Business magnate Richard Branson was forced to delete a tweet in which he posted an-all white team at his Branson Centre of Entrepreneurship launch in South Africa.
On Monday, Branson, tweeted, “Wonderful to be in South Africa to help launch the new Branson Centre of Entrepreneurship. We aim to become the heart of entrepreneurship for South Africa”.
The tweet accompanied a photo of him with an all-white team.
This drew a lot of criticism from online users. Former BBC Business Editor-Africa Larry Madowo retweeted saying, “It looks super inclusive!”
Citizen TV’s anchor and BBC Komla Dumor Winner (2018) quipped, “Such a diverse bunch of individuals you have there @richardbranson Kudos!”
But Branson, who owns Virgin Atlantic, Virgin Money, Virgin Media and Virgin Trains, on Tuesday, apologised saying, “The Branson Centre Centre of Entrepreneurship is for all South Africans, but yesterday’s choice of a photo to go with my tweet clearly lacked diversity.” “Apologies. I hope you will take a look at my blog which does far better justice to the amazing work of the Centre and its team.”
South Africa according to the BBC, has a population of almost 58 million is 80 per cent black Africans.
From its website, Branson Centre of Entrepreneurship supports entrepreneurs to “structure and scale their businesses by providing training, mentoring and networking to help them on their entrepreneurial journey”.
