Newly valued at $2 billion, the <a href="https://www.forbes.com/lists/ai50/">AI 50</a> debutant originated as a chatbot for teenagers. Now, it has aspirations—and $100 million in fresh dry powder—to be the GitHub of machine learning.



When Hugging Face first announced itself to the world five years ago, it came in the form of an iPhone chatbot app for bored teenagers. It shared selfies of its computer-generated face, cracked jokes and gossiped about its crush on Siri. It hardly made any money.



The viral moment came in 2018—not among teens, but developers. The founders of Hugging Face had begun to share bits of the app’s underlying code online for free. Almost immediately, researchers from some of the biggest tech names in the business, including Google and Microsoft, began using it for AI applications. Today, the chatbot has long since disappeared from the App Store, but Hugging Face has become the central depot for ready-to-use machine-learning models, the starting point from which more than 10,000 organizations have created AI-powered tools for their businesses.



Hugging Face announced Monday, in conjunction with its debut appearance on&nbsp;Forbes’&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/lists/ai50">AI 50</a>&nbsp;list, that it raised a $100 million round of venture financing, valuing the company at $2 billion. Top-tier venture capital firms Coatue and Sequoia won slots as new backers in the hotly contested Series C, joining A.Capital Ventures,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2020/07/01/lee-fixel-raises-1-billion-fund-addition/">Addition</a>&nbsp;Capital and lead investor Lux Capital as major stakeholders in the Brooklyn-based startup.



“Machine learning is becoming the new way to build technology, replacing software,” says Clément Delangue, cofounder and CEO of Hugging Face, which is named after the emoji that looks like a smiling face with jazz hands. “The old school of building technology was writing a million lines of code. Machine learning is starting to do that, but much better and much faster.”



Speaking from his home in Miami, where he moved during the pandemic (weather, not web3, he explains), Delangue, 33, says he believes that what GitHub is for software, Hugging Face has become for machine learning. That’s a confident comparison, considering the widespread popularity of GitHub, which is used by more than 70 million developers to share and collaborate on code and was last recorded making $300 million in revenue at the time of its $7.5 billion sale to Microsoft in 2018. Hugging Face, by contrast, generated less than $10 million last year, according to three people familiar with its finances. Delangue declines to comment on the number, but he and investors think that machine learning is already becoming the single most important technology of the 2020s, and that Hugging Face can eventually make billions in revenue with its own army of AI-minded developers.



“The companies you would assume are competitors on first blush—whether it’s Google or Amazon or Facebook—almost all of them are proponents,” says Lux Capital’s Brandon Reeves, who first invested in Hugging Face in 2019. “It really feels like this Switzerland-like piece of real estate in the ecosystem.”



“I don’t really see a world where machine learning becomes the default way to build technology and where Hugging Face is the No. 1 platform for this, and we don’t manage to generate several billion dollars in revenue.”Hugging Face CEO Clément Delangue



Growing up in La Bassée, a small town of 6,000 in the north of France, Delangue recalls an idle childhood until he got his first computer at age 12. By 17, he’d become one of the top French merchants on eBay, selling ATVs and dirt bikes he imported from China and stockpiled in his father’s garden equipment shop. That prowess impressed eBay, which offered him an internship once he began college at ESCP Business School in Paris. Representing the company at an e-commerce trade show, Delangue was accosted by another attendee who trashed eBay’s recent acquisition of a barcode-scanning app—barcodes, the man said, would soon be obsolete because of advances in AI.



The man turned out to be a cofounder of Moodstocks, a startup making image-recognition software using machine learning. “With a very small team, they were managing to do stuff on par with what Google was doing with 100 times more people,” he says (years later, the company was acquired by Google). Impressed by the nimbleness of startups, Delangue never looked back. He declined eBay’s offer to extend his internship so that he could spend his free time at Moodstocks. After graduating in 2012, he turned down a job from Google to run his own startup. Delangue’s idea for a collaborative note-taking app didn’t go far, but in the tight-knit European startup scene he met Julien Chaumond, a fellow entrepreneur building a collaborative ebook reader. The pair riffed on their mutual interest in open technology and talked about starting a company together.



That time came in 2016, after both their companies had ground to a halt. A third cofounder was recruited in Thomas Wolf, a college friend of Chaumond’s who had gone on to receive a Ph.D. in physics and written research papers on machine learning. For the business idea, they settled on “open-domain conversational AI”—in other words, a chatbot that could understand any kind of conversation topic—because they felt it was the most difficult problem in technology they had the expertise to tackle at the time, Delangue says. “There’s this dream we all have to speak with an AI about everything, like you see in sci-fi.”



Hugging Face began as a personalized, Tamagotchi-like friend powered by a form of AI known as natural language processing (NLP). To train the chatbot’s natural language capabilities, the team also built an underlying library to house various machine-learning models—for example, one to detect the emotions behind a text message and another to be able to generate a coherent response—and the many datasets for understanding different kinds of conversational topics, like sports or classroom gossip. Harking back to the founders’ values for open collaboration, they released free pieces of the library as an open-source project on GitHub. The company participated in a bot-specific accelerator program run by the New York-based startup studio Betaworks and raised seed funding from venture capitalists as well as NBA star Kevin Durant. But two years in, their chatbot hadn’t made much money and was losing its hold on the attention spans of its young users.



Around the same time, researchers at Google and OpenAI announced the development of “transformers,” a new type of NLP model that demolished the reading comprehension abilities of both humans and the best AI incumbent at the time. By 2019, Google was powering its search results using this model. Hugging Face’s open-source library appeared at the perfect time for organizations that wanted to harness these NLP breakthroughs but didn’t have the same machinery as Google to build them from scratch. It became a near-instant hit as the machine-learning community converged around it as the central base for deploying transformer models. “We released things without thinking too much about it and the community blew up, as a surprise even to us,” Delangue says.



Reeves, the Lux investor, first met Delangue at a coffee shop in downtown San Francisco on a Friday near the end of 2019. Scared to miss out on a chance to invest, he offered a term sheet the following Monday at an $80 million valuation. “For 90% of the companies I’ve invested in, I’ve known them for many weeks or months or years,” he says. “I don’t think any have come over a weekend.” Since Delangue accepted Lux’s check, usage has continued to skyrocket. The developer community has built more than 100,000 machine learning models on Hugging Face, enabling others in turn to use those pretrained models for their own AI projects instead of having to build models from scratch. On GitHub, Hugging Face has accumulated “stars”—a vanity metric measuring the popularity of an open-source project—at a faster pace than the projects behind&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2021/06/24/confluent-shares-jump-25-in-ipo-making-co-founders-new-cloud-computing-billionaires/">Confluent</a>&nbsp;(annual revenue of $388 million),&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrickcai/2021/05/26/accidental-billionaires-databricks-ceo-ali-ghodsi-seven-berkeley-academics/">Databricks</a>&nbsp;(more than $800 million) and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2017/10/19/mongodbs-ipo-gives-new-york-tech-a-much-needed-win-as-shares-jump-25/">MongoDB</a>&nbsp;($874 million).



Although funding rounds for companies with similar stature were plentiful in 2021, the growth-stage venture capital market has since&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/rebeccaszkutak/2022/03/23/record-setting-venture-capital-market-shows-signs-of-a-slowdown/">slowed</a>&nbsp;to a near halt. Hugging Face’s latest financing then indicates a more rarified vote of investor confidence, but some in the data startup ecosystem have privately expressed curiosity about how Delangue can grow Hugging Face’s revenue enough to validate its hefty valuation. Delangue thinks that if enough free users get hooked on Hugging Face, the money will follow in time from some of the companies that employ the users. “Given how valuable machine learning is and how mainstream it’s becoming, usage is deferred revenue,” Delangue says. “I don’t really see a world where machine learning becomes the default way to build technology and where Hugging Face is the No. 1 platform for this, and we don’t manage to generate several billion dollars in revenue.”



Hugging Face only started to offer paid features last year and counts more than 1,000 companies as customers, according to Delangue, including Intel and his former stomping ground eBay. Pharmaceutical giants Pfizer and Roche pay for enterprise-grade security features, while Bloomberg is paying to run machine learning for its real-time terminal through Hugging Face instead of having to build out its own infrastructure. Microsoft is not a customer, but prominently uses Hugging Face as the basis to train its Bing search engine to better understand natural language queries.



“They prioritized adoption over monetization, which I think was correct,” says Sequoia partner Pat Grady, one of the new investors. “They saw that transformer-based models working their way outside of NLP and saw a chance to be the GitHub not just for NLP, but for every domain of machine learning.” Indeed, over the course of the last year, Hugging Face has started to become a hub for machine learning models for a variety of uses, such as computer vision to train image recognition in self-driving cars and recommender systems to help pharmaceutical companies predict the effectiveness of new drug therapies.



If his assumptions of machine learning supremacy are wrong, Delangue says Hugging Face is close to breakeven and has all $40 million from its previous fundraise still in the bank to reorient. “One of my personal learnings as an entrepreneur is to not think too much strategically with a big business plan of ten years, but more to experiment and follow the validation of the community and what they’re telling you,” he says. If the vision pans out, Reeves thinks the prize could be a $50 billion or $100 billion market capitalization on the stock market. It’s no wonder that Delangue says he’s turned down multiple “meaningful acquisition offers” and won’t sell his business, like GitHub did to Microsoft.



“We want to be the first company to go public with an emoji, rather than a three-letter ticker,” he says with an emoji-like smile. “We have to start doing some lobbying to the Nasdaq to make sure it can happen.”



By Kenrick Cai, Forbes Staff

Screenshot 2022-05-10 at 10.02.49

The $2 Billion Emoji: Hugging Face Wants To Be Launchpad For A Machine Learning Revolution

Momoko Harada is turning macadamia nuts in Rwanda’s verdant, virgin fields into valuable export currency, in turn also helping the farmers and protecting the environment.



WORDS AND PHOTOS BY RIDHIMA SHUKLA



AT A FACTORY farm, about a 45-minute drive east of the Kigali city center in Rwanda, is a modern facility where the world’s most expensive edible nut – macadamia – is being laboriously processed.



The delightfully round nuts dangle off dainty trees – some the height of a Sports Utility Vehicle – overlooking the valley and are picked by the farmers as they drop to the ground.



Momoko Harada, the 41-year- old Managing Director of the Rwanda Nut Company, is often among the farmers, overseeing their rich, daily pickings.



The mother of two with a keen eye for detail turns around and points out to us: “It takes 15 years for a macadamia tree to grow to this puny size, it takes a lot of patience and discipline in the farmer to not pluck them right off the branch.”



Native to Australia, the macadamia nut’s demand has grown consistently among the world’s richest and discerning consumer markets. Kenya and South Africa are among the top exporters of the golden nut. Rwanda too has now joined the race for growing and exporting this prized natural commodity.



This is in line with the land- locked country’s strategy to diversify its crop exports beyond coffee and tea in ways that are sustainable and expandable.



Unlike other nations in the race, Rwanda’s weather conditions favor macadamia farming, allowing yields around the year as compared to only seasonal harvests. This realization led to the introduction of the crop to farmers of all scales by the leadership of the nation along with NGOs and the World Bank in 2004.



It was only in 2012 that the first matured nuts started falling to the ground. But in the absence of processing units, they were not ready for the world’s markets that only consumed it in its processed form.



This is when Rwanda began working towards the future. Funded by multiple investors from Japan, the Rwanda Nut Company was established in 2013.



The company has grown significantly whilst holding on tightly to its values and aspirations under the leadership of Harada who came down from Japan to kick-start this infant 



industry almost a decade ago and has not looked back since.



However, her history with Africa predates her relationship with macadamia nuts.



She fondly reminisces her first time on the continent at the age of 19, on holiday with her mother; a single woman who she commends for her commitment and dedication to giving Harada all the opportunities she never had.



Harada says: “I had seen poverty before, I knew poverty! But, what I saw in East Africa was more than that. Despite being impoverished, the people of East Africa were full of aspiration and with the desire for changing things.”



She traveled around East Africa and decided she would learn more about the region and return to develop a deeper relationship with this land rich with friendly people and ripe with untapped opportunities.



After completing a degree in law and spending three years working in the human resources department of a company in Tokyo, she went on to study economics at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.



“I always wanted to learn about East Africa. People are aging in Japan and are very protective of their ways. In East Africa, people have open minds and the readiness to take risks,” she says.



As the woman behind setting up one of the first macadamia processing plants, establishing an export market for fine quality organic Rwandan produce and running a company of 350 employees, Harada has come a long way from when the Rwanda Nut Company was all but a few farmers and consultants.



Today, the company works with over 1,200 farmers with farms as big as a hectare to those that have a single tree in their backyard. Harada says the company’s policy is to promote inclusivity and growth in the agriculture community – something she feels strongly about, having had a taste of struggle in her early years in Japan.



“I have first-hand experience of having less; we lived in a 10/10 house and shared a community shower. The idea was never to invest simply for monetary gains but to make an impact by creating a sustainable business and providing a living through jobs.”



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The global demand for macadamia nuts outweighs the supply which makes Rwanda’s move to upgrade its export crop list with the nut promising.



However, the country’s lateness to the market marks another challenge for producers like Harada.



In 2021, Rwanda exported around 600 tonnes of macadamia, which reportedly takes Kenya only two days to produce, package and sell and South Africa less than six hours.



China is planting the nut at a massive rate and within the next decade, could likely become one of the biggest suppliers of 



macadamia, posing an even bigger challenge to smaller producers. The United States, China, Japan and Germany are the biggest



buyers of the nut and so far, the Rwanda Nut Company only supplies to North American markets.



But despite the low volumes, Harada says her company is working with agronomists and quality controllers, and has developed a personal rapport with the farmers to ensure a specialty product for wealthy consumers around the world.



“There is no international grading system for macadamia; every producer sells their product under their own brand definition without strict quality control. The grading system in coffee and cocoa has allowed producers to capture markets and sustain long periods because of set expectations among buyers,” says Harada.



She is inclined to replicate a grading system for the industry, based on the produce’s oil content, moisture and freshness.



She asserts that her factory not only complies with the North American processed food standards but controls the quality of production across its entire value chain.



The company is currently expanding its processing facility to build capacity.



“We are growing; even in the face of the pandemic and a competitive market, the demand is still high. We are looking to rebrand our product as specialty food grown in the virgin fields of Rwanda with only organic practices, farmed under fair trade laws, and exceptional quality control for our refined consumer,” attests Harada.



The efforts are also ecological-friendly.



“We are working towards being zero waste and are fully circular in our business. Our husk is used by farmers as a fertilizer; the shell is used in our kilns for its caloric value and later turned into charcoal for farmers to take back to their village.”



The global macadamia nut market was valued at $1.31 billion in 2020 and is expected to grow up to $3 billion by 2030 (Grand View Research).



Although a small part of the pie, Rwanda is aiming for the highest hanging fruit in this sector, going by the long-term vision and commitment of its female business leaders such as Harada.

Screenshot 2022-05-09 at 14.35.40

Seed Capital: Turning Macadamia Into Currency In Rwanda￼

If it seems like the same Wall Street banks keep getting mentioned again and again as examples of companies requiring full-time, in-office work, there may be a reason: They don’t have much company.



A new&nbsp;<a href="https://www.conference-board.org/topics/natural-disasters-pandemics/reimagined-workplace-two-years-later-2022" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">survey</a>&nbsp;of human resources leaders from the Conference Board, a nonprofit business research group, finds that just 4% said they are requiring all employees to return to the workplace full-time. And less than half (45%) said they were requiring some workers to return to the office five days a week.



“We were all pretty shocked,” says Robin Erickson, vice president of human capital at the Conference Board. “We were surprised given what we’re hearing about how many employers are requiring workers to come back full time.”



In other words:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jenamcgregor/2022/03/15/two-years-into-the-pandemic-almost-twice-as-many-workers-prefer-hybrid-schedules-to-fully-remote-work/?sh=29d0423177ec">Hybrid work arrangements</a>&nbsp;really do seem to be taking hold. The research found that 90% of the surveyed employers are allowing hybrid work schedules, whether that means the occasional office visit that workers decide on their own or a more prescribed schedule of one to four days in the workplace.



Erickson believes the percentage may not stay that low, particularly if the labor market cools, but for now there is too much pressure on companies to be flexible from workers who have the upper hand.



“Hybrid work is going to be the most lasting organizational legacy of Covid-19 but I think the pendulum will swing back,” Erickson says. “Employers are going to decide that they lost too much in terms of collaboration and culture. I think it will take a recession when jobs are no longer plentiful.”



It’s possible that the “all employees” language in the survey question is prompting the single-digit percentage. Many companies may have groups of employees who can work a hybrid schedule while others must work onsite. Otherwise, Erickson says the sample of 179 human capital leaders is distributed across industry, region, size and other factors.



That the percentage is so low of employers requiring all workers to return doesn’t surprise&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jenamcgregor/2022/02/02/less-deodorant-fewer-showers-no-makeup-the-nine-extra-minutes-some-americans-sneak-by-working-remote/">Nicholas Bloom</a>, the Stanford University economics professor whose&nbsp;<a href="https://wfhresearch.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">research on remote work</a>&nbsp;is widely cited. Bloom and his colleagues at the University of Chicago and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.itam.mx/en" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">ITAM</a>&nbsp;found in April that among workers whose jobs can be done at home, the average number of days they can work remotely is 2.3, and very few of these employees have zero days they can work remotely.



“The share of employees doing jobs that can currently work from home (e.g. office jobs) but are forced into the office five days a week … is very small,” Bloom wrote in an email to&nbsp;Forbes. “It makes no sense—employees are happier and more productive when they work from home two or three days a week, so very few employers are forcing them back to the office full time.”



The Conference Board’s report about the “<a href="https://www.conference-board.org/topics/natural-disasters-pandemics/reimagined-workplace-two-years-later-2022" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reimagined workplace</a>,” based on a survey it has conducted four times since the pandemic began, also found that for the first time, employers are more concerned about finding professional and office-based employees than industry workers and manual laborers, suggesting the Great Resignation has become a major issue in the white-collar workforce, too.



In April 2021, the survey found that just 60% of employers said they were concerned about finding professional workers to fill jobs; that figure rose to 84% in March 2022. Meanwhile, the percentage of human capital leaders concerned about hiring front-line workers was much higher last spring, at 80%, but rose to just 81% in the most recent survey. “It’s no longer just a front-line worker issue,” says Erickson.



That’s another reason it’s important for companies to let employees work remotely at least some of the time if they’re able, she says. Those demanding everyone come back five days a week “don’t have much company. People will quit and you’re going to be dealing with attrition issues.”



By Jena McGregor, Forbes Staff

Senior businesswoman using laptop for team meeting video conference

Just 4% Of Employers Are Making Everyone Return To The Office Full-Time, Survey Finds

Renowned women’s and environmental activist Cécile Ndjebet sits down for an exclusive interview with FORBES AFRICA as she is announced the winner of the prestigious Wangari Maathai Forest Champions award for 2022.



“Determined, considerate and principled,” is how renowned activist, conservationist and feminist Cécile Ndjebet was described, honored this week as the winner of the 2022 Wangari Maathai Award in Seoul, South Korea.



Decked in beautiful color, Ndjebet accepted the award with emotion and characteristic humility. The African activist sat down for an interview with FORBES AFRICA to discuss her history and her hopes for the future.



Growing up in rural Cameroon, Ndjebet’s upbringing was typical of life at the time, involving farming, with much of the hardship and labor being performed by women.



“I grew up with my mother and elder sister – they were rural women. I could see the challenges that they were facing to raise themselves up, to raise us up. The other women in the village were sharing the same challenges,” says Ndjebet. “We were quite a poor family. That’s how I started.”



With over half of Cameroon’s population involved in agriculture, much of which was subsistence-based (CIA, 2020) Ndjebet had a clear, early picture of the poverty in her surroundings, as well as the impact that farming for survival was having on the local environment. Commercial logging interests by primarily foreign-owned companies also contribute heavily to deforestation and environmental destruction.



With limited opportunities available and a clear image of challenges to those around her, Ndjebet decided to take the initiative to solve problems. “I only had two things I could do; either go into rural development or being a medical doctor… I knew that I had to pay great importance and attention to rural women,” says Ndjebet.



It is these efforts that led to her being nominated and winning the renowned Wangari Maathai Forest Champions award, presented by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), announced this week. The award recognizes the extraordinary efforts of an individual to improve and sustain forests, as well as those who depend on them, and is a highly recognized award for climate change activists.



The award is named for Nobel Prize winning environmental activist Wangari Maathai of Kenya, who was critical in engaging with environmental concerns of rural Kenyan women, founding the Green Belt Movement and helping stimulate dozens of social and environmental initiatives.



Ndjebet’s honoring is appropriate, coming full circle from meeting Wangari Maathai and being inspired to do more.



A tearful Ndjebet accepted the award on stage during an award ceremony in South Korea’s capital of Seoul Thursday afternoon. “This is a hard moment for me, but a beautiful moment for me, and for rural women,” and acknowledging the direct inspiration that Maathai had on her in a brief meeting which served to inspire Ndjebet; “she explained to me her love for nature, for forests… the dangers of climate change and human responsibility.”



“It is sad for me that Wangari Maathai is unable to witness this moment since she passed away so early,” said Ndjebet in closing. She will continue to fight for women’s rights and environmental conservation by using the $20,000 in prize money to help found a women’s college in Cameroon. “… but this recognition gives me the courage to continue this work.”

Screenshot 2022-05-08 at 10.12.43

Cameroonian Environmentalist Wins Award And Honors Rural Women

One of Ghana’s finest DJs on being an example to young people and what Africa’s A-list musicians are now doing differently.



By Tania Habimana



Botswana had a taste of fine Ghanaian talent recently, when DJ Black belted out his foot-tapping numbers on the opening night of the Forbes Under 30 Africa Summit that took place from April 24-28 in Gaborone and Kasane.



“I didn’t expect such a welcome in Botswana and especially not by the President,” said Kwadwo



Ampofo, famously known as DJ Black, when we caught up with him in Botswana’s capital Gaborone where thousands gathered on the opening night in the city’s historic Main Mall, an outdoor shopping and commercial hub, to also enjoy his live performance.



This included the country’s President Mokgweetsi Masisi, who made a mention of the DJ in his welcome address and said: “My wife and I are in our dancing shoes and we are ready to rock!”



Born in New Tafo Akim in the Eastern Region of Ghana in West Africa, DJ Black has also been a broadcast journalist and has an abiding passion for African food, culture and of course, music.



His career started with an invitation to casually deejay at the University of Ghana in Legon, a suburb in Ghanaian capital Accra, one Tuesday night and this turned into a regular set eventually leading him to undertake further studies in mass communication and PR at the University of Ghana, and a master’s degree in media management from the Ghana Institute of Journalism.



“It was important for me to not just DJ, but to also have the formal knowledge to back it up. I wanted to be an example to young people to show them the importance of gaining the practical knowledge; almost like merging street smarts with business school.”



Today, DJ Black is the head of music and entertainment at Joy FM, a radio station in Ghana, where he is responsible for all music content that goes on air.



He also offers a comment on the state of the African music and entertainment industry during our short interview in Gaborone: “We’ve come a long way. The world used to think African music was all about drums and percussion only to now seeing the rise of artists like Wizkid doing partnerships with international artists. We now see people all around the world that listen to Afrobeats, Kwaito, Amapiano and the like.”

Screenshot 2022-05-06 at 17.56.20

‘African Music Not Just About Drums’: Ghana’s DJ Black

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



The stock market moved sharply lower on Thursday, reversing all of its gains from the previous session when the Federal Reserve raised interest rates by a half-percentage point, as volatility remains elevated and investors continue to worry about risks to economic growth.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



The market recorded its worst day since 2020: The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down nearly 3.1%, over 1,000 points, while the S&amp;P 500 lost 3.6% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite 5%.



Thursday’s declines reversed all of the market’s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov/2022/05/04/dow-jumps-600-points-after-federal-reserve-hikes-interest-rates-by-half-percentage-point/?sh=139fde9779ce">gains</a>&nbsp;from a day earlier, when investors cheered a widely anticipated half-percentage point interest rate hike from the Federal Reserve—the largest increase in over two decades.



Despite the Fed’s big&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2022/05/04/fed-authorizes-biggest-interest-rate-hike-in-22-years-to-fight-inflation-amid-violent-stock-sell-off/?sh=58e70b0c1822">announcement</a>, stocks were back down again as investors continued to dump shares of tech companies, which have been especially hard-hit amid the wider market selloff so far this year.



Several e-commerce companies saw shares fall after disappointing first-quarter earnings on Thursday, weighing on market sentiment: Ebay lost nearly 12%, Etsy 17% and Shopify 15%.



Shares of Big Tech companies were also moving sharply lower, with Amazon and Facebook parent Meta falling 7% or more, while Microsoft lost around 4%.



Government bond yields were on the rise amid the heightened uncertainty, with the ten-year Treasury note once again trading above 3%—its highest level since 2018.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



Stocks had surged higher on Wednesday following the Federal Reserve’s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov/2022/05/04/dow-jumps-600-points-after-federal-reserve-hikes-interest-rates-by-half-percentage-point/">rate hike</a>: The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 2.8%, over 900 points, while the S&amp;P 500 gained 3% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite 3.2%. Recent market moves have been extremely choppy, with equities still recovering from a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov/2022/05/02/markets-inch-higher-but-experts-warn-of-continued-volatility-after-brutal-stock-sell-off/">brutal selloff</a>&nbsp;in April. The Dow and S&amp;P 500 both recorded their worst months since March 2020, down 4.9% and 8.8%, respectively, while the Nasdaq posted its worst month since 2008, falling over 13%. Many analysts have warned of rising recession risks, as the Federal Reserve will likely have a tough time aggressively raising interest rates without hurting economic growth.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-crucial-quote">CRUCIAL QUOTE</h2>



“There’s a real battle going on between dip buyers and those that believe there is more downside to come,” says Chris Zaccarelli, chief investment officer at Independent Advisor Alliance. He believes that markets are in a “difficult period” and that there is “still more downside ahead later this year,” though bear market rallies can be “sharp and vicious (for those left behind).”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-to-watch-for">WHAT TO WATCH FOR</h2>



The latest move from the central bank on Wednesday “confirms the base case scenario that the markets incorrectly priced in huge aggressive Fed action this year,” says Jeffrey Roach, chief economist for LPL Financial. Though the Fed said it is “prepared to adjust policy” as needed, “inflation risks linger from the Russian invasion and China’s extreme Covid lockdowns,” Roach adds.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING:</h2>



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov/2022/05/04/dow-jumps-600-points-after-federal-reserve-hikes-interest-rates-by-half-percentage-point/">Dow Jumps 900 Points After Federal Reserve Hikes Interest Rates By Half-Percentage Point</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2022/05/04/fed-authorizes-biggest-interest-rate-hike-in-22-years-to-fight-inflation-amid-violent-stock-sell-off/">Fed Authorizes Biggest Interest Rate Hike In 22 Years To Fight Inflation Amid ‘Violent’ Stock Selloff</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov/2022/05/02/markets-inch-higher-but-experts-warn-of-continued-volatility-after-brutal-stock-sell-off/">Markets Inch Higher—But Experts Warn Of ‘Continued Volatility’ After ‘Brutal’ Stock Selloff</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2022/05/02/stocks-could-plunge-another-15-after-fed-spurred-selloff-will-the-economy-fall-into-recession/">Stocks Could Plunge Another 15% After Fed-Spurred Selloff—Will The Economy Fall Into Recession?</a> (Forbes)



By <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov/"></a>Sergei Klebnikov, Forbes Staff

Markets Open After Falling More 800 Points On Tuesday

Dow Plunges 1,000 Points, Tech Shares Crater As Stocks Erase Gains From Post-Fed Rally

<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-style-large is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">I pray for the people there, for the families of the many hundreds that I had met and for the souls of all those that have passed on during this unfortunate conflict; but more than anything, I pray for the children who have witnessed this brutality as history has reminded us that nothing lingers more than the insidious memories in grieved hearts which may perpetuate into a destructive future.</blockquote>



THE WAR IN Ukraine has dominated the news over the last few weeks. There are no winners in war; sadly, as always, it is people who will suffer. The colossal migration of people, the irreparable loss of life and accompanied suffering, the destruction of infrastructure and the economic disaster ahead all point to the futility of decisions made by leaders who have all lost sight of the greater good.



At the core of all irrational decisions lies man’s eternal desire to look for material benefit beyond what one needs. History has a convoluted mechanism of being documented; regardless of the outcomes, this sad human catastrophe will go down as one of life’s greatest regrets. 



I am a global citizen today and believe strongly that life’s solutions can never be found in death and destruction; so unless we want to go back to the stone ages and reinvent ourselves, sense lies in finding solutions through dialogue and common sense. The one attribute that leaders need to cast aside is their ego and find a way to end this human carnage. 



I am a dreamer by nature and have sublime dreams of life, purity and the greater good. I hope that by the time this article is published we would have the outcomes that we are all praying for and every party to this conflict rediscovers spirituality and redefines their infinite purpose; it cannot be the destruction of humanity and mankind.



Through this difficult period, I want to reflect on fond memories of my time, both in Russia and Ukraine between 1992 and 1996. I want to give historic context by quoting from page 46 of my book Be a Lion:



“As war raged in the Middle East, the Soviet Union was collapsing. Mikhail Gorbachev was a reformist leader, who in 1985 wanted to make changes to the way the Soviet Union was administered. He came up with two principles of change: perestroika, to deal with economic reform, and glasnost, to ease social and media controls. While the principles were laudable, it became impossible for Gorbachev to control the outcome. Media censorship ended in November 1988 and CNN was the first international TV station to be beamed into Russia, in 1989. The subsequent proliferation of media made it almost impossible to control the process of change. The Berlin Wall came down in November 1989 and Russia declared sovereignty on 12 June 1990. On 8 December 1991, the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) was formed. At its conception it consisted of 10 former Soviet republics, namely Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan. Gorbachev resigned as the last president of the Soviet Union on 25 December 1991 and on the following day the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was dissolved.”



Against this backdrop, I spent five years in this region, operating from our base in Dubai; similar to the last 18 years in sub-Saharan Africa. What always amazed me was the wealth in the region; not just the mineral resources but the quality of the people, their education, the research and educational institutions, the architecture in Moscow, Petersburg and Kyiv. In Russia,



I spent time in Moscow, Petersburg, Perm and a few other places like Magnitogorsk in the Urals. In Ukraine, I have lovely memories of my time in Kyiv, Donetsk, Dnepropetrovsk and Odessa; I cannot even imagine what these cities would be looking like today. I pray for the people there, for the families of the many hundreds that I had met and for the souls of all those that have passed on during this unfortunate conflict; but more than anything, I pray for the children who have witnessed this brutality as history has reminded us that nothing lingers more than the insidious memories in grieved hearts which may perpetuate into a destructive future.



It will take a long time for the hearts and minds to heal but what is the future from here and where do we go. I had written when Covid unleashed its fury in 2020 that the pandemic had forced us all into our shells to reflect on what was truly important and find our renewed purpose.



I quote: “The pollution has lifted; we should see our metamorphosis clearly now. Choices are ours to make and we must reconsider our priorities.” In December 2022, I wrote: “As profound as it sounds, through the trials of 2020, business lessons aside, my three visits to my ophthalmologist were symbolic of getting clarity of vision. Covid-19 in my view has been a global visit to our respective ophthalmologists; our vision had become blurred and some corrective procedures have been performed.



We all know the ‘why’, the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ of our circumstances, all that’s left is the ‘will’ to fix things. There is really no brain surgery required. Simply put, it’s all in the implementation of measurable actions with honesty, humility, integrity and honor. Most people I have interacted with unanimously agree that our world is going to change in many ways; consequently, we are likely to adapt to these changes more rapidly than anticipated. It’s our conduct that will define the change that we wish to see.”



Have we not learned anything at all?



The world is not going to be the same after this conflict is behind us. Instead of moving towards a sustainable future, the insecurities are bound to increase. The first ramification is going to be in the global increase in defence spending; some countries have already announced this. Instead of food and water security, healthcare and education, governments are going to catalyse the ‘guns versus butter’ equation in favor of guns. The more worrying part is the monetary realignment. There will be a significant realignment in the geo- political arena; the most immediate is the opportunistic bond between Russia and China (enemy’s enemy is a friend with regards to the US). These two giants with common boundaries, logistic routes and an aligned Mongolia can service each other’s needs without any intermediary platform or help; monetary or otherwise. With Europe largely fragmented and in turmoil, the Indian sub-continent neutral, outside of Japan, US and Germany, there is no other economic power that can challenge this emerging Sino-Russian collaboration.



The other major move that is going to begin is a radical change to self-sufficiency and indigenization. There is far too much dependence today on developed countries to service the needs of the developing world.



It does not take a rocket scientist to understand the insecurity of sanctions; all nations will start preparing for a future that is sustainable and where reliance is within regional alliances. This extends to the business world; everything from franchises and intellectual property will need to be relooked. There is a need to ensure that when any patent of intellectual property is registered, it has value only if it has significant value addition in the country where it is sold failing which it must be cancelled. This will expedite rapid transformation towards indigenization.



While this is a complex subject, one needs to really see the sustainability of financial sanctions on Russia and its trading partners. If sanctions apply to anyone dealing with Russia, the dissemination and evaporation of global economics and financial markets will be faster than any known vaporization in history. So how will this selection or partial selection of sanctions, including those by multinational corporations, work and will the negatively impacted countries accept this hypocrisy; and what moral high ground will those adjudicators have in making these decisions; and where will it leave their leadership in the free world? These dilemmas are real and will need to be addressed in the period ahead or do we expect that the sanctions will be lifted and the principles of humanity are relegated in favor of economic interests? What lessons are we to draw from such futile face-saving actions for the future that are nothing but rhetoric?



Energy in all its forms plays a vital role in global alignments. Other than Venezuela in Latin America, all members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) are in the Middle East and Africa. Oil is a finite resource and OPEC will want to ensure its long-term sustainability and want to remain neutral to sanctions. How will this be impacted if China as the largest consumer of oil, rearranges its purchases largely from Russia (a non-OPEC member)? OPEC has already made its position clear of not increasing oil production which will inflate the price of oil for all countries that toe the line of sanctions. Similarly, the European Union cannot in the short term cut their much-needed gas supplies from Russia. How then can sanctions be a serious consideration; it is likely that they will only apply as convenient.



The US dollar has been the default reserve currency but this is going to change in the medium-term. China was already insecure about this historic imbalance but this conflict and connected sanctions will force alternatives; the shape and form will emerge in the not-so-distant future. It is anticipated that China will surpass the US as the largest economy by 2030, which would likely place the Renminbi as the default reserve currency; will this get catalysed by the current events?



These are just some of the issues that the world will face going forward. As a citizen of the free world, I now question the relevance of institutions like the United Nations that were constituted to bring a form of unity to the world. The League of Nations was formed after World War I and it is recorded in history that the failure of the League of Nations was one of the reasons that resulted in World War II. The United Nations was formed after World War II with the following stated purpose: “The United Nations is an intergovernmental organization aiming to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations. It is the world’s largest and most familiar international organization.”



Is what is happening now because of the complete failure of the United Nations’ role where blocks like the European Union and NATO are playing a more dominant role in the alignment of interests of the developed world? Who will answer to this incongruity and how do we ensure that nations live and remain militarily nonaligned? Is that idealism or a necessity for the future?



Like many of you, I am confused and helpless about our future but more than that, I am concerned about what legacy are we going to leave for our children and future generations?

Rakesh Wahi

Have We Not Learned Anything At All?

After her recent gold at the World Cup in Cairo, 20-year-old South African gymnast Caitlin Rooskrantz tells us what it takes to win, despite injuries and setbacks, even as she looks forward to the 2022 Commonwealth Games.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">Topline</h2>



In a recent interview with FORBES AFRICA, South African gymnast Caitlin Rooskrantz discusses sticking landings, receiving support, her proudest moments and setting her sights on the 2022 Commonwealth Games to be held in Birmingham, England, from July 28 to August 8.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Background</h2>



 In 2019, Rooskrantz became the first South African female artistic gymnast to qualify for the Olympics since 2004. She was 17.



She also won her first gold at a World Cup with the uneven bars at the Artistic Gymnastics Challenge event in Hungary the same year.



“And I think that was one of the biggest highlights of my career, winning that gold medal, because it was so unexpected. I went into that competition with my biggest goal to try and get into the final. And that already for me was goal achieved, anything after was just kind of a bonus,” says Rooskrantz.



A random draw is done for the order of gymnastic performances. She wound up being last, an unenviable position.



“It was really intimidating. My biggest goal for the final was just to enjoy it, taking the moment, and I ended up coming first, which was the cherry on top of all of it.”



She participated in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, not winning a medal, but delivering her personal best.



Her favorite event is the uneven bars.



Comprising of vault, floor, beam and uneven bars; artistic gymnastics is a grueling and difficult sport, injury-prone, and with immense repetition behind the scenes. Crowds only see a few minutes of a clean routine at an event.



She dislocated her knee multiple times, eventually tearing a ligament in her ankle from overcompensating.



Her knee was becoming progressively unstable, so eventually, she opted for surgery. It took her nine months to fully recover, and she couldn’t attend the 2018 Commonwealth Games.



“The thing with being a high-level athlete, I was on bed rest for a week, and after, we got back in the gym; even if it was for an hour a day, I would go to gym every day. I was doing upper body strength, I was doing like rehabilitations in physiology and a lot of mental visualizations to try and keep in the game somehow.



“I made the decision that that was not going to be the end of my career. I was not even halfway there yet. So I really made a full recovery. I haven&#8217;t struggled ever since with my knee again, it&#8217;s been good and I haven’t dislocated it.”



She says she wouldn’t be where she is today without the solid support system of her medical team, her family and friends. She says her sport psychologist is important, as the mental side of a physical injury is just as important to heal.



Speaking on the sacrifices to get where she is, Rooskrantz says she would do it all again.



“It&#8217;s a lot, you know, to get to that point that we all want to get to. But I can also definitely say having gone to the Olympics and achieved my lifelong dream, it was all worth it. I would do it again, in a heartbeat, to relive that Olympic dream again.”



Only 20 years old, Rooskrantz landed a gold for uneven bars at the 2022 FIG Artistic Gymnastics World Cup in Cairo, Egypt.



“I think nothing compares to having to stand on the podium on an international stage and hearing your anthem play. It&#8217;s very rare, because gymnastics is not a big sport in South Africa. And we are not usually amongst the top five or 10. That&#8217;s always one of my proudest moments, is standing, hearing the anthem playing, knowing, I did that, myself!”



Rooskrantz is going as an all-round gymnast to the Commonwealth Games in 2022. She says she’s working tirelessly, upgrading her routines to get more difficulty in and become more internationally competitive on uneven bars.



“Because I am capable of it. It&#8217;ll be my first Commonwealth Games. I&#8217;m really excited. I hope that I can really showcase my best routine and I don&#8217;t know more or less what the competition standard is like, but I’ll try my best to challenge for a podium finish,” she concludes, confidently.

Tokyo 2020 Olympics – Previews – Day -1

Raising The Bar: South African Gymnast On Gold And Getting On With The Sport

IN MARCH, AFRICAN PHILANTHROPIST AND SOCIAL entrepreneur, Tsitsi Masiyiwa, and other world philanthropists came together to raise $1 billion to advance gender equality and women’s leadership. The organization, Co-Impact, launched The Gender Fund to bring significant resources into a grossly underfunded space and address “gendered systems” – the underlying norms, laws, practices, sanctions, and decision-making processes that lead to systematic barriers and persistent discrimination against women and girls.



According to the organization, “while funding for gender equality has been rising over the last decade, only 1% of that funding has reached women’s organizations”.



Masiyiwa spoke to FORBES AFRICA about the fund stating that what attracted her to the initiative is the big focus on women.



“I believe that the world is made a better place when there’s justice and inclusivity. In the world, everybody has the potential to thrive. So, the attraction was number one, the agenda that we are focusing on women and girls and empowering, encouraging them to go into places of leadership, encouraging them to use their voices, and exercise their power. So that really inspired me,” Masiyiwa says.



According to Co-Impact, this kind of fund aims to transform systems to be “more just and inclusive” so that at least 100 million people have better healthcare, quality education, and the opportunity to thrive – regardless of their gender, class, ethnicity, or race. The fund will support organizations across Africa, Asia and Latin America to advance their vision for change.



“And as an African, I said to myself,” Masiyiwa adds, “I may not have the kind of dollars that some of the partners are bringing in. But what’s important is if we’re going to have a seat at the table and have our voices heard, we have to also have skin in the game.”



Masiyiwa says her philanthropist spirit began at the same time her husband, Strive Masiyiwa, London-based Zimbabwean billionaire businessman and philanthropist, wanted to set up a mobile telephone company.



In the midst of this, Masiyiwa and her family were also going through some personal setbacks.



“During that time, we had the AIDS pandemic. And I saw a lot of my family members, neighbors, employees [impacted]. And combined with that, I think it got me to do some deep soul-searching and go on a spiritual journey, which landed the best way because I found that I could express my compassion and love and deal with the difficulties and the pain through helping others who are more vulnerable,” she says.



Besides Masiyiwa, other collaborators of the fund include Melinda French Gates and the Bill &amp; Melinda Gates Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation and Indian billionaire Roshni Nadar Malhotra, just to name a few.



In a press statement, Olivia Leland, Founder and CEO of Co-Impact, says the mission of the fund is to deliver on the ambition of a world where system and societies are just and inclusive.



“To make progress on gender equality, we need systemic change in the structures, laws, and policies and processes of government, in how markets function, and how social norms are shaped and enforced,” Leland says.



“We need change to happen at every level of society. And it starts with opening more doors for women to step into their power and craft policies that lift others up like them. This is our once in a generation chance to rebuild our systems to finally work for women and girls,” Melinda Gates added in the statement.



“Why gender fund?” Masiyiwa tells us.



“Because the need is so great. The need is now. The need is massive and to not do anything is doing a huge disservice to the next generation. So we owe it to the younger generation.”

heather.32.final

‘The Need Is So Great’:Tsitsi Masiyiwa On New Gender Fund

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



Severe Covid cases may cause cognitive impairment equivalent to aging 20 years and losing 10 IQ points, according to a new&nbsp;<a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S258953702200147X" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">study</a>&nbsp;conducted by researchers at the University of Cambridge and Imperial College London, adding to a growing body of evidence that coronavirus infections can lead to long-term cognitive and mental health issues.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



The study, published in the journal eClinicalMedicine, found survivors of severe Covid-19 infections had cognitive impairments similar to aging that occurs between the ages of 50 to 70.



Cognitive impairments were even worse for those who had been put on a ventilator while they were infected, researchers found.



The study compared 46 patients between the ages of 28 to 83, who were hospitalized between March 10 to July 31 2021, to more than 66,000 members of the general public, and found cognitive impairments for those with severe Covid sometimes persisted more than six months, and patients improved slowly, if at all.



The results suggest patients recovering from severe coronavirus infections may need longer-term care for cognitive deficits, according to the researchers.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-crucial-quote">CRUCIAL QUOTE</h2>



“Cognitive impairment is common to a wide range of neurological disorders, including dementia, and even routine [aging]&nbsp;, but the patterns we saw—the cognitive &#8216;fingerprint&#8217; of COVID-19—was distinct from all of these,” the study’s senior author, David Menon, a professor at the University of Cambridge, said in a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/951275" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">statement</a>.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



A growing body of research shows people recovering from severe Covid can experience a range of long-term mental health and cognitive symptoms including depression, anxiety, brain fog, fatigue and other issues. A&nbsp;<a href="https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20211025/brain-fog-months-covid" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">study</a>&nbsp;of 740 people with no history of memory problems conducted by the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in October 2021 found some patients treated for Covid still had high rates of brain fog more than seven months after diagnosis. Previous studies have also&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2022/02/16/unvaccinated-more-likely-to-get-long-covid-and-suffer-symptoms-for-longer-studies-find/?sh=13579aaf49e6">shown</a>&nbsp;unvaccinated people are more likely to develop long-term Covid symptoms than those who are vaccinated. The study from the University of Cambridge and Imperial College London is one of the first comprehensive inquiries into the long-term effects of severe Covid, finding that the severity of a coronavirus infection is linked to the severity of the after effects.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-we-don-t-know">WHAT WE DON’T KNOW</h2>



Exactly what causes long-term Covid cognitive effects. The body’s inflammatory response and immune system are potential pathways, but researchers said future studies should focus on “mapping” cognitive deficits to underlying issues in the body and inflammatory biomarkers.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://news.sky.com/story/severe-cases-of-covid-causing-cognitive-impairment-equivalent-to-ageing-20-years-new-study-finds-12604629" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Severe cases of COVID causing cognitive impairment equivalent to ageing 20 years, new study finds</a>&nbsp;(Sky News)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2022/02/16/unvaccinated-more-likely-to-get-long-covid-and-suffer-symptoms-for-longer-studies-find/?sh=13579aaf49e6">Unvaccinated More Likely To Get Long Covid—And Suffer Symptoms For Longer—Studies Find</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



By Madeline Halpert, Forbes Staff

PALESTINIAN-HEALTH-VIRUS-VACCINE

Severe Covid Can Drop Your IQ 10 Points, Study Suggests

Art can have many expressions. Jacqueline Suowari’s is as a draughtswoman, with larger- than-life drawings using a ballpoint pen.



FOR AS LONG AS JACQUELINE SUOWARI CAN remember, she had wanted to become an artist. Born in Zaria in Kaduna State, Nigeria, Suowari developed a passion for art the moment she chanced upon a sculpture made by local artists in her neighborhood. Her only problem was convincing everybody else that this was what she was born to do. This was when she was only nine.



“I said I wanted to be an artist, and literally had to fight that battle with everyone. I was being ignored by everyone because they thought I was a child and they wouldn’t take me seriously. Even when I didn’t know what it entailed or what it meant, I stuck to it,” says Suowari.



As she was leaving secondary school for university, her teachers too tried to convince her otherwise.



“But I had to stand my ground and say that being an artist is the thing I want to do even in the face of the impending doom they painted. I knew I wouldn’t be happy doing anything else.”



As the years passed, she eventually became a painter, but that too led her to reinventing herself.



“I went to school as a painter, I trained as a painter. I was second-best graduating student in my department as a painter, and then I finished and then three years down the line, I realized I was not happy. Yes, I went to school, I studied fine art, I am a painter but I am not happy. After some serious introspection, I found out that it was drawing that made me happy. It wasn’t the painting. And I wasn’t drawing anymore because I was now a painter.”



She read a profile on Toyin Odutola, a Nigerian-American contemporary visual artist known for her vivid drawings on work and paper, and that brought Suowari back to her childhood calling.



“She draws with a ball point pen and I saw on her bio on Twitter the word &#8216;draughtswoman’ and that was the first time I saw that. I checked it in the dictionary and at thetimetherewasn’t any word like that,” says Suowari.



That was the light bulb moment she needed. 



It took Suowari a while to find her style but 



once she did, things began to slowly materialize. “At the time, nobody was buying my drawings. Imagine what it’s



like to build four years as a painter and then stop and start again as a draughtswoman. It was crazy but I wanted to draw so I kept on doing work, getting better and building on my skills. I found out my passion was to do bigger work, not just small ones. I wanted to go bigger and bigger to a point where I couldn’t find paper to draw on in Nigeria.”



She started importing paper that could take the size of the drawings she wanted to create. This was her new-found love for drawing with a ballpoint pen.



Alongside, Suowari also offered children art lessons to pay the bills until she got her first big break.



“People were saying nobody has houses with this kind of space and nobody will buy [the drawings]. But I thought to myself, my market is not just restricted to Nigeria. Yes, I’m a Nigerian in Nigeria but I’m making art for the world and the owners of these paintings will find me. When you are passionate about something, you don’t put the money in front, you put the passion in front,” says Suowari.



And she was right. Suowari was signed up between 2014 and 2017 by the Avant Gallery in New York. Today, she is a name in contemporary art exhibitions in Nigeria and overseas; selling from between $10,000 to $40,000 depending on the size of each work.



Her larger-than-life pieces are overlaid with beautiful colors and are in demand but for Suowari, nothing is better than the joy of picking up a ballpoint pen; it’s the same joy she discovered as a wide- eyed nine year old.

Screenshot 2022-05-03 at 13.20.33

The Draughtswoman Making Her Point In Art

<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-topline">TOPLINE</h2>



Elon Musk is looking for additional equity financing for his planned $44 billion purchase of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/twitter/?sh=2f10336d22a3">Twitter</a>, Reuters&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/exclusive-musk-talks-new-twitter-financing-sources-2022-05-02/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reported</a>&nbsp;Monday, which could allow the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/elon-musk/">billionaire</a>&nbsp;to reduce the amount of his&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbesindia.com/article/news/musk-offloads-4-billion-in-tesla-shares-after-twitter-deal/75805/1" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">own money</a>&nbsp;bound up in the acquisition without taking out more loans.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



The&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/tesla/">Tesla</a>&nbsp;CEO has&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/exclusive-musk-talks-new-twitter-financing-sources-2022-05-02/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">approached</a>&nbsp;investment firms including&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/apollo-global-management/?sh=5a842bd17358">Apollo Global Management</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/ares-management/">Ares Management</a>, Reuters reported, citing unnamed sources.



Musk is reportedly communicating with hedge funds, private equity companies and wealthy individuals about the possibility of obtaining equity financing.



Musk has offered to pay for Twitter through&nbsp;<a href="https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001418091/000110465922048128/tm2213229d1_sc13da.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">$21 billion</a>&nbsp;in equity financing, in addition to a $12.5 billion&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/advisor/investing/elon-musk-to-acquire-twitter-twtr/">margin loan</a>&nbsp;against part of his&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattdurot/2022/04/26/why-elon-musk-is-already-26-billion-poorer-because-hes-buying-twitter/">21% stake</a>&nbsp;in Tesla and $13 billion in loans secured against Twitter assets.



Some banks that offered to support the acquisition with loans secured against Twitter have hesitated to provide additional debt financing,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/exclusive-musk-talks-new-twitter-financing-sources-2022-05-02/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Reuters</a>&nbsp;reported, noting that banks think Twitter did not generate sufficient cash flow to justify more loans.



However, Reuters said Musk is still deliberating on whether to enlist equity partners to help shoulder his own $21 billion share of funding for the Twitter acquisition.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tangent">TANGENT</h2>



Musk has also contacted major Twitter shareholders—including founder&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/jack-dorsey/?sh=4d4b5b992372">Jack Dorsey</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/companies/fidelity-investments/?sh=234e8055370a">Fidelity</a>—about the prospect of holding onto their stakes in the company’s new structure, Reuters&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/exclusive-musk-talks-new-twitter-financing-sources-2022-05-02/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reported</a>. Musk has previously&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-14/the-twitter-investors-musk-hopes-to-keep-may-not-want-to-stay" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">suggested</a>&nbsp;that he wants to retain as many existing Twitter shareholders as possible following the planned acquisition.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



Musk disclosed April 4 he had acquired a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2022/04/04/elon-musk-acquires-92-stake-in-twitter/">9.2%</a>&nbsp;stake in Twitter, and later made his&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/masonbissada/2022/04/26/musks-twitter-purchase-includes-1-billion-fee-if-deal-falls-through/?sh=7872cf3eb15a">“best and final offer”</a>&nbsp;to purchase the entire company for&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2022/04/25/twitter-elon-musk-takeover-bid-deal-43-billion-54-20/?sh=191965d8b680">$54.20 per share</a>&nbsp;The board first adopted a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/twitter-moves-to-block-elon-musk-from-increasing-stake-11650040204?mod=article_inline" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">“poison pill”</a>&nbsp;defense to deter a hostile takeover, but several days after Musk announced he had secured&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2022/04/21/elon-musk-has-secured-465-billion-in-financing-for-twitter-bid-considers-tender-offer/?sh=2a43ef2316a4">$46.5 billion</a>&nbsp;in financing, the board accepted his offer. Despite setting a lofty goal of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/10/technology/twitter-earnings-4q-2021.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">doubling revenue</a>&nbsp;from 2021 to 2023, Twitter’s growth has&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2022/04/27/twitters-first-quarter-earnings-sojust-how-bad-are-they/">lagged</a>&nbsp;expectations. In the&nbsp;<a href="https://s22.q4cdn.com/826641620/files/doc_financials/2022/q1/Final-Q1%E2%80%9922-earnings-release.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">first quarter</a>&nbsp;of 2022, Twitter’s revenue grew by 16% year-over-year to $1.2 billion. The company’s net income grew 655% year-over-year to $513 million, though this growth was due mostly to a gain of $970 million from the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/martyswant/2021/10/06/twitter-is-selling-its-mobile-ad-network-mopub-to-applovin-for-105-billion/">sale</a>&nbsp;of the mobile ad network MoPub, and the company reported an operating loss of $128 million in the first quarter. Musk said he intends to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/musk-told-banks-he-will-rein-twitter-pay-make-money-tweets-sources-2022-04-29/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">boost</a>&nbsp;Twitter’s profitability by offering new opportunities to monetize tweets and that he intends to cut costs by reducing Twitter board member salaries from roughly&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov/2022/05/02/musk-criticizes-twitters-executive-compensation-heres-how-it-compares-to-rivals-meta-snap-and-alphabet/">$290,000</a>&nbsp;to&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1516056299376623626?s=20&amp;t=gPll1s9GF3Pt_5KAO4G7iw" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">$0</a>.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-big-number">BIG NUMBER</h2>



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/elon-musk/">$253.6 billion.</a>&nbsp;That’s how much Musk is worth, making him the world’s richest person, according to&nbsp;Forbes’ estimates. His stakes in Tesla and SpaceX account for most of his fortune.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicholasreimann/2022/04/29/how-musk-already-owns-twitter-the-8-top-tweets-in-the-past-week/">“How Musk Already Owns Twitter: The 8 Top Tweets In The Past Week”</a> (Forbes)



By <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/zacharysmith/"></a>Zachary Snowdon Smith, Forbes Staff

Economic Photo Illustrations

Musk Reportedly Seeks More Financing For Twitter Acquisition

Technical analysis has become a go-to strategy for many traders to build strategies and gauge market strategy. It is a broad subject, but at its core technical analysis relies on the use of charting tools and indicators to gauge market momentum and trends. This information can then be used to identify buy and sell signals, as well as getting an early sense of when market sentiment is starting to shift.



However, technical analysis is not without is criticisms, especially when it comes to crypto. Indicators can be wrong, or send off conflicting signals. Additionally, crypto’s relatively short lifespan, especially beyond Bitcoin and Ethereum, provide little historical data to test strategies and assumptions. Additionally, concerns surrounding wash trading and market manipulation, although know unique to crypto, can be problematic.



One of the industry leaders in providing crypto-specific technical analysis is Katie Stockton, founder and managing partner of Fairlead Strategies, LLC, an independent research firm and investment advisor. I spoke with her to learn how she approaches these challenges and what she has learned in her coverage of crypto.



SPECIAL OFFER: For expert insights into the latest crypto and blockchain developments, crypto and equity model portfolios, and exclusive interviews subscribe today to our premium research service,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/newsletters/forbescryptoassetadvisor/?sh=48525336dec8">Forbes CryptoAsset and Blockchain Advisor</a>.



Forbes: What does technical analysis actually mean?



Stockton:&nbsp;I hate to say it but I wish it wasn&#8217;t called technical analysis because I think it&#8217;s mistaken for things that are technical as it pertains to technology. Charting is more accurate as a description of what we do. We see technical analysis as one discipline of several that can be used to understand markets, and its goal is primarily to understand price trends and where there may be inflection points as well as potential areas of buying and selling pressure.



And we&#8217;re doing that through an understanding of supply and demand. The way you understand supply and demand is by simply analyzing price. The only other data point that the market lends itself to in technicals is volume, but our focus is on price. We use a number of technical indicators to take out some of the gray area of the markets, and because they give you a binary buy or sell signal. We welcome that since the takeaway is usually black and white.



Forbes: What are some of those indicators?



Stockton:&nbsp;I’ll give you sort of the big picture and how I think about technical indicators. I classify them in three ways: trend following, overbought/oversold conditions and relative strength. We have probably two or three for each category. I always tell people, you don&#8217;t want to have too many indicators that are trying to get the same answer, because then you’ll find some confirmation bias and or duplication in what you’re doing. And remember, this is all based on price. So you also don’t want to get too many derivatives away from price. One of the indicators I use for trend following is the MACD, which stands for moving average convergence divergence.



Here is what it means: We want to buy things that are going up and to the right. Very simply, we want to buy things that are going to go higher, and a trend has this inherent momentum to it. Suffice it to say that when something has momentum, you should make the assumption that it will continue to do so. And that’s the momentum inherent to trends. So, you really genuinely want to buy things that are working their way higher, and you want to sell things that are in downtrend or working their way lower. That is trend following. We have indicators to understand if those trends are still strong. And the indicators tend to be based on moving averages of price, including the MACD moving average convergence, divergence and the moving averages are basically look backs using historical prices. What we’ve found is that some of the indicators that are derived from them can really help isolate important shifts and trends. And not only do we want to buy securities that are going up, we want to know when to sell them. The indicators can help us know when those trends are shifting.



Here is an example using&nbsp;bitcoin&nbsp;(BTC)&nbsp;on the monthly chart. Bitcoin has suffered a loss of long-term upside momentum according to the monthly MACD indicator, which crossed over in a “sell” signal in January. The indicator has an inherent lag to it, but it is designed to identify major shifts in trend. The last “buy” signal occurred in July 2020 and was followed by a strong up move.



Forbes: What are some of the other buckets?



Stockton:&nbsp;For the overbought/oversold piece of it, we tend to gravitate towards the stochastic oscillator. Here the goal is to look at where security is closing relative to a high/low range to see where it has been over that period of time. If it continually closes near the high end of that range, it supposedly gets more overbought—talk about an overused word; same with the word oversold. I would say overbought and oversold are almost misnomers and that, overbought isn&#8217;t necessarily a bad thing. When something is overbought, it is a reflection of momentum. And there&#8217;s a reading based on the stochastic oscillator that is an actual overbought reading. And it&#8217;s an oscillator between zero and 100%. Above 80% is overbought, and we don&#8217;t mind that. In fact, we sort of like to see something overbought above 80%. What we don’t like to see in terms of following a trend or an uptrend is that reversal back down. So it’s when that overbought reading gives way to a downtick or a downturn, that’s when we feel we have some kind of sell signal.



We rely on this stochastic oscillator to help us understand when an overbought reading is finally taking its toll on price (and vice versa) and to help us identify good entry points in stocks or securities that had been trending lower. Of course, we have a lot of people watching, as an example, bitcoin or high growth stocks, for some kind of turnaround. In those cases, they want to know if this downtrend that we&#8217;ve seen is at the point where it’s oversold enough that it’s going to turn the corner. We can use this stochastic oscillator to get us to that answer in a way that is not our opinion, it’s just a reflection of what this mathematical gauge is telling us.



Here is an example of the stochastic oscillator using&nbsp;ether (ETH). Ether has made a lower high associated with a downturn in the weekly stochastic oscillator from overbought territory above 80%. This tends to be a setback with a duration of several weeks as it pertains to the weekly bar chart. Ether was oversold as recently as March, when risk assets bottomed, but the rally was fleeting. We see upturns and downturns in the stochastics as catalysts.



Forbes: What happens if you get mixed signals?



Stockton:&nbsp;There’s a degree of subjectivity depending on the state of the market, such as whether it’s a trending market or a sideways market. In a trending market, you should give more weight to momentum gauges, trend following gauges and moving average based gauges. A range bound environment, which is where an oscillating measure like the market breadth measure or the stochastic oscillator, will be a little bit more valuable.



Forbes: The crypto market can be fragmented. How do you make sure that you are looking at accurate prices?



Stockton:&nbsp;That&#8217;s a good question. I always like to review what most people are looking at, such as a mainstream exchange. And honestly, usually, the first thing that you pull up, if you were to type in a ticker, is usually the primary exchange on which this instrument is traded. We primarily use Coinbase for bitcoin and ether.



Forbes: The transparency of blockchains has led to an explosion of technical indicators that are available to traders. Do you use any or do you just focus on price?



Stockton:&nbsp;We just focus on price. And that’s across the board for all asset classes, not just cryptocurrencies. We’re interested in reading about things like these emerging trends because they also help you make an informed decision. So it’s not to say we don’t agree with using that as an input. It’s just not really what our expertise is. One reason that the equity market is great for us is because there’s so much data around it. You get not just price data, but you also get what we call market internals. Market participation/sentiment can be measured either as an investor poll, like how you feel or it can be like a transactional gauge of how people are positioned like using the volatility index or put call ratios. So we have this abundance of data for these market internals for the equity market, just because of how long it’s been around, in part. We don’t yet have the same level of price history for cryptocurrencies, but we also don&#8217;t have all these data points that we would consider to be market internals. And it would be really helpful if we did.



Forbes: I’m sure you’ve seen some of the criticisms of technical analysis when it comes to crypto, such as the challenges presented by such a shallow pool of data. How do you adapt to this?



Stockton:&nbsp;The good news about the short history of bitcoin and others is that we’ve actually had some cyclicality already within that context. I call it time compression, the moves that used to take six months now take two months, and then those that take two months run their course in two weeks. I think the more price history, the better. But as long as you’re capturing different types of environments you can still build models around it. And you can still trust your indicators, as long as you have enough signals to analyze. The technical indicators, at least the ones we use, should theoretically carry over to anything that has a price and liquidity. So there’s definitely going to be nuances or maybe a certain timeframe just matters a bit more for one security than the next, but overall, you should see that transference of the methodology be pretty seamless, especially bitcoin and ether, obviously, like deep liquid markets. Others should still carry over pretty equally unless liquidity is so thin that you see a chart that has a lot of gaps on it, not just a gap up in response to news, because that’s kind of normal at times, but gaps throughout a trend as well.



Forbes: I&#8217;m sure you&#8217;re aware of wash trading and other ways that people try to manipulate the markets. How do you try to account for that, especially for assets that might be a little less known and less trustworthy that trade primarily on exchanges that aren&#8217;t necessarily based in the U.S. or have strong regulatory credentials?



Stockton:&nbsp;That would be concerning if we’re looking at something that we don’t trust. So we would probably avoid that at all costs, if we can. The price is the price. If the volumes are strong enough to move the price, we care about that. And as mentioned, we’re not really looking at volumes as much anyway.



Forbes: It is impossible for someone to be right 100% of the time. But I’m curious if you have any sense of what your success rate is or if you find your predictions in crypto being more or less accurate than in traditional markets.



Stockton:&nbsp;I don’t have a way to measure my accuracy ratio, per se, because I’ve always been a publishing research analyst, money manager until very recently. So now, as you know, as a money manager, we have a way to track records.&nbsp;The company recently launched the Fairlead Tactical Sector ETF (TACK) that tracks technical trends across asset classes.&nbsp;But what you hope is that people will subscribe to your research and follow your calls if you&#8217;re right, more often than not.



We will be wrong at times, but we’d like to think that we don’t stay wrong for very long because the indicators don’t let us. The indicators will keep you honest. We don’t try to be ultra predictive, but rather just keep people on the right side of trends, give them some risk metrics to watch and some objectives, perhaps based on the current action, talk about catalysts, etc. So we’re not saying we think bitcoin will be at price X by year end—we don’t add value that way or have that crystal ball. But when people can follow the views in a consistent manner, that’s where the real benefit can be.



By Steven Ehrlich, Forbes Staff

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Tanzania-born Franck Leya, the co-founder and Managing Director of Honest Travel Experience in South Africa, has had an interesting journey and is now working towards getting people to experience the continent on solar-powered scooters.



BY NAFISA AKABOR



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-style-large is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">I was not a fan of how tourism was being done in the inner city because a lot of what people were consuming was poverty porn, which is showing people a bad side of something while you capitalize&#8230;</blockquote>



FRANCK LEYA’S FIRST TRAVEL EXPERIENCE BEGAN in the late 1990s as a refugee who had to flee the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) out of fear that his father, a political journalist, would be executed.



“My passion for travel pretty much started as an immigrant. After my dad was charged with treason, we began migrating to African countries depending on the diplomatic relationships the countries had,” says Leya to FORBES AFRICA.



A Congolese born in Tanzania, Leya had to travel by bus and foot over the years, having lived in Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and Angola, before reaching his final stop: Johannesburg.



“When we arrived in South Africa, it was different because my dad had gotten asylum. The laws here were different when compared to other African countries,” says Leya. “My love for storytelling began because I migrated so much that everywhere I went, I had all these cool stories I wanted to share.”



Growing up in Johannesburg, his mother warned him to be aware of certain places and buildings, says Leya.



“As much as the inner city was considered ‘dangerous’, it was the only place I could call home due to its diversity and acceptance of all people.”



Walking distance from his home was the iconic Ponte Tower, which he refers to as ‘The United States of Africa’.



“I was constantly reminded that if I don’t do well, I’ll end up in that building. At the time, the building was a symbol of failure,” says Leya.



“Curiosity led me to move into this building later on, which gave me the opportunity to challenge people’s perception about my neighborhood and to expose them to the beauty of the inner city,” he says.



Leya eventually won a scholarship to attend St. John’s College in Johannesburg, where he used to sneak his friends out of rugby festivals to give them tours of Yeoville and when the demand grew, he began charging for it. “The first tour I ran was in 2013, I took a group of college boys for a Yeoville nightlife experience.”



While studying Economics and Ecometrics through Unisa, Leya met his mentor at Ernst &amp; Young, who had started a tourism company called Dlala Nje. He was employed as a tour guide, while living at Ponte City.



“I was not a fan of how tourism was being done in the inner city because a lot of what people were consuming was poverty porn, which is showing people a bad side of something while you capitalize and make money from it,” he says. “Essentially what was being sold was my reality. I felt like it could be done better. This is what inspired my brand.”



Leya worked at Dlala Nje for five years but after graduating, started his tour company, Honest Travel Experience. It has been operating since January 2019, with experiences offered in Cape Town, Durban, and Johannesburg. It includes walking, bike and electric scooter tours that cover food, history, graffiti, nightlife, arts, and markets.



He credits Airbnb Experiences with helping him grow, which eventually brought in bookings daily for this Johannesburg nightlife tour.



As a fan of technology, he began offering virtual tours before Covid hit, which subsequently turned into Zoom tours, silent discos and hosting international guests through online forums during lockdown.



“The pandemic took our 10-year plan to two years, we were already equipped for these instances, like reaching international schools to give them an African experience without actually being here.”



“When we read the Covid protocols, they fit in with our checklists like social distancing, smaller groups, and being outdoors. We’ve always been considerate of two things: the planet and the people. A lot of people who buy our products are conscious travelers.”



The right circumstances led Honest Travel Experience to offer e-scooter tours through a partner.



“It allowed us to make an impact quicker on a traveler that had very little time in Johannesburg. It has now evolved into something beyond us.”



Leya and his business partners decided to cut out the middleman and use their last bit of funds to invest in their own fleet of e-scooters to keep tours affordable and accessible. The company owns 58 scooters.



“We are in the second stage of launching and getting more investors to come on board so that we can launch the e-scooters as a short distance travel model in Johannesburg.



“We are also looking at ways to make the scooters solar powered. E-scooters could revolutionize how people view short distance travel within Africa, which is ideally where we’d like to branch out to.



“It was a strategic decision we made to pursue this idea of moving into transportation. That money could have done wonders for our business in the travel space, but I genuinely believe this is the new way. E-scooters on the African continent will get people thinking differently.”



Leya is confident that the company will receive their first sample of a solar-powered scooter by June 2022. “The goal after that is to mass-produce it and get it to the rest of Africa.”



Honest Travel facilitates tours using hosts but partners with locals in each city for authentic experiences. “It’s always been a partnership for us, we don’t compete with each other. We create jobs within the local communities that we operate in.



“I believe I can use tourism as a catalyst for building communities and changing the narrative of this beautiful continent through a fair trade between visitors and communities.”

Screenshot 2022-05-02 at 08.57.24

The Itinerant African Entrepreneur On A Solar Scooter

In a surprising move, the Central African Republic has become the first African nation and second country worldwide to adopt Bitcoin as recognized currency.



The landlocked nation of the Central African Republic (CAR) has become one of only two countries to adopt the cryptocurrency Bitcoin as legal tender, joining El Salvador in pioneering recognized use. While not criminalized in most nations, few countries have introduced and published regulation to govern Bitcoin\s use and normalize it alongside fiat currency.



“[this is] a decisive step toward opening up new opportunities for our country,&#8221; said a statement signed by Obed Namsio, Chief of Staff to CAR President Faustin-Archange Touadera.



The former French colony of the CAR only gained its independence late in the 1960s and has been wracked by an ongoing civil war since 2012. While rich in natural resources such as gold and diamonds, the country ranks amongst some of the worst in the world in terms of its GDP and internationally recognized development indices, which makes the supposed adoption of Bitcoin an interesting proposal.



Early reports indicated that the proposed bill to legalize and regulate bitcoin as legal tender has passed unanimously in a vote by lawmakers and confirmed by the Presidency yesterday, bringing Bitcoin alongside the West African Franc as recognized tender. The West African Franc is a regional currency governed by the Bank of Central African States (BEAC) and backed by France, neither of whom were reported to be informed of the bill to adopt Bitcoin.



The BEAC has not yet responded to queries from FORBES AFRICA.



Reports are that the utility of such an adoption is likely to be limited. Just over 4% of CAR nationals have access to the internet (World Bank, 2019), a prerequisite for cryptocurrency exchange. The combination of lack of accessibility and discussion with BEAC before the adoption do not bring high hopes for widespread use of Bitcoin within the country.



Since the election of President Touadera, CAR has reportedly become increasingly close to Russia, its preferred ally in fighting the ongoing insurgency since 2017. The adoption of Bitcoin could represent a more symbolic move away from French interests within the country, as it equates as tender the French-backed West African Franc and Bitcoin.



African governments have taken differing approaches to the adoption and regulation of cryptocurrencies, with South African regulators currently exploring blockchain technologies and already taxing earnings through cryptocurrencies, while Nigeria has launched its own digital currency, the eNaira.

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