bydaway is convinced that nothing is too late in this world. He is also motivated by the saying that “no matter how much the odds are stack against you, with determination, you can win.”

“[It is] never too late to make a turnaround,” the amazing businessman says in a piece of advice to all Black youth. “It most likely not going to be easy as the cards [is] stacked against Blacks, he adds. “We must work extra hard to break the chain. Everybody should want to be on the streets and take care of their family if you not going to do it for your self do it for your family.”

Bydaway also believes the U.S. government can play a role in creating opportunities for Black communities. When asked about the role the U.S. government can play to support Black businesses and the Black community in general, the serial entrepreneur called for more education and skills training. “The funding should go where it can count and will make a difference,” he says.

Gaining admission to Oxford, the prestigious British university thought to be better than pretty much every American Ivy League school besides Harvard, is a major achievement at any age. However, the fact that Joshua Beckford attended the school at only 6 years old is absolutely mind-blowing.

Gaining admission to Oxford, the prestigious British university thought to be better than pretty much every American Ivy League school besides Harvard, is a major achievement at any age. However, the fact that Joshua Beckford attended the school at only 6 years old is absolutely mind-blowing.

Joshua Beckford has high functioning autism and has demonstrated superior intelligence and an ability to learn from the time he was only a baby. At 10 months old, his father noticed that he could identify numbers and letters on a keyboard and commit them to memory.

“I started telling [Joshua] what the letters on the keyboard were and I realized that he was remembering and could understand. So, if I told him to point to a letter, he could do it… Then we moved on to colors,” Knox recalled.

Not only could he read phonetically by the age of three, but he also taught himself fluent Japanese and knew how to touch type all before he was able to write. It’s no surprise, then, that Knox was keen to get his son into a program like Oxfords, which could challenge and stimulate Joshua’s young mind.

Joshua took certificate courses in both history and philosophy and passed with distinction. He hopes to become a doctor when he gets older and says he hopes to “change the world” with his work. This child prodigy is certainly well on his way to doing so—he’s even hosted his own TED talk already, so it’s fair to say we can expect great things from Joshua.

Zambia’s Zesco Limited says it intends to save about 12 megawatts of electricity through the installation of energy-saving bulbs.

The power utility, on Monday, through its spokesman, Henry Kapata, said the power utility has embarked on the replacement of incandescent bulbs with Light Emitting Diodes (LED) tubes and fluorescent tubes with LED tubes as part of energy-saving measures.

“These alternative energy bulbs are long-term that will help us meet the demand for electricity and the ever-increasing customer base,” he said in press release.

Kapata said power utility had since embarked on the distribution of the bulbs in some residential areas in Lusaka, the country’s capital, which is expected to be completed before the end of the year.

According to him, the power utility expects to install 147,456 LED bulbs with a lifespan of about 30,000 hours, suggesting savings of about 12 megawatts.

Power utility has procured 30,000 energy-saving bulbs and installed them in all its buildings.

Kapata added that power utility has also embarked on promoting the bulbs in industrial, commercial and public buildings to scale up energy efficiency.

Brazilian gymnast Angelo Assumpcao still wonders how far he could have gone if not for the decision he says derailed his career: speaking out against the racism he was subjected to by his white teammates.

Could he have made the Olympics? Won a medal? At 24 years old, he may never get the chance to find out.

"Some people think racism doesn't exist. I wonder where my career would be without it," he told AFP in an interview.

Assumpcao's career was as short as it was promising.

A muscular dynamo with an exuberant afro, he grew up on the outskirts of Sao Paulo, Brazil's economic capital, where he developed a love for gymnastics that soon landed him at the revered Pinheiros Sporting Club.

Located in the upscale neighborhood from which it takes its name, Pinheiros is a veritable institution in Brazilian sport.

Founded in 1899 -- just 10 years after Brazil became the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery -- it has trained some of the country's best athletes, including 12 Olympic medalists.

Assumpcao came of age in its elite training academy, a lone black boy learning backflips and dismounts surrounded by white gymnasts.

- 'New sensation' -

He got his big break in 2015, when he took the place of injured teammate Arthur Nory on the vault at the Gymnastics World Cup stage event in his hometown, Sao Paulo.

Assumpcao won gold, upsetting Brazil's leading gymnast at the time, veteran Diego Hypolito, who won bronze.

Globo Sports, part of Brazil's biggest media house, proclaimed Assumpcao "the new sensation" of Brazilian gymnastics.

Days later, though, his celebration was cut short.

Nory put a video on social media in which he and two other young white gymnasts cracked racist jokes with a visibly uncomfortable Assumpcao.

"When your cell phone's working, the screen is white. When it breaks, what color is it?" a snickering Nory asks in the video.

"Black!" comes the answer.

"The plastic bags at the supermarket are white. What color are garbage bags?"

The video went viral online, triggering outrage in Brazil, a country of 212 million people where 54 percent of the population is black or mixed race.

The Brazilian Gymnastics Federation suspended the three white gymnasts for a month. They later apologized.

But Assumpcao says it was not an isolated incident.

He was regularly mocked for his skin color, hair and Afro-Brazilian heritage, he says.

He pinpoints his decision to speak out against such behavior as the moment his career started to unravel.

He was not selected for the 2016 Olympics, held in Brazil's second city, Rio de Janeiro. Hypolito and Nory were, taking home medals -- silver and bronze, respectively, in the floor competition.

Assumpcao says he sank into depression because of the discrimination he faced.

At first, he kept his complaints behind closed doors, going to Pinheiros directors in private because he feared reprisals, he said.

When he felt the club failed to listen, he went public about the "structural racism" he says prevails there.

- Training at home -

In November 2019, Pinheiros rescinded his contract, saying he was under-performing.

Assumpcao says it was punishment for condemning racism in the gymnastics world.

"You pay a very heavy price when you're a victim of racism in Brazil, or anywhere in the world," he said.

"But the oppressors pay a much cheaper price. Look at Arthur Nory. He got to go on with his life."

Last year, Pinheiros carried out an internal review that confirmed incidents of "racial abuse" and "harassment" at the club, according to a report by Globo Sports.

However, in a statement to AFP, the club denied racism in the decision to cut ties with Assumpcao.

His bitter experiences rushed back recently when another Brazilian, Neymar, accused a defender of using racist insults against him during Paris Saint-Germain's 1-0 loss to Marseille Sunday.

"That just goes to show that you can be the best athlete in the world, rich and famous, but they still judge you by the color of your skin," said Assumpcao.

Today, the gymnast trains by himself at home, getting by with the help of donations from friends and family and hoping to get the chance to compete again.

Ethiopia’s upcoming general election will be free and fair, the country’s president, Sahle-Work Zewde, assured lawmakers in the country on Monday.

Zewde made the vow in a speech she gave to a joint session of both houses of parliament, which have gone past their five-year term under a state of emergency due to the outbreak.

Ethiopia had postponed the 6th general elections that were scheduled to take place on August 29, 2020 mainly due to COVID-19. The horn of Africa nation is now set to hold the polls before September 2021.

The president told the parliamentarians that some reforms had been done on the electoral commission to ensure its independence.

“We managed to restructure the country’s electoral board in a way it can function independently,” Sahle-Work said.

Last year in her opening speech to the joint session of the Houses of Peoples’ Representatives and Federation, President Zewde had also expressed the government strong commitments towards a fair, free and credible election.

Indicating the importance of accommodating more diverse views in the parliament, she said the government and pertinent bodies are working around the clock to realize this core value of democracy.

Meanwhile, the National Electoral Board of Ethiopia (NEBE) announced that it has prepared 90 percent of election materials required for the 6th round national general elections scheduled to take place in 2021.

In a media tour on October 3rd, the Board announced that more than 50 million voters are expected to participate in close to 51 thousand polling stations.

NEBE Board Chairperson, Birtukan Mideksa, told journalists that the necessary preparations are going well ahead as over 90 per cent of the materials required for the election are already at hand.

According to Birtukan, the Board has been working to hold credible and reliable elections using modern and standard materials, unlike the previous elections, and preparations are going smoothly in this regard.

NEBE Communications Advisor, Soliana Shemelis on her part said that all necessary preparations are going well as the Board has prepared ballot boxes, voters’ registration forms in five local languages and packaging materials to transport polling materials.

According to Soliana, a box containing 29 different items will be sent to each polling station. She added that a total of 644 small generators and more than 2,500 laptops and tablets would also be distributed to various constituencies.

In addition, Soliana said that 152, 700 people would be trained to conduct voters’ registrations while 254, 500 others that participate in managing the vote casting process receive training.

The board announced that its preparation is to make the election credible by using modern materials that meet international standards. NEBE on its social media page announced that it has completed all purchases except voters ID card.

Kandi Burruss was growing restless. She’d already scored a platinum album, won a Grammy, and starred on The Real Housewives of Atlanta. But no matter her accomplishments, in 2011, nobody wanted her to be the face of an ad campaign.

“There were only very few Black women who were being chosen to represent brands, and there were maybe three [women] constantly being used over and over again for all the major brands,” Burruss tells Marie Claire. “One day I just said to my team, ‘I don't even care. I'm tired of even asking how to be the face of somebody else's brand. I'm gonna build my own brand.’”

So Burruss started Bedroom Kandi, a line of sex toys that grew into a home-party plan company (also known as a direct sales company, like Avon). Her goal was to “help make sex a more comfortable conversation for Black women to have,” she says. “I was one of the very first well-known Black women who was very unapologetically open in speaking about sex and relationships to sell products.”

Burruss has to deal not only with the hardships of being a female entrepreneur in a male-dominated industry, but also with being a Black business owner in a white-led world. While statistics on the racial make-up of sex-toy company executives and customers are not currently available, Scott Watkins, the vice president of sales for the Doc Johnson company, confirms that most major sex-toy companies were founded by white people. Additionally, a 2012 study of home sex toy party attendees found that less than 4 percent of attendees were Black.

“There is a very strong tokenism in the industry,” says Tracy Felder, a brand ambassador for sex-toy company Children of the Revolution. “It just makes it feel like at times you have to work twice as hard.” She says while the company she works for is great, when she attends trade shows, white men assume she is a model—even though she wears a badge explaining her role. “As Black women, we’re fetishized,” she adds.

The racial biases that Felder and Burruss have felt has deep roots in the sex toy business. The modern industry was founded in the 1960s and 1970s by white men who packaged and sold their devices at "adult bookstores" to appeal to other white men, the predominant shoppers at the time. Historically, “flesh” dildos and vibrators were the color of Caucasian skin, while African-American sex toys were intentionally oversized and stark, crayon black. It wasn’t until Grenadian immigrant Gosnell Duncan came onto the scene in the 1970s and created the first silicone dildo, in a wide variety of Black and Brown skin tones, that things slowly began to change.

While women like Hart have been trying to change the sex toy industry for years, the recent resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement has more people-in-charge finally starting to take notice of the systemic racism within their own companies.

In June, industry publication Xbiz held a roundtable discussion on race, out of which participants created an action plan for pleasure products companies. The plan included such initiatives as hiring more Black people and people of color in management positions and adding more images of Black people to packaging. Other companies, like Unbound Babes and Dame Products, made sure to double down on their public statements in support of Black Lives Matter. Unbound Babes made Juneteenth an official company holiday and vowed to match donations to the Mutual Aid Fund for Sex Workers of Color, while Dame Products made donations to a number of organizations, including the Marsha P. Johnson Institute.

Yet one of the companies that released a similar statement, Pipedream Products, still has a male masturbation sleeve for sale on Amazon that uses racist language: The packaging reads “Flip a Sista Over” and “Jizzle in My Nizzle for Shizzle.” Hart called out Pipedream’s hypocrisy on social media, and after seeing her post, an executive for Pipedream reached out to her. In the conversation, Hart says she encouraged the exec to hire more Black employees and to change its packaging in consultation with Black consumers.

For Tamara P. Bell, founder of the Home Party Plan Association, an organization that helps home party companies select sex toys directly from the manufacturers, the strides forward are welcome, though a long time coming. She recalls seeing more products directed to the Black community at sex toy trade shows about a decade ago, but “they were doing it in a very derogatory way, [featuring outdated stereotypes], and so I had to call a couple of manufacturers out.” In April 2010, she formed a group of industry CEOs which has met every six months to talk about race “behind closed doors.” (They plan to resume the forums in the fall, or as soon as COVID-19 restrictions allow.)

While hiring more Black people, specifically in decision-making roles, will help create noticeable change in the industry, it’s become clear that simply being a Black female sex toy entrepreneur is helping pave the path forward and make room for others. For instance, Burruss says that almost 90 percent of her company’s consultants are Black and the majority of her customers are too. And one of her Black female contemporaries, Nenna Joiner, founder of Feelmore in Oakland, says she made sure to keep her sex-toy store open during Oakland’s BLM protests, providing goggles and band-aids for the protestors.

“Being open as a Black business is a form of activism,” Joiner says. “You’ve got to be out there protesting, but my protest is also a pleasure activism and making sure that my business, a Black business, stays open, stays available to the community.”

The World Business Angels Investment Forum recently announced African Development Bank as its newest Board Member, a position that will see the Bank represent Africa's early-stage equity markets, entrepreneurship and startup ecosystems, small and medium enterprises and high-growth businesses, angel investors, and private equity funds.

The forum promotes access to finance for businesses from start-up to scale-up, with the goal of generating more jobs and social justice worldwide.

"I am confident that by including the African Development Bank, World Business Angels Investment Forum will be able to provide a wide range of opportunities for start-ups, scaleups and high growth businesses in Africa--ones that will open the doors for economic development. By working together across borders, with a common vision, and with these smart dynamics in mind, we are well placed to bring about positive change in the Africa and global economy," said Baybars Altuntas, Executive Chairman of World Business Angels Investment Forum.

Abdu Mukhtar, the Bank's Director of Industrial and Trade Development, will occupy the Bank's Board seat.

'I am excited about joining the World Business Angels Investment Forum Board and am quite impressed by its vision. Support for innovation, entrepreneurship and SME development is very important to us, especially since these areas are directly linked to some of our development objectives, including job creation and women empowerment," said Director Mukhtar.

The African Development Bank is Africa's preeminent Development Finance institution with a capital base of $208 billion as at November 2019.

Kenya has introduced its first licensed investment fund for citizens living overseas, in a move that is expected to channel more of the diaspora’s money into development projects across the country.

Almost three million Kenyans living in mostly North America and Europe sent an estimated $3bn in remittances to Kenya last year, representing the largest source of foreign exchange for the country.

While remittances are usually sent to families, direct investment is also common though studies have shown that difficult procedures, lack of information and informal channels often lead to unsuccessful ventures.  

Kenya’s diaspora can now make investments through the African Diaspora Asset Managers (ADAM), an investment firm that has been granted the first licence of its kind for a diaspora fund by the Kenyan Capital Markets Authority.

The fund is expected to provide a safe and regulated investing body for Kenyans living overseas.

It also allows payments to be made using Kenya’s popular mobile money platform M-Pesa, enabling Kenyans to make investments from as little as five dollars.

Susan Muigai, ADAM’s head of global business development, said: “The use of technology will be the hallmark of the five diaspora funds, available to investors from all over the world as well as Kenyans. Using the ADAM mobile app, they are able to invest, check their investment balances and even sell their units in real time using VISA cards, bank accounts and MPESA.”

Abubakar Hassan, director of market operations at the Capital Markets Authority, added: “Kenyans living in the diaspora send billions home every year, but mostly for consumption and social support. A few have tried their hand in investments including real estate and farming, but without a way to establish what is happening on the ground, it has in numerous instances ended up with them losing their hard-earned money. We are delighted with this development, as all this will now be a thing of the past, as those investing through these licensed diaspora Funds will have the recourse and protection of the CMA as a regulator.”

The Omo bones were discovered between 1967 and 1974 at the Omo Kibish sites near the Omo River, in Omo National Park in south-western Ethiopia. First, anatomically modern humans are found in the Omo Valley region Africa and are dated at 195,000 years old.

The bones were recovered by a scientific team from the Kenya National Museums. The remains from Kamoya's Hominid Site (KHS) were called Omo I and those from Paul I. Abell's Hominid Site (PHS) Omo II. The bones include two partial skulls, four jaws, a legbone, around two hundred teeth, and several other parts.
Omo I and Omo II differ in morphological traits. The Omo II fossils indicate more archaic traits. In 2008, new bone remains were discovered from Awoke's Hominid Site (AHS). The AHS fossil's tibia and fibula were unearthed from Member I, the same layer from which the other Omo remains derive. About 30 years after the original finds, a detailed stratigraphic analysis of the area surrounding the fossils was done. The Member I layer was argon-dated to 195,000 years ago, and the (higher layer) Member III was dated to 105,000 years ago. Numerous recent lithic records verify the tool technology from Members I and III to the Middle Stone Age.

The lower layer, Member I, is considerably older than the 160,000-year-old Herto remains designated as Homo sapiens idaltu. The rainy conditions at that time—which are known from isotopic ages on the Kibish Formation corresponding to the ages of Mediterranean sapropels—suggest the increased flow of the Nile River and, therefore, increased flow of the Omo River. But the climates changed such that after 185,000 years ago conditions were so dry as to not allow speleothems to grow in the caverns in the Levantine land-bridge region, the vital inroad for migration to Eurasia.
Parts of the fossils are the earliest to have been classified by Leakey as Homo sapiens. In 2004, the geological layers around the fossils were dated, with the age of the "Kibish hominids" estimated at 195,000 years ago.

At the age of 16, Paris McKenzie has opened her own beauty supply shop called Paris Beauty Supplyz in Brooklyn, New York, making her the youngest person to ever do so. Already equipped with a lot of business experience, she has so far been running the business smoothly.

Despite her young age, she also earned the respect of her relatively older staff including 22-year old Giselle Ashby who said, “Paris, she’s like a little sister to me. I respect her. It’s fun.”

Aside from being an entrepreneur, Paris, who is a straight-A student, also plans to major in pre-med to achieve her dream of being an orthopedic pediatric surgeon. She is an incoming junior year high school student and is already taking college courses. She is a busy teenager but she doesn’t forget to enjoy from time to time.

“I don’t really have any more free time, but when I do, I try to go out with my friends,” said Paris. “Walking in here every morning, it makes me feel awesome.