Black Umbrellas was first conceived as the Black Umbrellas, a project spearheaded by Cape Town social entrepreneur Charles Maisel and Mark Frankel to support SMMEs. Black Umbrellas is an enterprise development incubation organization partnering with the private sector, government, and civil society to address the low levels of entrepreneurship and a high failure rate of 100% black-owned emerging businesses in the African continent. The Black Umbrellas model is aimed at supporting emerging black businesses through the incubation program so that they are able to emerge as independent, viable businesses.