According to the Migrant Founders Monitor 2022, 22 percent of start-up founders in Germany have a migration background. Most of their founders come from Eastern Europe, followed by Southern Asia and Western Europe. Africa, on the other hand, does not appear in the report. Reliable data on how many black founders there are in Germany cannot be found either.
Businesswoman Irene Aniteye, 30, believes that black people in Germany lack visibility. There are hardly any role models in business. The black community also lacks access to entrepreneur networks and financiers.
That’s why her team founded Aidia, the first Afro-German start-up pitch. Black entrepreneurs from different sectors competed against each other for the first time on Saturday in Hamburg. They were inspired by the format of the TV show “Lion’s Cave”.
In the interview, Aniteye talks about unequal opportunities, her own experiences of discrimination and why it is important to collect data on ethnic groups.
WORLD: Ms. Aniteye, a conceptual question in advance: You chose the term Afro-German for the project, but you also speak of black people – what is the politically correct term?
Irene Aniteye: In fact, there is no perfect answer to that. In my opinion, black is the most appropriate designation and a direct translation of “Black”, which is the most widespread self-designation in English-speaking countries. I would argue that most black people would be comfortable with that, but of course I can’t speak for everyone. The term “colored” comes from the colonial era and was used pejoratively in the past. In English, terms such as BIPoC and PoC are also common. Afro-German means specifically black people who are socialized in Germany – all those who are black but have a German passport, live in Germany or speak German.
WORLD: Before our conversation, I asked myself whether I knew of a single family business in Germany that was run by a black person in the second generation. But I couldn’t think of anything. Them?
Aniteye: No, I’m not aware of any.
WORLD: What do you think are the reasons for this?
Aniteye: That has to do with the fact that the black community in Germany is a relatively young minority. The colonial history of people of African descent in Germany is around 200 years old. However, the majority only came to Germany in the last 40 years. As a result, the situation in this country is very different from that in the USA, for example. On the other hand, black people have many hurdles to overcome – they have language barriers, they lack the right networks and they are often socially and financially disadvantaged due to structural discrimination. As a result, black people are missing as role models, especially in politics and business – and so it is difficult for many in the black community to even imagine that they could make it into certain circles and positions.
WORLD: People with a migration background from Poland, the Czech Republic or Vietnam sometimes face similar challenges – what exactly makes it even more difficult for black people?
Antieye: They are different realities of life. I believe that the less you conform to Eurocentric ideals, the more likely you are to experience discrimination. At first glance, black people are obviously different because of their skin color – even if this is a very superficial criterion. That is why many of them experience discrimination – whether in their free time, at school or at work.
WORLD: You yourself were born in Germany and grew up as the daughter of a Ghanaian and a Ghanaian in Hamburg. What experiences of discrimination shaped you?
Aniteye: I was always told in school that I wouldn’t make it far. That does something with self-confidence, with one’s own appearance. If you hear that as a child, you have less confidence in yourself. And I lacked a social network that opened doors for me. With our project and the association behind it, we want to encourage and motivate each other to go and found our professional path.
WORLD: In your work, you focus primarily on black founders. But getting figures showing how many black start-up founders there are in Germany is almost impossible. However, how do you know that they have it harder?
Aniteye: We know that from many personal conversations. Catching racism and proving discrimination is often not easy. This often happens unconsciously or subconsciously. Why investors choose which start-ups is neither completely transparent nor based solely on rational factors. With the Afro census, a large-scale study was carried out for the first time last year that dealt with the discrimination experiences of Afro-Germans. The fact that there is no data on how many black founders there are in Germany is an additional problem. The main reason for this is politics: In this country, statistics are not collected according to ethnic origin – unlike in the USA, for example. I think that’s problematic.
WORLD: But categorizing people by ethnic groups also has its downsides. Why are you still for it?
Antieye: Of course, such data has been misused in the past. Without this, however, there is a lack of visibility. If we can’t determine from numbers that, for example, black founders are promised relatively less funding, then for many there is no problem at all. That’s why the topic is questioned again and again, and we often have to justify ourselves. The missing data was also a motivation for us to found Aidia. We plan to conduct surveys and collect data ourselves in the future.
Data from the US shows that funding for black founders in the States has fallen sharply as investors have pulled out. Black-led startups received $324 million in venture capital in the second quarter. A sharp decrease from the $1.2 billion they received in the first quarter of 2022 and a notable decrease from the $866 million they raised in the second quarter of last year. This decline is not surprising for experts, since the start-up industry as a whole receives less funding and investors tend to withdraw into their respective networks in times of economic crisis and finance those companies that they trust and therefore appear safer.
At the European level, there are few reliable figures. The State of European Tech Report has been collecting data on inclusion and diversity since 2018. Around two percent of the 300 participating start-up founders stated that they were black. In Germany there is a lack of comparable data collected on the basis of ethnicity. The Migrant Founders Monitor has established a ranking based on the region of origin of the founders. Eastern Europe leads the top ten, followed by southern Asia and western Europe. However, Europe’s neighboring continent of Africa does not appear in the list. Since sub-regions were queried and their values were too low, no region in Africa made it into the ranking, the start-up association said when asked. For the entire continent of Africa, a total of 6.3 percent of first-generation migrant founders said they came from Africa.
WORLD: The first Afro-German start-up pitch started at the weekend – so only black people were allowed to compete. why is it needed
Aniteye: Aidia focuses on black founders, but the start-ups themselves are a mixed bag. In conversations with Afro-Germans, we have heard again and again that they do not get any funding, that they lack the knowledge, but also the network. That’s how my team members Lucy Larbi, Daniel Tiemor and Louisa Schätz came up with the idea of creating a start-up pitch for Afro-Germans. This idea originally came about in the non-profit association FoGG e.V. and has meanwhile developed into a start-up itself.
WORLD: What exactly does the competition look like?
Aniteye: You can imagine it similar to the TV show “Lion’s Den”. The founders competed in front of a five-person jury and the live audience. There are two categories: An idea pitch, in which willing founders submitted their business ideas. Each founding team had two minutes to present their idea. The jury then tested the legal viability of the idea in a question-and-answer game. In the main category, five founders (teams) who have already founded start-ups competed against each other. You have five minutes to present your business model.
WORLD: And what did the winner get?
Antieye: A total of 53,000 euros was paid out. The money comes mainly from sponsors, including main sponsor PayPal and Snipes. The main prize was endowed with 30,000 euros. Of course, we wanted to pay out as much prize money as possible, but the exchange of knowledge and networking is also worth a lot.
WORLD: What chances do we have in Germany to create an integrative society?
Aniteye: We have to accept that people are different and look different – and that it’s okay to see those differences. I keep hearing the phrase “I see no color”. This is certainly well intentioned, but not helpful. The goal should not be to see everyone the same, but to treat them equally. After all, topics such as inclusion and diversity are now on everyone’s lips – I see that as an opportunity to make a difference.
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