Cybersecurity Companies 2022 Archives

Capitol Technology University: Empowering Students to Build Great Careers

In 1927, Navy veteran Eugene H. Rietzke founded Capitol Technology Universit y in Washington, D.C., as the Capitol Radio Engineering Institute. Initially, the institute served to educate radio and electronics technicians, and later with growing popularity, it started offering other areas of study related to engineering and technology. As the school evolved, it underwent several name and location changes before moving to Laurel, MD. Campus in 1980 and settling on the current name Capitol Technology University in 2014. Thanks to its strong leadership, Capitol Tech has grown into an MHEC-accredited, bustling academic community offering graduate and undergraduate degrees.

Led by its President, Dr. Bradford L. Sims, Capitol Technology University is a private, independent university offering 26 Bachelor’s, 21 Master’s, and 32 Doctoral degree options in a variety of STEM-based subject areas. Every program at the university focuses on helping students develop practical and modern skills that will make them valuable assets for their employers. Its most popular study program is its acclaimed Cyber and Information Security major, which has received several honors, including the 2020 S.C. Media Award for Best Cybersecurity Higher Education Program. It also has expertly designed Construction Management & Critical Infrastructure Programs, which help students prepare for lucrative careers in the industry. The career-focused university provides two unique promises for eligible students–the Chargers Assistance Program (CAP), which promises to assist students with paying off loans if their post-graduation income is under $50,000, and the Capitol Commitment, which offers to fund up to 36 additional academic credits for students who do not find employment within 90 days of graduation.

A Technology-Obsessed Leader

Dr. Bradford L. Sims joined Capitol Technology University in 2017 as its eighth president. An educator, administrator, and construction project manager, Dr. Sims has a massive experience in academia and in numerous career industries.

Dr. Sims was introduced to computer programming at a very young age when he received a Commodore 64 as a birthday gift. Soon after completing his Bachelor’s degree in Building Construction Management from Purdue University, he spent significant time in project management for industrial construction companies. His technical knowledge provided him with the opportunity to not only oversee projects but to have involvement in managing the computer systems at each company he served. Later, he returned to the University of Florida to pursue his Master of Science in Building Construction and a Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction from Purdue. These studies eventually led Dr. Sims to his first position in the higher education industry as an assistant professor at the University of Florida. Later, he worked in various positions in the higher education industry before joining Capitol.

Setting High Standards

Capitol Technology University sets itself apart by helping students find their careers immediately after graduation. The university has partnerships with major government agencies like the NSA, allowing its students to build career connections quickly. It hires faculty members who not only have brilliant minds and a passion for teaching, but have worked in the industry and can show students what their future employers could look for. Additionally, Capitol’s programs are developed on the base of the current STEM career industry, and each subject area was designed to meet the specific demands of the job market.

Tackling the Pandemic

Although Covid-19 made it very difficult for many colleges and universities to operate in person, leading to a decline in enrollment, Capitol was already well-positioned to tackle the pandemic due to its existing robust online learning infrastructure.

“While we missed the lively on-campus presence of our undergraduate students during 2020, we successfully continued operations virtually and maintained the same level of quality and excellence that our community expects.”- Dr. Sims said.

Helping Students Build Great Careers

Since its foundation in 1927, Capitol’s primary mission has been to provide its students with great careers. What has changed is the university’s commitment to offering its education at advanced degree levels and the delivery methods of several of its degrees. During the late 1990s, Capitol Tech was one of the leaders in converting its Master’s degrees to online delivery, which helped it to reach a much wider audience of full-time working students. Later it added an online doctoral degree to serve working students who wanted to continue their education. Initially, the online experience was a synchronous 16-week semester. However, to meet the current student needs, synchronous delivery has migrated to asynchronous delivery with the addition of 8-week courses.

Preparing for the Future

As a career-focused university, Capitol will continue to look at the future needs of the industries it serves and add new degree programs and certifications to fill that market demand. Capitol Tech works closely and has many partnerships with associations, companies, government agencies, and government subcontractors and uses many full-time industry employees to instruct in classes both on campus and online, ensuring that the university stays active in current and future industry needs across the United States and internationally.

Cyan Security Group: Keeping the Digital World Safe

Meet Frank von Seth, the CEO of cyan AG , a Europe-based, internationally active provider of seamless cybersecurity solutions (cyan Security) and lightweight BSS/OSS platform services (i-new). Born and raised in Hamburg, Germany, Frank started his professional career as an Insurance and Risk Consultant with several companies on three continents and five different countries. Before joining cyan, Frank served Aon in Switzerland for over ten years. He started his current position as the CEO of cyan AG and is now leading the company into its future while working on a safer tomorrow for everyone by safeguarding users on their daily digital and connected journey.

cyan Security started its journey as a B2B provider of network security solutions like secure web gateways. Later in the 2010s, the company underwent a business model change as it realized that to protect a large number of users, a B2B2C model, leveraging the far reach of the telcos was necessary. So, the organization expanded its threat intelligence platform, built products specifically for this sector, and quickly signed its first contract with T-Mobile in Austria. Later, in 2018, the company went public in Frankfurt and inked a major contract with Orange Group, a leading telco. Soon many customers followed suit, and cyan Security partnered with T-Mobile in Poland and dtac in Thailand. Last year, with Frank taking the helm at the company, cyan started to focus more on driving customer success. It does this by partnering with its direct customers to provide security and relevant features to the end customer and guides these customers to fully leverage the potential of its solutions in the market.

Safeguarding Lives of Millions

In its cybersecurity segment, cyan Security is currently offering four primary solutions named OnNet Security, OnDevice Security, Child Protection, and CleanPipe DNS. The organization brings all of its products under a B2B2C white label approach to the market, providing clients the opportunity to enhance their product portfolio, protect their subscriber base, and boost their brand while generating additional revenues with its value-added products.

Frank states, “All our solutions have in common that they are built utilizing the DNS, an integral part of the modern internet, and on our threat intelligence platform which screens the internet 24/4 leveraging 200 virtual datacenters worldwide. This results in over 1 trillion data requests processed every month.”

cyan Security uses AI and ML in its 25 proven analysis methods, thereby minimizing the time that users are vulnerable. Its database of more than 300 million entries gets updated continuously, and because cyan Security doesn’t need to push updates to millions of end users, those updates become available almost instantly on the network independent of the device a customer is using – a genuinely unified experience.

Frank believes, from the clients’ perspective, cyan Security’s network-based approach has even more advantages. He says, “The customer does not need to install or update anything – the safety is provided directly by their telecom company. This is a huge advantage as many customers struggle to select and install an appropriate cybersecurity solution. Our solution, hence, has a very efficient and smooth customer journey compared to other solutions where you need to find an app, download, install, pay with a credit card, receive and enter a license key, configure the app on every device, and so on.”

The Catalyst

The pandemic acted as a catalyst for the increased focus on cybersecurity. With the sudden shift to a work-from-home model, companies and individuals realized that vulnerabilities could drastically affect professional and personal lives. Although available, the cybersecurity infrastructure was already on limits before the sudden shift to daily digital life, leaving many doors open to malicious actors. The fact that security needs to be the number one priority in our digital world has become more apparent during the pandemic. There are numerous instances of people operating and managing everything, starting from professional to personal matters in their life, without having the necessary protection in place.

Picture of the Future

For leaders in the connected world, cybersecurity has become a strategic priority. cyan Security provides a cybersecurity platform that is capable to cater to the billions of unprotected internet users worldwide. The solutions built upon this platform are highly scalable and delivered by a team of professionals who carefully analyze the needs of individual markets and customers to best facilitate their needs.

Along with high technological standards, cyan Security’s research and development center helps the firm to constantly be aware of the latest trends. A significant advantage for cyan Security’s partners is that they get a B2B2C white label solution. With this innovative approach, cyan enabled its clients to support and differentiate their brand with highly relevant value-added services by using one of its products under their name.

As an organization, cyan Security aspires to become a guiding star in the world of cybersecurity. Frank says, “We want to be the “seatbelt” of the digital journey of all users and devices. Of course, this is an ambitious goal, but as previously stated, I took on a challenge and am fully committed to this challenge. How do we plan to achieve this? One aspect for example is that we work on expanding our global footprint in the B2B2C business; we already work with multiple partners over different continents and protect hundreds of thousands of end users.”

Also, expanding in untapped markets will be one of the next steps for the organization. Furthermore, it also wants to get closer to end users, having a direct connection. In order to do that, cyan Security is planning to expand its cybersafety offerings into the B2C segment and directly provide its service to individuals.

CloudWize: Helping Companies Get Maximum Cloud Security and Compliance

Cybersecurity has always been a never-ending race against time, but the changes are gaining momentum. Companies are slowly investing in various technologies that can help them run businesses. Thanks to technological advancements, companies are now layering more systems into their existing IT network to support their customer experience, and generate value, and remote work. However, adding these new layers often comes with the cost of creating new vulnerabilities.

On the other hand, cybercriminals use various integrated tools and capabilities with machine learning and artificial intelligence to exploit vulnerabilities. Therefore, the threat is growing fast, and no organization is immune. Everyone, from small and medium enterprises to various municipalities, governments, and large multinational companies, faces such risks.

With the mission of providing an easy-to-use tool for complex environments and 24/7 maximum
cloud security and compliance to every company, Chen Goldberg, Co-founded CloudWize, a no-code platform for maximum cloud security and compliance from architecture design to runtime.

Chen is an experienced cloud engineer with knowledge and hands-on experience in various technologies like Cloud Computing, Cloud Architecture, Consulting/Software Development, DevOps tools, and Risk Management. During the last 15 years, he has worked in the development and operations, building infrastructure and implementing best practices in different leadership roles.

Since CloudWize’s foundation, Chen and his team have been building and improving the best tools for cloud security and compliance with the vision to include all the cloud pillars.

Helping Companies to Secure their Cloud

As a no-code platform for maximum cloud security and compliance from architecture design to runtime, CloudWize helps organizations secure their cloud and uphold regulations. During the period of the last 10 months, as much as 79% of companies have suffered from cloud data breaches, exposing them to hefty fines from regulators, getting a bad reputation, and ultimately losing customers.

Thanks to CloudWize, companies can now get more than 800 rules that are continuously running on their cloud services. “But to really better cloud security and compliance, we have investigation abilities like no other. The CISO, DevSecOps, or anyone else can easily detect and fix cloud issues, no code required.“- says Chen.

CloudWize has various alerts and insights showing security, compliance, operations, costs, and performance coverage reports. It also provides much-needed recommendations to users on how to improve their coverage based on the severity and auto-remediation with just a click of a button. Additionally, CloudWize’s drag and drop interface makes it easy to customize security, compliance, cost, operations, and performance rules. Anyone who wants peace of mind should choose CloudWize because it’s a personal virtual CISO that works automatically 24//7.

Chen believes one of the biggest challenges for the companies lies in their cloud’s access control, mainly because various stakeholders need to access the cloud. However, with CloudWize, companies can now see who did what, where in the cloud, and when. As a holistic platform to cloud security and compliance, CloudWize is often referred to as a cloud security center of excellence. It also provides users extensive context in minutes and helps SMBs, enterprises, and even MSP and MSSP to reduce operating costs by up to 90%.

The Differentiating Factor

Chen explains that CloudWize’s competitors offer an out-of-the-box solution, while his company has not only made rules, but it also has no-code customization. Also, with the platform’s graph engine, users can investigate events, metrics, data transfer, configurations, network relations, and cost business impact in minutes.CloudWize combines the risks with actual pentest to enable prioritization of the company’s risks, which gives real context to the company and reduces the noise. Also, as a client-focused company, CloudWize’s dedicated support team helps right from onboarding and anything else that its users need.

The Pandemic’s Effect

As we all witnessed, the pandemic has accelerated the move to the cloud as people had to work from home. So, along with big tech companies, small and medium businesses also moved online, and with that move came many security breaches and regulatory compliances. So, CloudWize is working with companies of all shapes and sizes to make everyone secure and compliant.

“We want everyone who uses the cloud to have maximum cloud security and compliance, understand what’s going on, and see the connection and business impact. After all, there are reasons behind the configurations and how the architecture is built. If someone is unaware of those reasons, he can do something that will impact other stakeholders and can also impact the entire company.“- asserts Chen.

Vikram Venkatasubramanian: Helping Consumers with Simple, Comprehensive, and Affordable Online Privacy and Security Solutions

The average US household today has around 24 connected devices. An internet-connected home can make over 50,000 internet requests daily and the average phone app collects 24 pieces of information about its user. A connected home today has enough computing power, storage capacity, and networking power to rival a small enterprise from two decades ago. These data points represent a large and growing cyberattack surface that can be exploited by both hackers and marketing companies. This problem space led Vikram Venkatasubramanian to further investigate the issues around online privacy and security in home networks – an investigation that led to many shocking findings pertaining to our online privacy and security.

Vikram says, “The average home could see up to 12,000 cyberattack attempts per day! On any given day, on average, 10% of the internet traffic is related to gathering data about us. We are all literally one click or less away from a cyberattack, and in many cases, we have been attacked, and we just don’t know it.”

Vikram strongly feels that online privacy and security is a fundamental right. Passionate about solving the issue of privacy and security, in March 2020, Vikram founded Nandi Security, an online privacy and security company for the entire connected home.

The Cybersecurity Expert

Born and raised in Chennai, India, Vikram Venkatasubramanian immigrated to the United States during the mid-90s to pursue his second Master’s degree. Today, Vikram is a technology industry veteran with over two decades of experience across healthcare IT, telecom/CRM, and cybersecurity. Vikram considers the dozen or so years of experience in cybersecurity to be the most personally and intellectually rewarding time of his career.

Vikram’s academic qualifications include a Master’s degree in Mathematics from the Indian Institute of Technology – Madras, a Master’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Missouri – Columbia, and a Master’s degree in Business Administration from Cornell University. However, Vikram feels education is not only the primary driver for him; the profound learnings he accumulated over the years interacting with the some of the most well-known cyber security experts on the planet helped shape his passion for personal privacy and security space.

Cyber Security Solution for Connected Homes

Vikram says, “We cannot have a conversation about cybersecurity in the connected home without addressing privacy. We also cannot speak of comprehensive security and privacy in the connected home with device-by-device-based solutions.”

Nandi Security’s Kavalan is an online privacy and security product aimed at making the task of protecting connected homes easy for the average consumer. It protects all the devices in the connected home from cyber threats, including malware, botnets, phishing sites, etc., while protecting the privacy of all individuals in the connected home by blocking ad networks, data brokers, trackers, pixels and other privacy violating entities. With Kavalan, there’s no software to install or devices to buy, and the best part is the product can be set up within 5 minutes or less for uninterrupted protection against cyber threats. The product’s ease of deployment, coupled with its comprehensive protection capabilities, is unparalleled in the entire industry.

Helping with Comprehensive Privacy and Security Services

In 2020, IDC published a connected home security research that identified seven different categories of products that a consumer would need to buy in order to enjoy comprehensive privacy and security. Nandi Security saw an immediate need to build a better solution for the average consumer, as there was no other way for a person with no cyber security expertise to have the awareness and technical expertise to find and use such solutions. Additionally, the combined cost of such products often makes them financially unviable for the average household. Under Vikram’s leadership, Nandi Security’s mission is to simplify and make it affordable for everyone to enjoy comprehensive privacy and security in the connected home.

Tackling the Pandemic

The pandemic has proven to be an accelerator in the cyber security industry. With remote work becoming an immediate requirement, companies soon realized that their network perimeter extends into the connected home. The initial attack vector to penetrate a corporate network may not need to be the corporate device; it could be a camera, thermostat, wearable or any other device in the employee’s home. Further from a consumer perspective, there has been a surge of interest in privacy issues amongst the general public given the post-pandemic events surrounding the US elections and the recent US Supreme Court rulings. This has resulted in a greater need and awareness at both the corporate and consumer levels for privacy and security products.

Vikram states, “While we did not see a pandemic coming, we saw the fundamental issues around privacy and security brewing a long time back, and we believe we are at the right time with the right product to address the problem.”

Preparing for the Future

Vikram is a believer in a free, open, safe, and equitable internet, and he understands that Nandi Security can make a significant contribution to the ‘safe’ and ‘equitable’ parts of that conversation. His primary goal is to make Kavalan the single most trusted name for families worldwide when it comes to protecting their online security and privacy. The organization is going about it by keeping simplicity, transparency, and quality as the prime pillars of focus for its product.

“Protecting your home and your family should not be as complex as it is today, and as broadband coverage expands across the world today, safety and privacy should come with it by default. The very fibers of connectivity that promise to improve our lives are already being used to shift the balance of equity both in terms of cyberattacks and surveillance capitalism. I believe that with Kavalan, we have taken the first step towards shifting the control back into the hands of the consumers.”- Vikram states.

Nandi Security is already working on evolving Kavalan into a full-fledged Intelligent Digital Safety Solution for the connected home.

Zack Blakeney: Capitalizing Expertise and Passion To Help Leaders Maximize their Potential at Invincible Intelligence

In 2019, a visionary took the entrepreneurial plunge with Invincible Intelligence LLC, a unique and innovative blend of science-based methodology, consciousness, and accountability that quickly shifts your limiting perceptions and rapidly accelerates the development of your emotional intelligence and authentic habitual alignment.

Among the few pioneers to bring innovation in the industry, Zack Blakeney has been graciously awarded as one of the best influences on the Austin, Texas health community by Austin Fit Magazine. He has also been recognized by Fox, NBC, and CBS for his work with business leaders and founders.

He is the CEO of Invincible Intelligence and works as a peak performance and consciousness coach, published author and accomplished public speaker. His mission is to help raise the collective consciousness of the world by guiding business leaders, founders, and businesses to develop emotional intelligence to master their emotions and navigate through change efficiently and effectively.

Empowering Entrepreneurs & Businesses

There are two verticals that they serve in both B2C and B2B.

For B2C, Zack Blakeney works 1-on-1 with the support of his team to guide leaders and founders to maximize their potential and create sustainable balance with their Freedom 4 Framework: Physical, Emotional, Relational, and Financial. They provide one of the most in-depth analyses of their client’s current state using their proprietary Invincible Intelligence© Assessment, hormone, cell, and metabolic testing, and gut intelligence testing. We use this data to create one of the most in-depth and truly personalized programs that unlock their peak performance and maximum potential.

For B2B, they package their Invincible Intelligence© Assessment and Emotional Intelligence (EQ) coursework for HR Departments to optimize their hiring process for the best candidate selection, team EQ discovery, and team workshops to foster emotional intelligence development.

What Influenced Your Decision to be an Author?

“Writing stimulates my version of the flow state. It allows me to express myself fully and truthfully and unlocks new understandings of myself and my teachings. I also enjoy the challenge of creating consumable analogies for complex concepts and offering perceptions that can create instantaneous understandings and, in some cases, healing”, said Mr Blakeney.

Clientele & Unbreakable Faith

The visionary works 1-on-1 with business leaders and founders and he finds it both challenging and fulfilling. He creates the opportunity for his clients to achieve an invincible self-belief from his own certainty while showing up for them consistently with love, truth, and my intention to serve them to the best of his ability. His passion for emotional intelligence and personal development drives him to continuously learn, teach new relevant concepts, and stay ahead of the game.

Major Hurdles & The Driving Force

The biggest challenge was overcoming Zack’s own pride and trusting his team to do the tasks he no longer needed to do. He told them when he brought them on he only wanted to create content, coach, and do deals and they have stepped up to the plate to make that happen for him. He is so incredibly grateful for his life because he gets to wake up every day doing what he loves, with the people he loves.

For Zack Blakeney, it’s been a journey to discover his authentic self, as it is for all. It was filled with a string of painful experiences stimulating from addiction to substances and porn that ultimately led to a divorce. He learned so much from the emotional intensity of these experiences that granted him the vision to know what he wants, and who he wants alongside him. He has had many mentors in his life across business, mindset, and spirituality that have given him the guidance and permission to be the man he is today.

Creating a Balanced and Equal Industry

The leading man does not believe the industries should be balanced and equal because it’s not about the industries, it’s about the people in them. It is his belief that there is more than enough for all to succeed. Infinite resources are available to anyone wanting to live their purpose and passion, but many do not recognise this. Instead, they allow fear, uncertainty, and doubt to imprison them into limiting beliefs that contribute to the imbalance industries. In order to create balance in the industries, they must create balance within themselves first.

A Day in Zack Blakeney’s Life

He wakes up at 5:30 am every morning and immediately drinks 16 oz of ice-cold water to wake up, then he takes his two dogs out and enjoys some fresh air. After he comes in and starts his meditation with morning devotion to the Creator, practice singleness of thought, set his intentions for his day, and give gratitude for his life. Then he hits the gym for a little over an hour, eats breakfast, and begins looking over his schedule to create priorities and affirm his intentions. Most of Zack’s workday is filled with communicating with his team, coaching clients, creating content, and creating strategic connections and partnerships. He ends his day by reviewing his tasks and looking ahead to the next day and week to ensure he knows his priorities and direction for the next day.

Favourite Book

Zack’s go-to book for his clients because of the sustainable impact it made on his life is Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself by Dr. Joe Dispenza

Road Ahead

“We find ourselves in a market with emotional intelligence that is an immediate need and desire by businesses, but sorely under-resourced. I believe we are in the next phase of business evolution that has come from the technology and internet integration of the late ’90s and early 2000s. This integration has created a need for greater empathy, compassion, and trust in both company cultures and with customers. We are most excited about developing our proprietary technology that will house our Invincible Intelligence© Assessment and EQ position-specific courses to support emotional intelligence development in organizations, specifically for non-supervisory roles”, Zack Blakeney further apprised.

A Piece of Advice for Female Entrepreneurs

Do not sacrifice your feminine energy to conform to the predominantly masculine marketplace. Your intuition and empathy are superpowers needed now more than ever to create sustainable change that fosters a new standard of business excellence with trust and transparency leading the way.

Favourite Quote

“Self-control is the chief element in self-respect, and self-respect is the chief element in courage.” – Thucydides

Why i am resolute in my afro-optimism despite the continent’s challanges

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It is becoming clear that most – if not all – our major social, economic and political decisions over the next few years will be made through the prism of the coronavirus and the ripple effects of the pandemic.

However, it is certain that we are yet to see the worst of the disease, in terms of health, social impact and the economy. While lockdown measures are evident in much of the region, public health experts are unanimous in their view that we won’t escape a surge in new infections, especially as we head into the colder winter months.

Already, the economic effects of lockdown can be felt, as informal traders and small to medium enterprises grind to a halt due to government restrictions. The effects, while impossible to fully predict, are likely to reshape the future of the continent in fundamental ways.

While our current focus is on overcoming the immediate challenge posed by the virus, I cannot help but look up and consider what awaits us beyond the immediate horizon. And, despite the chaos and uncertainty we all presently feel, I remain highly optimistic about our collective future, both as a business leader and as an African citizen.

Inspiring an entrepreneurial spirit

Due to the digital skills divide and a number of other factors, most Africans are not actively working in the digital economy. The overwhelming majority of Africa’s citizens are informal traders, smallholder farmers and other forms of entrepreneurs.

An estimated sixty percent of Africa’s workforce are engaged in agriculture alone. The continent’s 250 million smallholder farmers, working on plots of around 2ha each and earning less than $1,000 per year, produce 80% of all food consumed here. A single smallholder farmer financially supports multiple family members and makes an invaluable contribution to food security. Any intervention that supports this sector has the potential to deliver dramatic socio-economic returns.

We can see this in Nigeria, where an initiative by the Convention on Business Integrity’s for-profit arm CBI
Innovations has seen the deployment of a technology tool to support 850 000 maize farmers and connect them more sustainably to the agricultural value chain.

Where countries have invested in building stronger agriculture sectors, the entire economy has been lifted. World Bank data shows that Ethiopia’s poverty levels dropped by a thirds since 2000 mainly thanks to impressive agricultural GDP growth of nearly 10% per year.

A growing and evolving continent

Africa’s population growth has been on an accelerated path for some time. Experts agree that, at current rates,
the continent’s population will double by 2050. This will be accompanied by a mass urbanisation that could see rural areas empty as more citizens seek a better life in fast-growing cities.

The World Economic Forum predicts that the population in Lagos in Nigeria could pass 88 million by 2100, making it the most populous city on the planet.

However, these oft-quoted predictions are extreme. The latest data shows that the working age population
in Africa – those aged between 25 and 64 – is growing faster than other age groups, which provides an opportunity for accelerate economic growth, also known as the ‘demographic dividend’.

How we engage, mobilise and equip this demographic dividend in service of the continent’s socio-economic goals will be instrumental in our collective effort to build a better future.

Which makes the advances in digital skills development, driven by investments from public and private sector organisations into digital skills development among teachers and students, all the more exciting.

Digital skills training crosses tipping point

With more than 700 million youth spread across 54 countries, Africa’s wealth of youthful talent is the envy of even more developed nations that face ageing – and in some cases, declining – populations.

A broad collective effort has been underway over the past few years to equip this youthful talent pool with the skills and knowledge they need to be active participants and contributors to the global digital economy.

Much of the developed world has been able to quickly shift learning to online platforms thanks to the pervasive high-speed internet connectivity and broad use of internet-enabled devices in those markets. In Africa, too many children simply don’t have that option.

Public and private sector organisations will need to build on the success that has been achieved over the past years to bring digital skills learning to more of the continent’s youth. Such efforts should focus not only on expanding access to technology among especially rural communities, but on equipping teachers and educators with the tools and knowledge they need to be effective digital learning champions.

The investments we make in training our youth today will pay huge dividends as we steer through the coming years and decades.

Diversity our greatest strength

Just as technology is supporting smallholder farmers by connecting them to better information and market opportunities, so too will we see innovations that empower female entrepreneurs to maximise their business ventures.

In the latest Global Entrepreneurship Monitor Women’s Report, sub-Saharan Africa boasted the highest rate of female entrepreneurs at 21.8%. This against a global rate of 10.2% – in Europe, the rate drops to 6%. This means more than one in five women in Africa are engaged in some form of entrepreneurial activity.

Social entrepreneurship is also gaining ground as a more sustainable and broadly beneficial business model for addressing socio-economic challenges on the continent. In 2019, Africa hosted the Social Entrepreneurship World Forum, first established in 2007, in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia. In that country alone, 55 000 social enterprises have sprung up to address a wide spectrum of challenges. Surprisingly, more than a quarter of social entrepreneurs in the country are women, compared to only 4.5% who lead mainstream Ethiopian businesses.

I believe it is our diversity and multiculturalism that gives us immense strength in innovation and resilience. Three thousand ethnic groups speaking more than two thousand languages lend the continent an unmatched richness in perspectives and lived experiences.

As a greater share of our daily work output becomes automated by more efficient machines and algorithms, we’re likely to see a shift back to those skills and qualities that make us uniquely human. Empathy, creativity, compassion, the ability to consider and engage with a diverse set of views – these are the skills that will distinguish us as we head into the coming decades.

In closing

There’s no doubt we face a difficult and uncertain road ahead. Things are likely to get worse before they
get better. But we have done so much work over the past decades, achieved so much, overcome such immense socio-economic challenges, that I take heart that our continent will survive.

More than that, I believe we are well-placed to create a pan-African community with a shared vision for a
more equitable future, one driven by the deeply African belief in Ubuntu. Some global analysts believe there is opportunity for Africa to rival China’s economic might, despite our challenges.

I think Africa will chart its own course, one that is no less transformational than the so-called Chinese Miracle, but takes all our best qualities: our diversity, our natural wealth, our youthfulness, our creativity and resilience, and forges an inclusive future for all who call this continent home.

ENDS

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Why more Women Entrepreneurs should consider investing?

Women have been breaking the glass ceiling in all walks of life, especially the business world. According to research, now women are in charge of four out of 10 businesses in the U.S., and the number of businesses owned by women’s own has gone up by 114 percent in reference to the data acquired twenty years ago. Of course, they are in no mood to slow down and more and more women are going to college and educating themselves, and becoming the prime breadwinner in their respective families.

In spite of all the progress women are making in the right direction, they still struggle in terms of management of cash and especially investing, compared to their counterparts. According to a popular business magazine, women are far behind men when it comes to financial literacy tests and they also tend to invest 40 percent less in comparison with men. Though women are considered great with saving as they save 9 percent of their salary, while on the other hand men save only 8.6 percent. But when women were asked what they would do if they were handed $1,000, and the immediate response was that they were 35 percent less likely to invest the money when compared to men.

Even though women entrepreneurs run business excellently and are great at money-saving. They have a hard time understanding the importance of investing – even at the cost of taking some risks. In order to help women invest more, there are tons of online investing platform made for women, that has taken an initiative to bring the change by providing the required guidance and mentoring needed to handle those risks successfully.

Why investing can be difficult for women entrepreneurs?

Women entrepreneurs have higher chances of gaining more personal and business capital through investing. They can also advance their savings and secure their financial future. For example, if they put their money into a traditional savings account, which will build upon average only about .01 percent to .06 percent a year in interest, whereas, comparing that to the stock market, where one can get historical returns of 10 percent and the window to gain quarterly dividends. So if they are putting $1,000 into a savings account and gaining .05 percent interest, they would be getting $5 in interest over the course of a year. But, if they put it into the stock market, then they can potentially get a 10 percent return, and eventually, they’ll make $100 that year.

But how to actually get started?

Associating with online investing platforms will definitely help in creating and managing their personalized portfolios. The investment algorithm will weigh crucial factors in women’s lives such as career breaks, pay gaps, and longer lifespans, and decide with their financial planners.

Women entrepreneurs might find it intimidating, as they have never bought a stock share but now have a desire to get into bonds and real estate but don’t know-how. But with the help of proper guidance, they can start investing in a diversified portfolio easily and begin to boost their financial future.