Bask & Lather's Shaina Rainford Lands Black Beauty Founders Cover + EIB Finances Africa's Largest Solar PV Plant + Hashgraph Pledges $1M to Africa Web3 Hackathon
Black haircare founder scales across Amazon, Walmart, TikTok Shop without VC backing. Egypt's 1.1 GWp hybrid solar project secures $150M from European Investment Bank | Tuesday, January 13, 2026
Three stories define infrastructure-building across Black entrepreneurship and African tech today.
Shaina Rainford, founder and CEO of Bask & Lather, was featured on Black Beauty Founders’ January 2026 cover, highlighting her bootstrap journey from a family-created scalp health solution in December 2020 to a diversified haircare brand thriving across direct-to-consumer, TikTok Shop, Amazon, Walmart Marketplace, and wholesale channels—without venture capital.
Egypt’s Obelisk solar project secured $150 million in EIB Global financing for Africa’s largest hybrid solar photovoltaic plant (1.1 GWp capacity + 100 MW/200 MWh battery storage), co-financed with African Development Bank, EBRD, and British International Investment.
And Hashgraph Ventures, an Abu Dhabi-regulated VC fund, pledged $1 million to the Hedera Africa Hackathon—bringing total investment commitments to $2 million (plus a $1M prize pool)—supporting 13,000 developers and 1,300 startups across 20+ African cities building Web3, AI, and deep-tech solutions.
Bask & Lather’s Shaina Rainford Lands Black Beauty Founders Cover—Scaling Haircare Across Amazon, Walmart, TikTok Without VC Backing
Black Beauty Founders unveiled its January 2026 cover featuring Shaina Rainford, founder and CEO of Bask & Lather, a haircare brand built on operational discipline, platform diversification, and direct consumer engagement—without venture capital backing.
This marks Rainford’s debut on a magazine cover and examines her path from launching Bask & Lather in December 2020 as a family-created solution aimed at improving scalp health and addressing hair loss to building a multi-channel business model that operates across digital, social, and retail-adjacent spaces.
