Harry and Meghan's african tour kicks off

The 10-day visit has begun: the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have arrived in South Africa with their son Archie. It's their first official tour as a family.

The visit will see the couple celebrate the people and culture of southern Africa. Prince Harry and Meghan are sending a clear signal with this trip: they want to be taken seriously, highlighting issues ranging from the abuse of women to wildlife conservation.


They are visiting a township in Cape Town on the first stop of the visit. The family arrived in Cape Town at approximately 10:00 BST.

The duke and duchess faced criticism last month after newspapers claimed they flew in private jets four times in 11 days.


In a post on the Sussex Royal Instagram account ahead of the tour, the duke said he could not wait to introduce his wife and son to South Africa.

On their first engagement, the couples visited Cape Town's Nyanga township, where they met staff of a workshop that supports children and empowers young girls.


They spent time at the Justice Desk - an NGO supported by the Queen's Commonwealth Trust - which teaches children about their rights and how to deal with trauma, as well as offering self-defence classes to young people.

Meghan is expected to speak about the rising violence against women in South Africa.


The royals will be in Africa until 2 October. While the duchess and Archie are scheduled to spend the duration in South Africa, Prince Harry will also travel alone to Malawi, Botswana and Angola, where he will pay tribute to his mother Princess Diana's anti-landmine campaign.

Glue and blood against climate change

The opening of the London Fashion Week has been disrupted on Friday, when climate activists glued themselves to a door and poured a “bleeding” red carpet, seeking to draw attention to the apparel industry’s impact on the environment. Protesters belonging to the Extinction Rebellion group have vowed to disrupt the five-day event, where luxury brands such as Burberry, Victoria Beckham and Erdem are presenting their spring 2020 womenswear collections.

The group, which has staged numerous protests in recent months calling for action to tackle climate change, had called on the British Fashion Council to cancel the event. Wearing white dresses with blood-like stains, five protesters glued themselves to the entrance door of the main London Fashion Week building. Other demonstrators briefly lay on a pool of pink liquid, which they said depicted blood. The protest took place before the start of the first fashion show, scheduled at 0800 GMT. “(The demonstrators) are calling for the fashion industry to tell the truth about its contribution to the climate and ecological crisis,” the group said in a phone message to journalists.

At a time of growing public environmental awareness, fashion brands are being urged to be more sustainable and cut waste. Speaking to Reuters, BFC Chief Executive Caroline Rush said demands to cancel London Fashion Week did not “solve the problem in terms of the way the industry needs to address the climate change emergency”. “By having a platform like Fashion Week, it’s an opportunity to bring designers and the industry together and engage them in the conversation,” she said.

“We’re looking forward to five days of incredible creativity and we’ll be showcasing fantastic businesses, that many of them are already working in terms of how they can address the climate change emergency and what they’re doing to address positive change.” London Fashion Week is the second leg of a month-long catwalk season that began in New York and will also take place in Milan and Paris.

Nicole Junkermann: “Business is about revolutions”

"Business is about revolutions. And passion”. Thus spoke Nicole Junkermann, the London-based entrepreneur, founder of NJF Holdings. So blonde and charming, you could say she has dedicated her whole life to being a model and, after marrying an Italian count and having a daughter, to living for her family and social life. Nothing is further from the truth.

The precocious entrepreneur

At age 12, Nicole — born in Düsseldorf and raised in Spain — was a translator for her father on a business trip. But her baptism of fire as a businesswoman came up ten years later watching a football game. While writing her degree thesis, it occurred to the then student that there was no reason to wait for the diploma. It was at that moment that she started thinking about creating the Winamax online gaming platform. In 2002 Nicole Junkermann co-founded Infront Sports and Media, which she sold in 2011, for 650 million euros. Later, she invested in Really Sports, one of the most important sports stores in China, and two years later she created the United in Sports venture capital fund. Currently, Nicole runs NJF Holdings and has collaborated on investments with Silicon Valley personalities such as Eric Schmidt —Google— or Peter Thiel — Paypal.

The private side

She gets up at six to meditate. “In a world where we are bombarded with so much information, I find it fundamental,” she says. Normally, Nicole will also run before reading the newspapers and having breakfast with her husband, Count Ferdinando Brachetti Peretti, and their one-year-old daughter, Vita. Ferdinando is the president and CEO of the Italian energy company Gruppo Api / IP and his family owns the Il Pollenza vineyards. “I like that Vita can grow up surrounded by the traditional values of our family,” Nicole says. Her husband’s maternal aunt, Elsa Peretti, is the designer of Tiffany & Co. and New York legend of the Studio 54 era, where she rubbed shoulders with Andy Warhol and Liza Minnelli while triumphing as a model and being photographed by Helmut Newton. Nicole Junkermann doesn’t seem very fascinated by clothes and accessories, though. “The truth is that I prefer reading a book rather than going shopping,” she confesses.

In 2015 Nicole Junkermann and Ferdinando Brachetti Peretti coincided by chance in the lobby of the Palace of Gstaad. Since then they have not separated. Last year their family has become whole with the birth of Vita. Nicole is clear on how to educate her. “My mother raised me to be an independent woman. And my wonderful husband’s mother, despite growing up in a world dominated by men, is the only woman elected general of the Italian Army. I feel very grateful for that generation that, enduring much more difficult than us, jumped obstacles to make our life possible”.

Businesses that bring revolutionary ideas

Nicole has an analytical side, but also an adventurous spirit that allows her to bet on disparate industries. “I am an entrepreneur and I am interested in businesses that bring revolutionary ideas“. In 2018 she has been appointed advisor to the Under Secretary of Health and Technology of the British Government, but also has a social conscience that led her to invest in Magnum, the agency created by photographers such as Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson at the end of World War II and which has since covered worldwide the most important historical conflicts.

The Magnum challenge

“Magnum is a bit out of the orbit of the companies I normally invest in. It was the result of a passion, I thought it would be important to renew this great cooperative of photographers. We live in a world of fake news where people change their reality with Photoshop. The millennial generation reacts much more to images than to texts. Magnum is a great heritage and I hope to revive it. I want people to appreciate this art again in the same way they have appreciated vinyl again” she concludes.

https://businessvertex.com/index.php/2019/09/04/nicole-junkermann-business-is-about-revolutions/