BLACK GIRL Fest founder Nicole Crentsil and Foundervine’s David Fisayo will give investments of £10,000 to five businesses as part of a bid to diversify funding.

Crentsil and Fisayo are two of five angel investors who have been chosen for Ada Ventures’ Ada’s Angels scheme, which will see a total of £250,000 invested.

“Over the last month I’ve been learning all things Angel Investment so I’m GASSED for this new chapter,” Crentsil tweeted.

The additional investors participating in the programme are Arfah Farooq, founder of Muslamic makers, Angel Noorbakhsh Ashman, founder of the Iranian Women’s Associaion and Ash Phillips, founder of Yena.

Each investor will receive £50,000 to invest £10,000 in five different businesses over the next 12 months. The scheme was launched yesterday on Ada Lovelace Day, which celebrates the pioneering computer programmer.

It’s widely reported that the majority of angel investors are white and male. The aim of the Ada’s Angels initiative is to break down the barriers those from underrepresented communities face in becoming angel investors and securing funding as entrepreneurs.

Angel investors provide financial support to start-ups in their early stages of development and they usually take a stake in the company in return for their investment.

“The angel community is even less diverse than the VC world and so we have empowered members of our scout community with capital to make early stage investments in overlooked founders,” Ada Ventures said in a statement on their website.

“To effectively level the playing field and diversify the founder landscape, it is very important to have a diverse pool of angel investors to fund them,” Sifted reported Fisayo said.

Fisayo, is the founder and director of Foundervine, a social enterprise that specialises in digital start-up and scale-up acceleration programmes for founders from diverse backgrounds.

Crentsil is the CEO of Black Girl Fest, a festival and platform dedicated to black women, girls and non-binary people.