For Flavilla Fongang, the move from Paris to London in 2000 was supposed to be temporary but only a few weeks in the UK capital was enough to convince the aspiring entrepreneur that there were much better opportunities there for ambitious young black people.
“There’s a level of hypocrisy in France because we have liberte, egalite, fraternite [as the national motto of France] but deep down people from different backgrounds have not been promoted or sponsored to go to the top.”
She cites watching Sir Trevor Macdonald presenting the news on ITV as the moment she saw a black role model in the mainstream for the first time. “If I ever saw black people on TV [in France] it was on sports channels or music
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