About CyBlack
A year ago, Iretioluwa Akerele, Aliyu Yisa, Febisola Olanipekun, Omotolani Olowosule, Simbiat Sadiq, Onyekachi Anyalechi and Dr. Jude Osamor decided to build a community and make an impact in the life of upcoming African cybersecurity professionals with CyBlack.
CyBlack is helping talented Africans to grow through mentorship, community
engagements, internships, connections, and job opportunities.
We have seen an unprecedented interests in cybersecurity in the last few
years and this has also resulted to individuals pursuing a career in cybersecurity outside of Africa. With the challenges faced by Africans when they move to Europe, CyBlack is giving cybersecurity students and cybersecurity enthusiast the knowledge, skills and experience needed to kickstart their cybersecurity career.
“…. being an African myself, I have been able to witness first-hand the hurdles that every young black tech enthusiast will most certainly face. Therefore, we chose to build a community specially catered to help African cybersecurity talents on their journey” – Iretioluwa Akerele – Co Founder, CyBlack
The Journey so Far
In one year of Cyblack’s existence, they have.
- Built a community of 400+ student and an internship alumni group of 150+ members
- Provided free training to over 200 community members
- Provided academic support to students through mentorship and guidance for their university coursework and dissertations among others.
- Accelerated career journey of the CyBlack community through insights and teaching of the ins and outs of the Cybersecurity industry,
- Provided Internship opportunities which includes real-world tasks in cyber threat intelligence, cloud security, human factors, governance, risk and compliance, ethical hacking and incident response
- Aided networking, support and connection of an integrated community filled with some of the most promising talents in cybersecurity, both seasoned professionals and newbies.
- Hosted a Conference with the theme “The future of Diverse Cybersecurity Talent” where the opportunities and future of diverse cybersecurity Talent were discussed by professionals and recruiters among others.
What the Future Holds for CyBlack
In a conversation with Aliyu Yisa, he is excited about the growth of the community and the Impact those who are benefiting from the community are going to provide as well. “It is the triple effect of the community that excites me. We see fellow students volunteering to help each other, we see people who have graduated or close to graduating volunteering to help people that are just getting started”.
“I see a future where CyBlack will become so big with so many things happening and even thou we started it, we will not be directly Involved in a lot of things. The community will be running the journey with so many exciting and impactful initiative which will help grow the vison”
CyBlack has also recorded a number of success with some member of the community who has gotten their first cybersecurity roles as a result of the communities support. You can read all about the work CyBlack has done in 1 year on the published report here.
CyBlack is also looking forward to more opportunities, partnerships, and more success stories from the community.
If you would love to partner with CyBlack to achieve its mission and vision, you can reach out to them on twitter or via email at admin@cyblack.org. You can also find CyBlack on LinkedIn
Wonderful work👏👏