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West Africa Bankrolled Europe's Recovery. The Reckoning Is Now a Financial Architecture.
The colonial sterling balance system extracted billions from Nigeria and Ghana to stabilize postwar Britain. The same structural premium costs Africa $74.5 billion a year in 2026. The institution being built to end it issued its governance framework this February.
The Pulse
The Pulse is your weekday briefing on what's moving across Black American and African business. We cut through the noise to deliver the market moves, funding rounds, policy shifts, and leadership changes that matter to founders, operators, executives, and investors building across the diaspora.
The Week Ahead
The Week Ahead is your Sunday briefing on the economic, business, and cultural developments worth tracking in the coming week. Before Monday hits, you'll know what earnings are dropping, what policy decisions are pending, what events matter, and what market signals to watch across Black American and African business.
Yesterday's Architects
Yesterday's Architects is a biographical series honoring the Black and African entrepreneurs, executives, and innovators who laid the foundation before us. These are the builders history often overlooks — the dealmakers, the institution founders, the strategists who created industries and wealth across the diaspora when the odds were designed against them.
Jordan C. Jackson Jr.: The Self-Taught Slave Who Became Lexington's First Black Undertaker — Then Took on Jim Crow
He taught himself to read and write in secret. He became a lawyer, newspaper editor, funeral director, and Republican National Convention delegate. He stood before the Kentucky legislature in 1892 and fought a segregation law. He credited his wife for everything.
Eliza Allen: She Built America's First Black Bank — Starting in Slavery
Before the Civil War, she organized secret mutual aid societies for enslaved women in the Virginia night. After it, she helped charter the first Black-owned bank in the United States. She did it all while working as a laundress.
Today's Builders
Today's Builders profiles the founders, operators, investors, and executives shaping Black and African business right now. These are the leaders closing rounds, launching platforms, entering new markets, and building institutions across the diaspora economy in real time.
He Ran a $23 Billion Business Unit. Then He Tried to Run the NAACP.
Bruce S. Gordon spent 35 years climbing from management trainee to president of Verizon's retail division — overseeing $23 billion in annual revenue and 35,000 employees. When he walked into the NAACP in 2005, he was the most powerful corporate executive ever to hold the role. He lasted 19 months.
He Built the Bible of Black Business From a $250,000 Bank Loan and a Blank Page
Earl G. Graves Sr. did not inherit a media company. He created the category. In August 1970, with a loan from Chase Manhattan Bank, a small staff, and a mission that had no commercial precedent, he put the first issue of Black Enterprise on newsstands.
She Built the App That Puts Every Streaming Service in One Place. Then She Drove It Into a Porsche.
Rose Hulse founded ScreenHits TV in London in 2012 when the streaming wars hadn't yet been named. By 2023 she had signed the first global deal to put a TV streaming platform inside a car — and done it in 56 countries at once.
She Started on the Ramp Loading Luggage. She Ended Up Running the Company.
Stephanie Chung spent more than thirty years in aviation — parking planes at Boston Logan as a teenager, selling corporate accounts for US Airways at 25, generating $835 million in revenue at Flexjet, becoming the first African American president of a private aviation company and more.Latest Articles
West Africa Bankrolled Europe's Recovery. The Reckoning Is Now a Financial Architecture.
The colonial sterling balance system extracted billions from Nigeria and Ghana to stabilize postwar Britain. The same structural premium costs Africa $74.5 billion a year in 2026. The institution being built to end it issued its governance framework this February.
