Float, a start-up company with offices in Nigeria and San Francisco, is here to solve the problems that many African companies say they have with cash flow. According to TechCrunch, 85% of African SMBs have zero access to financing, which creates issues in the supply chain. Jesse Ghansah and his co-founder Barima Effah founded Float — originally named Swipe — 18 months ago with the hopes of closing the gaps in the funding. ” Cash flow [is] the number one problem that [businesses] face,” said co-founder and CEO Jesse Ghansah to TechCrunch. “Because you’re waiting for your revenue to come in, they sometimes fall behind in meeting certain expense payments like payroll, inventory, utilities. That’s what really causes a lot of these cash flow issues, and because of that, businesses can’t grow.” For Float, solving cash flow problems involves providing the users with credit when they need it, and working capital when possible. The founders say that this approach to extending credit and...

South Africa President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that the country has launched a new $95 million fund to help grow small and medium-sized businesses as part of its CEO Initiative. South Africa’s government, business leaders and labor leaders partner to solve some of the countries largest economic issues for the CEO Initiative. Now, its latest fund will serve as a big step in the right direction. According to Focus Economics , South Africa has had slow economic growth since its recession last year, and now the country is taking steps to reverse its impact. Back in May, Ramaphosa helped pass economic reforms that would ultimately put South Africa back on the path to growth. Last month, Ramaphosa signed the Competition Amendment Bill aimed at boosting small and medium sized business in addition to expanding innovation and investing in the economy. The SA SME Fund will allocate capital to three types of funds — venture capital, growth, and social impact funds. These funds will invest...

Data analyst Hervé Aniglo is on a mission to make coding fun through music. The University of Memphis alum’s passion for technology began in elementary school. Over the years, he gained experience as a software engineer and business analyst, but it was his love for using data to tell compelling stories that ultimately led him to his current role. “I just like working with data — gathering information and seeing what I can do with it. I love to tell stories,” he told AFROTECH™ in an interview . “So that, being a data analyst, it shows the world and it shows people like what stories you can tell from it in a sense. You can predict the future. You can see what’s going to happen with the current trend.”‘ Personal Call To Action In Tech Aniglo is also dedicating time within the industry to give back, guided by two personal calls to action. The first is to help people find roles and support their professional development. This mission, which began in college, includes reviewing resumes,...

How mid-career Black tech professionals can turn raises into real returns. You got the raise. Maybe a title bump. Maybe equity. On paper, it’s progress. But a few pay cycles in, your spending’s up, family asks are louder, and your calendar feels less like control and more like chaos. The raise solved old problems. And surfaced new ones. Equity Means Nothing If You Don’t Understand It Equity sounds like a win until you’re staring at a vesting schedule you’ve never seen before. Mid-career is where the gaps show up: in your calendar, in your confidence, and in your checks. For Black professionals in tech, visibility is high but support is low. The infrastructure isn’t broken. It was never built for you. What AfroTech Insider Members Have That You Don’t Most people treat a raise like a reward. Insiders treat it like a runway. AfroTech Insider gives mid-career professionals the structure that raises don’t. Here’s how it works. Coaching That Levels You Up Monthly 1:1 sessions with HR...

Microsoft is laying off approximately 9,000 employees, impacting less than 4% of its global workforce. On Wednesday, July 2, 2025, the second day of its 2026 fiscal year, the tech giant confirmed the move to CNBC via email, stating it will “continue to implement organizational changes necessary to best position the company and teams for success in a dynamic marketplace.” Microsoft — which employed 228,000 people worldwide as of June 2024 — has conducted multiple rounds of layoffs in recent years, including letting 10,000 employees go in 2023. In January 2025, the company reduced its headcount by less than 1% based on performance. AFROTECH™ also reported that in May it laid off around 6,000 employees — roughly 3% of its global workforce. And the company cut at least 300 more in June. A source familiar with the matter told CNBC that, like with the May layoffs, Microsoft is aiming to streamline its organizational structure by reducing the layers of management between individual...

Kyrie Irving, Dallas Mavericks point guard, has donated to support the construction of a center that will educate the youth. There is an active GoFundMe that was launched to commemorate the legacy of Tamir Rice, A 12-year-old Black boy who was shot and killed by Timothy Loehmann, a white police officer, in 2014 at the Cudell Park Recreation Center in Cleveland. The child had been playing with a “toy black airsoft pistol with a removable magazine” at the time, a news release reports. A Center In His Legacy Samira Rice, Tamir’s mother, has made the GoFundMe to raise funds in support of a new center in his honor to empower the youth through arts and education, notes Complex. She’s asking for $23 donations to commemorate what would have been Tamir’s 23rd birthday. The project has a $110,000 target and has already raised $92,717 (at the time of this writing). With over 1,000 people contributing, Irving made a significant donation towards the project, committing $50,000. “I miss my son so...

If the bevy of look-alike summer event flyers flooding our timelines are any indication, we are fully in the AI era, and we won’t be turning back. While it seems like we’re just scratching the surface of end user applications of GenAI, companies are looking to adapt their businesses to incorporate GenAI. However, many are not quite sure how to do so in a way that is sustainable, both from a business perspective and in terms of environmental impact. Enter CoreWeave, where they are actively customizing AI innovation for a variety of clients to develop cloud infrastructure intentionally created with AI in mind. CoreWeave’s approach to creating a modern infrastructure stands out from that of other companies in this space in that they directly address the fact that so much compute capacity (up to 65%) is lost due to system inefficiencies once embedded in GPUs. With that and other factors in mind, the company built out data centers around GPU clusters powered by NVIDIA along with powerful...

Authenticity and research fuel successful brand partnerships — and Aaron Walton recognized this long before it became the norm. At AFROTECH™ 2024 , Walton, CEO and founder of award-winning ad agency Walton Isaacson, joined Shardé Marchewski, Wayfair ‘s Head of Supplier Diversity , for a conversation on how aligning values and culture with the right celebrity can elevate storytelling and impact consumers. The session offered creatives a behind-the-scenes look at major brand collaborations and practical strategies for securing and executing high-impact campaigns. Walton’s brand story began after graduating from Babson College in 1983. With a passion for advertising , he joined the Pepsi-Cola Company as a research analyst, learning how to tell stories with data before being promoted into brand marketing , marking the start of a game-changing career. “The truth is everything that we do now, whether it is an event or some type of communication, starts with looking at what the business...