Black Genius, the first podcast curating the voices of the world’s future Black leaders, will return for its second season on Friday, February 5 at Noon EST with host Lolade Siyonbola interviewing Nigerian entrepreneur, Iyinoluwa Aboyeji. In partnership with the Harambe Entrepreneur Alliance, Black Genius will be highlighting 10 Harambeans who are building Africa’s future through visionary, market-creating, global enterprises.
Black Genius was created in 2020 to highlight the visionaries, brands and worldmakers mobilizing the global Black Diaspora towards a Liberated future through technology, the arts, the sciences and political organizing. The return for Black History Month aligns with NOIR Labs’ drive to amplify African voices, histories and futures during a period often focused primarily on America’s Civil Rights era and Black firsts. Understanding Africa’s complexities is critical to understanding Black history and futurity.
Black Genius is partnering with the Harambe Entrepreneur Alliance (HEA) for this ten-part series due to their pledge “to work together as one” to unlock the potential of Africa.
Who Are the Harambeans?
HEA is an alliance of determined entrepreneurs–visionaries who are transforming Africa’s challenges into opportunities, creating positive and scalable change, and enabling Africa to reach her boundless potential. The highly selective Alliance receives thousands of applications each year from leading entrepreneurs at the world’s top schools, from which only 30 applicants are selected. To be inducted as a Harambean, selected applicants must complete a rigorous colloquium on entrepreneurship and sign a pledge to commit to Africa’s development above all else.
The creator of the Black Genius podcast, NOIR Labs Founder Lolade Siyonbola, states about Harambeans: “I really used to doubt whether we would see a Liberated Africa in our lifetimes. But when I became a Harambean, and met these incredible humans, I knew for certain we would see Africa Liberated by this generation.”
“When the pandemic is over, if nothing else remains, there will be cockroaches and Harambeans joyfully rebuilding the world,” Harambeans founder, Okendo Lewis-Gayle has been known to say. He was the 6th Black Genius, interviewed last June by Siyonbola. You can listen to his interview here.
From Top Left: Nelly Wandji of Moonlook. Seni Sulyman, formerly of Andela. Haweya Mohamed of AfroBytes.
Selectees
The Harambeans selected for this series were found to demonstrate compassion, intellectual acuity, and profound vision in their enterprise models, thought leadership and personal journeys. We believe they are models for all Black leaders to emulate across the globe.
The first Black Genius to be featured in the Harambe series, Iyinoluwa Aboyeji, made history when the startup he co-founded, Andela, received a $24 Million investment from Mark Zuckerberg & Priscilla Chan’s CZI fund for African Engineers. Zuckerberg’s surprise visit to Lagos in 2016 sent shockwaves across the African tech community, and awakened those unaware of the exploding African tech economy. The Andela-CZI partnership spurned a new era in African entrepreneurship catalyzing billions of dollars in investment interest in African startups, with investments surpassing $1 billion in both 2019 and 2020.
Aboyeji has since gone on to found two more startups–Flutterwave and Future Africa–and invested in many impact-focused enterprises. Future Africa returned $3.7M to investors at the end of 2020, experiencing explosive growth across their portfolio in the midst of the pandemic. Aboyeji regularly writes and speaks on the urgency of inclusive African development, and the need for African elites to do more for the plight of the common man.
Other Harambeans to be featured in the series include Nelly Wandji, Seni Sulyman and Haweya Mohamed, founder of AfroBytes. Previous Black Genius guests include Alex Tsado of Alliance for Africa’s Intelligence, Tokini Peterside of ART X Lagos and Kevin Beckford an Obama staffer and co-founder of the Hustler’s Guild. Future Black Genius 10×10 series will focus on the arts, technology and health.
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