African money looking for places to invest | Local News

The inaugural Afro Vibe Festival will start today at Marina Park, showcasing the wide range of growing black-owned businesses throughout Northern Ontario.On Friday afternoon, the two-day event kicked off in Thunder Bay with a visit from Chamirai Charles Nyabeze, the chief executive officer of the Northern Ontario Black Economic Empowerment Program (NOBEEP), who spoke about the programs and services NOBEEP offers. He was joined by MP Patty Hajdu, minister of jobs and families and minister responsible for the federal economic development agency for Northern Ontario.Nyabeze explained how the NOBEEP program began in 2021 to empower black entrepreneurs in business and to give black people an opportunity to obtain some crucial context around obtaining services, and someone to listen to their business ideas.”We want to level the playing field of access,” Nyabeze said.”New immigrants don’t have any networks set up in this country, so part of our job is to try and raise the profile of the black people and network them so that they can gain access to people to share with them their best practices on how to do business in Canada.”He noted that most of the black immigrants coming into the country are not coming in because they’re wealthy.”They’re coming from a place where their life was hard for them, and to start a business is sometimes not necessarily a first choice,” he said.”When you look at wealth in Canada, it’s really concentrated amongst business owners and not so much the wage makers. So there is something about the culture here and wealth building that requires someone to have access to business support and resources to build businesses.”Nyabeze added that the black economic empowerment program is open for mentors such as established black entrepreneurs. He said they already have partners in the community and future developer corporations, who (NOBEEP) also partners with.He said they also have sponsors who offer financial support to move things forward.”We also are very interested in making a way for black business owners or black investors to come and invest in northern Ontario, because there is money in Africa that is looking to get mobilized and invested,” Nyabeze pointed out.”So why not invest here? It’s a good, secure investment environment. Just like we ask for investors from other countries to come and open businesses in Canada, we’re going to do the same thing for Ontario with black business owners.”Nyabeze also pointed out that the black population in northern Ontario is less than one per cent.”The funny thing is it’s the opposite of a visible minority, it’s actually invisible as a minority. These people, who are a very small portion of the community, need to be supported to level the playing field,” he said.He said how they do business in Africa and here is quite different, and they want to make sure that “that cultural context is not lost.”Nyabeze said the organization wants young, middle-aged, black people who want to start a business to come to them to obtain support to make the process easier and less stressful.More information is available online at www.NOBEEP.ca regarding the services and resources available.

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