News — black inventors

The Atlanta Hawks and the Ressler Gertz Family Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Hawks Principal Owners Tony Ressler and Jami Gertz, are committing $40 million into Black-owned businesses to create sustainable wealth and economic opportunity in the Black community.

The investment plan includes a long-term, comprehensive plan to provide financial, marketing and educational resources to Black-owned businesses and entrepreneurs throughout the city of Atlanta.

The Ressler Gertz Family Foundation has committed to giving $5 million to the Herman J. Russell Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (RCIE), the largest non-profit centre for Black entrepreneurs in the nation, to expand its reach and provide financial support to local Black-owned businesses through increased access, opportunity and exposure as well as expanding future RCIE programming.

According to the foundation, the gift will also increase RCIE’s ability to provide Black entrepreneurs access to corporate partners and capital as well as utilization of all Hawks marketing channels. 

The Hawks, on the other hand, announced a plan to expand their diversity and inclusion program with a $25 million commitment over the next decade. The NBA Players Association and the Hawks Foundation have also pledged to commit $10 million to provide economic opportunities within Atlanta’s Black community.

“Systemic barriers have prevented the Black community from pursuing the educational, employment, and business opportunities necessary to fully contribute to and benefit from our growing local economy,” said Ressler in a written statement.

“Jami and I take our responsibility as owners of a professional sport franchise in the great city of Atlanta very seriously—and with that responsibility is a commitment to devote resources to organizations that are making tangible, impactful change. In my career, I have built and supported many businesses, and I believe that the access to mentors and capital, opportunity to market products and services, and exposure to customers that RCIE provides is invaluable to the growth of the Black business community in Atlanta. We look forward to adding our resources, connections, and platform to this brilliant organization and its mission,” he added.

“Forging pathways to equitable opportunities that help create and accelerate Black-owned businesses across our nation matters more than ever before. That’s why the partnership between the Ressler Gertz Family Foundation and Russell Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship is momentous,” said H. Jerome Russell, president of H. J. Russell & Co. and chairman of RCIE.

This is not the first time the Ressler-Gertz Family Foundation has donated to support Black businesses. The foundation recently teamed up with Atlanta Hawks center Dewayne Dedmon to invest $65,000 in small Black-owned businesses that have been impacted by the coronavirus pandemic.

South Sudanese oil marketing giant Trinity Energy Ltd is set to inject $10 million worth of new investments in its Kenyan operations and also plans to build a $500 million crude oil refinery in South Sudan to serve the region with refined petroleum products.

The firm, which controls close to 40 per cent of the South Sudanese oil market, is planning a 40,000 barrels per day (bpd) modular refinery at Paloch in the oil-rich Upper Nile State, with the potential of expanding capacity to 200,000bpd, as well as petroleum storage facilities at Nesitu, in the south of the country.

South Sudan has the third-largest oil reserves on the continent after Libya and Nigeria, estimated at 3.5 billion barrels, with much of it yet to explored.

The refinery, to be built by American firm Chemex, is expected to be operational in two to three years, with plans to start distribution of refined petroleum products to Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of Congo by road, owing to the absence of railway and pipeline connectivity between these countries.

The EastAfrican has learnt that the feasibility study and the designs for the proposed refinery have already been concluded with Afreximbank together with big regional banks operating in Juba expected to provide financing.

"We are already making steady progress towards our refinery project. We have already identified and secured land for the refinery in Paloch. We have engaged Chemex of the United States as the project manager for this project. Separately we are close to tying up project preparatory work financing from Afreximbank and this will aid in the engineering and design work for the facility," the firm's chief executive Robert Mdeza told The EastAfrican in an interview.

"Various discussions are ongoing with financiers for the various facets of our business. We have opted for segmented approach so that we can kick off with the low-hanging opportunities such as our working capital requirements as we work our way towards financing for the larger projects like the refinery," he added.

Competition

Trinity's refinery will upstage Uganda, where the commencement of the construction of the $4 billion refinery at Kabaale in Hoima district has been pushed to 2025 following the delay in the conclusion of the Final Investment Decision on the basin-wide upstream oil development project.

Initially, the FID was expected to be reached in September and the projected completed in three years.

The Kabaale refinery is expected to process an estimated 60,000 barrels of oil per day with an initial output of 30,000 barrels per day at the time of the commissioning of the project.

Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi had been allocated a combined 40 per cent shareholding in the refinery, translating into an eight per cent stake for each, with 60 per cent of the shares reserved for private investors. However, only Tanzania took up its full share of eight per cent while Kenya took up 2.5 per cent.

Rwanda and Burundi had not expressed interest in the facility by the expiry of the extended period set aside to do so in 2016. As a result, Uganda was compelled to take up an additional 11.5 per cent shareholding in the Hoima-based refinery, bringing its total shareholding to 19.5 per cent, with French oil giant Total SA taking up a 10 per cent stake.

Trinity Energy is not new to the region, and was incorporated in 2013 with majority ownership by Trinity Holdings which is 90 per cent owned by a local South Sudanese businessman Akol Emmanuel Ayii.

Currently, the firm supplies substantial volumes of refined products to South Sudan, effectively stabilising domestic supply and demand for refined oil products.

"We are now embarking on our next phase of growth with major projects lined up in South Sudan including a 40,000bpd refinery as well as growing our footprint outside of South Sudan. This will be instrumental in our plans to enhance energy stability particularly for South Sudan and our landlocked neighbours," said Mr Mdeza.

The country is seeking to increase crude oil production to pre-conflict levels of 350,000bpd, which is expected to significantly contribute to economic growth and sustainability.

Last year, Africa accounted for more than 7.9 million bpd in oil production, an output level that has significantly dropped from nearly 10 million bpd in the period between 2005 and 2010 largely due to lower global oil prices.

The construction of the refinery in Paloch is expected to strengthen the firm's bid of expanding its operations across the East and Central African region through a combination of acquisitions and greenfield investments as part of its five-year (2020-2024) growth and expansion plan.

It is estimated that there are approximately 30 million people around the world who are speech impaired and therefore rely on the use of sign language to be able to communicate with others. Not everyone understands sign language, so for someone who is speech impaired it will obviously be difficult for them to communicate what they want to say.

In steps Roy Allela, a 25-year old man from Kenya who has created an invention that’ll solve this problem: Smart Gloves. These gloves are able to convert sign language into audio speech, meaning that a person who does not know sign language would be able to communicate much more effectively with those with speaking difficulties. 

Allela says that he was inspired to create these gloves by his 6-year old deaf niece, who uses the gloves to communicate with him. Each of these gloves contains sensors in the fingertips which detect the movement being made once connected to the mobile application created also by Allela to work in tandem with it. Once connected and upon a movement being made, the corresponding letter or word comes out as audio speech.

One of the most important features about this product according to Allela is the speed of the audio. He says: “People speak at different speeds and it’s the same with people who sign – others are really fast, others are slow, so we integrated that into the mobile application so that it’s comfortable for anyone to use it.”

Inventors like Roy Allela are the people that the black community needs to push, push and push some more. These are the kind of inventions that get swept up by someone else claiming it was theirs and getting all the rewards from it as well as being recognised as the creator. Take Thomas Edison for example, the ‘creator’ of the light bulb. The innovation used to create longer, more efficient light bulbs with the carbon filament that we use today was created by an African-American man, Lewis Latimer. He’s often the one who gets overshadowed and forgotten about but without him, there would be no light bulb. 

With this being said, it is important that we as a community give Roy Allela the recognition and exposure his invention deserves. It has incredible potential and is something that a lot of people, maybe even 30 million people, will be able to benefit from. Click here to see a video of the gloves in action. 

Written by Lore Adekeye (Twitter: @loreadekeye, Instagram: @shemz_nl) 

Source(s): wearable-technologies.com