Essential Afro-Latino/ Caribbean Current Events

[Yehuda]

First digital bank for blacks to ease financing for Afro-entrepreneurs

By Silvia Nascimento | October 17 2017

It’s harder to get credit when you’re black. Despite the various initiatives to orient the afro-entrepreneur through events focused on capacity building, many are already at an advanced level in terms of developing their business but lack the money to grow.

Knowing latent structural racism in Brazil, we don’t need to guess what happens when an black businessman sits at the desk of a bank manager to ask for credit. If the business is focused on the black community then it is almost impossible to get some money to raise your working capital or finance the purchase of new equipment.

Conta Black (Black Account), which will be officially launched on October 31st, during the Black Summit: Precisamos falar sobre "Black Money" (Black Summit: We need to talk about "Black Money") event, is a digital bank focused not only on afro-entrepreneurs, but on people from the black community in general, who according to surveys, are the ones that have the most difficulty accessing banks.

“We cannot accept the bank exclusion without trying to find a solution. According to the latest IBGE study, about 60 million people in Brazil do not have access to basic banking services. If the black population corresponds to more than half of the population, we already know numerically speaking the ethnic profile of the desbancarizados (without a bank),” explains Sérgio All, CEO of Afrobusiness, an association for the promotion and integration of black professionals and entrepreneurs and founder of Conta Black.

In the US where afro-entrepreneurship is light years ahead of development compared to Brazil, financial organizations with a focus on black entrepreneurs were key. One example is One United. A total of $100 million was invested, especially in small businesses, after a careful evaluation.

Making the client feel special and motivated is part of the Conta Digital project, considering that racism manifests itself in the form of denial of credit and poor service.

"A black entrepreneur has credit denied three times more than a white one with the same conditions here in Brazil. That is, we have a portion of the population which is mostly black and is not served in a dignified manner and Conta Black as a Fintech (digital bank) proposes to help in solving this problem. Our performance will be gradual and divided in phases. Users will have an important stake in driving feedback from each of the steps,” explains the CEO of Afrobusiness.

Watershed

Sérgio All sees the niche business focused on the black community optimistically. "I believe that afro-entrepreneurship has had a lot of visibility in 2017. The concept has become more and more widespread so that entrepreneurs have more opportunities to train and leverage their performance. I believe that in the coming years surely the entrepreneurs of the afro niche who have prepared themselves will surf on this wave.”

The Afrobusiness event on October 31 will bring influential black community names to talk about afroconsumo (afro-consumption), black money and even billion-dollar deals. The event takes place at the charming Sheraton WTC Hotel in São Paulo. For more details click here.

First digital bank for blacks to ease financing for Afro-entrepreneurs

 

[Yehuda]

Caribbean island-nations take climate response into their own hands

Sunday, November 19, 2017

BONN, Germany (CMC) — Caribbean and other island-nations, with no time to lose, are taking climate response into their own hands.

Following two weeks of negotiations on bolstering the Paris Climate Change agreement, leaders on Friday said their hopes that island issues would take center stage have mostly been dashed.

The New York Times reports that almost none of the measures to help their countries adapt to the impacts of global warming have been resolved, and few delegates said they were hopeful the final hours of talks would bring decisions.

“I’m anxious, and I’m fearful,” said Prime Minister Allen Chastanet of St Lucia.

“It can’t be that a prime minister’s only resource is to get down on his knees on the side of a bed and pray.”

From rising seas to the loss of fresh water, islands are among the most vulnerable nations to global warming, the Times said, noting that hurricanes, expected to become more ferocious with climate change, pummeled Caribbean island-nations into crisis this summer.

Hurricane Irma destroyed nearly every car and building on the the island of Barbuda and swelled the population of Antigua overnight as thousands of Barbudans sought shelter. Hurricane Maria knocked out power across the United States Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico and left Dominica in tatters.

Small islands also are among the smallest contributors to climate change, producing less than 1 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions and leaders of the industrialized world said they owe some recompense for the disasters these vulnerable nations will suffer in the years ahead.

“The very thing that makes them wealthy is contributing to our vulnerability,” said Prime Minister Gaston Browne of Antigua and Barbuda. “It’s only fair that they provide some level of compensation.”

But it’s reported that hopes are waning that Caribbean island-nations will see a major increase in financial support to help address the consequences of climate change.

On Friday, here created an expert group to formally include the issue of helping vulnerable Caribbean and other countries with immediate needs, known as loss and damage, in the United Nations climate process.

But the Times said “there is no money attached to it, though, nor means to raise any.”

So far, it said the biggest news came midweek, when Germany and Britain announced funding for a long discussed partnership to promote insurance coverage in island-nations vulnerable to disasters.

“It can help people recover from floods or cyclones. But it doesn’t help against slow onset events like sea-level rise — no one will insure against that,” said Harjeet Singh, global head of climate change for ActingAid.

He also noted that many of the details of the new insurance proposal were still vague, like how much relatively poor island countries would have to pay in premiums.

The UN Climate Change Conference (COP23) wrapped up, with delegations expressing a renewed sense of urgency and a need for greater ambition to tackle climate change.

The conference, which ran from November 6-17, was chaired by Fiji, an island-state particularly affected by the impacts of climate change. The Fiji Presidency announced an agreement on a Gender Action Plan, highlighting the role of women in climate action.

Apart from negotiations among Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) , the UN said several new climate action initiatives, commitments and partnerships were announced by states and non-state actors in the areas of energy, water, agriculture, oceans and coastal areas, human settlements, transportation, industry, and forests.

Climate finance and climate resilience were also at the center of the discussions at the conference, the UN said.

It said more than 20 countries, including the Canada, Finland, France, Mexico, and the United Kingdom, launched a new global coal alliance aimed at achieving the rapid phase-out of existing traditional coal power and at placing a moratorium on any new traditional coal power stations without operational carbon capture and storage.

The conference took place one year after the entry into force of the Paris Agreement. The agreement, which was adopted by the 196 Parties to the UNFCCC in December 2015, calls on countries to combat climate change by limiting the rise of global temperature below 2 degrees Celsius and strive not to exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius, the UN said. On Friday, 70 Parties have ratified the treaty.

A week before the opening of the conference, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) announced that the levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere surged at “record-breaking speed” to new highs in 2016.

The UN said COP23 will be followed by a series of summits and conferences on climate change, which are scheduled ahead of the UN Climate Summit in September 2019, including the “One Planet” summit to be convened by France next month.

The “One Planet” summit focuses on financing, a gathering in California, bringing together non-State actors, and the COP24 in Katowice, Poland, in December 2018, the UN said. Brazil has offered to host COP25 in 2019.

Caribbean island-nations take climate response into their own hands

 

[Yehuda]

Wtf this got to do with the Caribbean

 

[Yehuda]

Barbados leading news outlet, Nation News, reports that Rihanna's uncle, Leroy Fitzgerald Brathwaite, is charged with selling knock-offs of Rihanna's Puma line. Funny enough, they say he was caught after Rihanna was visiting the country and had seen some knock-off's of her t-shirts and slippers being sold on Swan Street. She told a Puma representative who later flew in to Barbados to investigate the matter. After concluding they were indeed fake, the rep made a police report which led to Brathwaite's arrest. They say he had about $1000 in merchandise and one of Puma's officials from Curacao went to court to witness it all.

Rihanna's Uncle Reportedly Charged With Selling Knock-Offs Of Her PUMA Fenty Line

Lmao

 

[BigMan]

for my Caribbean brehs

 

[Concerning VIolence]

No. Why?
I have many friends and family who have.

Just asking

You reppin' for Haiti but never stepped foot in Haiti.


I bet this bouzin doesn't even understand kreyol.

And then this dude wants to fukking dictate how the country is run.


why can't this motherfukker just be proud to be AA?

 

[loyola llothta]

for my Caribbean brehs

accurate. Alot Haitian went to Cuba, Nassau, French Guilana, Canada, and The U.S

 

[BigMan]

Colloquially Barbadians refer to their home island as "Bim" or other nicknames associated with Barbados includes "Bimshire". The origin is uncertain but several theories exist. The National Cultural Foundationof Barbados says that "Bim" was a word commonly used by slaves and that it derives from the Igbo term bém from bé mụ́ meaning 'my home, kindred, kind',[20] the Igbo phoneme /e/ in the Igbo orthography is very close to [ ɪ ].[21] The name could have arisen due to the relatively large percentage of enslaved Igbo people from modern-day southeastern Nigeria arriving in Barbados in the 18th century.[22][23]
@Diasporan Royalty @The Odum of Ala Igbo @The Wave @.0.ggggggod.*

 

[Bawon Samedi]

Colloquially Barbadians refer to their home island as "Bim" or other nicknames associated with Barbados includes "Bimshire". The origin is uncertain but several theories exist. The National Cultural Foundationof Barbados says that "Bim" was a word commonly used by slaves and that it derives from the Igbo term bém from bé mụ́ meaning 'my home, kindred, kind',[20] the Igbo phoneme /e/ in the Igbo orthography is very close to [ ɪ ].[21] The name could have arisen due to the relatively large percentage of enslaved Igbo people from modern-day southeastern Nigeria arriving in Barbados in the 18th century.[22][23]
@Diasporan Royalty @The Odum of Ala Igbo @The Wave @.0.ggggggod.*

Interesting.

 

[010101]

Colloquially Barbadians refer to their home island as "Bim" or other nicknames associated with Barbados includes "Bimshire". The origin is uncertain but several theories exist. The National Cultural Foundationof Barbados says that "Bim" was a word commonly used by slaves and that it derives from the Igbo term bém from bé mụ́ meaning 'my home, kindred, kind',[20] the Igbo phoneme /e/ in the Igbo orthography is very close to [ ɪ ].[21] The name could have arisen due to the relatively large percentage of enslaved Igbo people from modern-day southeastern Nigeria arriving in Barbados in the 18th century.[22][23]
@Diasporan Royalty @The Odum of Ala Igbo @The Wave @.0.ggggggod.*

roots*

 

[BigMan]

roots*

Where’s your AA side from? I read ibgos we’re the majority in VA and MD

 

[Bawon Samedi]

Where’s your AA side from? I read ibgos we’re the majority in VA and MD

I thought he was full Bajan.

 

[BigMan]

Interesting.

Yeah it seems most Igbos were taken to English speaking colonies although many Spanish speakers have Igbo ancestry as Jamaica was the first stop for many slaves taken to Central America. I was looking at reports that show most slaves shipped to Jamaica were Igbo but the predominant group was Akan. That may explain why while Igbo culture has had a big effect in Jamaica it’s not as big as the Akan influence

 

[010101]

Where’s your AA side from? I read ibgos we’re the majority in VA and MD

i was made uptxwn
but both my mom and pops bajan

*

 

[BigMan]

i was made uptxwn
but both my mom and pops bajan

*

oh i thought you were both

also
@Diasporan Royalty

Even the word “Jamaica” had been discovered to be of Twi origin from “Gyamayaka” to mean “perhaps we are stuck”, Gyama(pronounced: ‘Jama’) – perhaps or maybe; yaka – we are stuck(ka – to be stuck or to bite[depending on context being used]). Gyamayaka—>Jamayaka—>Jamaica. Though contemporary(white europeanized history) states that it’s from the Arawak ‘Xaymaca’, this contradicts the actual Arawak words of: “Hororo – land or earth; Ada – wood; oniabo or nia – water” (Taylor, Douglas 1977).

i found this on Jamaica. i would love to see if there are any Ghanaians that can confirm this