Only yesterday German e-commerce incubator and cloning giant Rocket Internet and MTN partnered to develop internet businesses in Africa through Africa Internet Holding (AIH), a vehicle to develop e-commerce businesses across the continent (alongside partner Millicom International Cellular). 

They took a 1/3 stake but the value was undisclosed. It’s already developed a number of e-commerce ventures in the last 18 months, including Jumia, Zando, Kaymu, Jovago, Lamudi, Carmudi, Easytaxi and Hellofood.

The veritable scramble for Africa is continuing, with the news that iROKOtv, the Africa-based movie platform for Nigerian movies (known colloquially as ‘Nollywood’) has closed a funding round of $8 million, led by existing investor Tiger Global, with further participation from Sweden-based Kinnevik. A new investor to this round is US-based Rise Capital. This brings the total raised to $21 million, which makes iROKOtv one of the best well funded internet companies in Africa today.

iROKOtv a Video-on-Demand (VOD) platform for African content which claims one million monthly users.

To-date, the capital raised has been used to acquire content, expand the London-based tech team, develop mobile websites and applications and open offices in London, New York and Johannesburg, alongside the company’s Lagos headquarters.

iROKOtv now claims to hold the world’s largest online catalogue of African content, with over 5,000 movies watched in over 178 countries.

The new capital will be used to flip the company’s audience from a primarily Diaspora base to an African base, as well as migrating from a largely ad-supported model to subscription service.

Currently, 50% of iROKOtv’s audience is located in the UK and US.

Clearly the aim here is to become the Netflix for Africa.

Credit: Mike Butcher

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04:40

An estimated US$7 billion is given away every year by Africa’s philanthro-capitalists – at least the ones we know about. These are the men (sadly no women yet on this list) providing home-grown solutions to local needs. 

Mertech Group founder and Africa's leading philanthropist Francois van Niekerk of South Africa 

Francois van Niekerk, South Africa - The founder of Mertech Group gave 70 percent of his equity (valued at $170 million) to his Mergon Foundation, which funds education, health and skills-building initiatives.

Allan Gray, South Africa - The owner of Allan Gray investment management firm, Gray gave his Allan Gray Orbis Foundation $150 million. The foundation gives high school scholarships and supports other causes.

Theophilus Danjuma, Nigeria - The chairman of South Atlantic Petroleum broke Nigerian philanthropic records when he gave $100-million to set up the TY Danjuma Foundation, a grant-making organization that partners with NGOs in education, health, policy and poverty-related fields.

Donald Gordon, South Africa - The real estate and insurance billionaire founded the Donald Gordon Foundation which has given an estimated $50 million in donations to develop higher educational facilities and the arts in the UK.

Aliko Dangote, Nigeria - The president of the Dangote Group has recently entered the field of philanthropy and has already made significant contributions totalling $35 million. He has contributed to flood relief, an NGO developing low-cost housing and universities in Nigeria, and also gave $500,000 for victims of a munitions blast in Brazzaville, Congo in 2012. 

Africa's richest man E

Mark Shuttleworth, South Africa - After selling his digital security company for $575 million, Shuttleworth spent $20 million on developing free open source software, Ubuntu, and another $20 million - through the Shuttleworth Foundation - on funding the projects of individuals trying to change society.

Jim Ovia, Nigeria - The founder of Zenith Bank gave $6.3 million to the flood relief effort in Nigeria in 2012. Through his Youth Empowerment and ICT Foundation, he has given much to get youth interested in ICT. He gave $320,000 to help 10 young Nigerian entrepreneurs establish their technology businesses.

Strive Masiyiwa, Zimbabwe - Zimbabwe’s richest man and the founder of Econet Wireless, Masiyiwa has spread his philanthropic work to several African countries, including Zimbabwe. He established a $6.4 million trust in 2012 to pay for the education of 40 students. He also supports organizations that help orphans in Zimbabwe.

Tony Elumelu, Nigeria - Elumelo, chairman of Heirs Holdings, gave $6.3 million to flood relief in Nigeria in 2012. His Tony Elumelu Foundation gives entrepreneurial training to young Africans.

Arthur Eze, Nigeria - The elusive oil magnate donated $6.3 million to flood relief in Nigeria. He also gives large amounts towards higher education.

Other noteworthy philanthropists include: Mike Adenuga and Hakeem Belo-Osagie from Nigeria; Manu Chandaria and Naushad Merali from Kenya; Ashish Thakkar from Uganda; the Sawiris family from Egypt; and Patrice Motsepe, Nicky Oppenheimer, Raymond Ackerman, Tokyo Sexwale, and Cyril Ramaphosa from South Africa.

Sudanese-born British telecommunications billionaire Mo Ibrahim has been dubbed the most powerful black man in the UK as well as the “Bill Gates of Africa” for his philanthropic efforts on the continent. He has signed the Giving Pledge to hand over half his wealth and has offered a prize of $5 million over 10 years, and a further $200,000 for life, to African leaders who excel. Motsepe is the first African-based businessman to have signed the pledge.

Sources: Forbes and AFK Insider

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02:16

When it comes to skin color, the idea that we're really all the same isn't just a utopian dream. A look at skin cancer from an evolutionary perspective suggests that maybe once we were all white; then we were all black; then some of us went back to white.

A scientist argues that once we were all white; then we were all black; then some of us went back to white.

In a study published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Mel Greaves, professor of cell biology at the Institute of Cancer Research in London, looked at some 25 studies of skin cancer in albinos in Africa. Albinos have less melanin, a natural pigment that helps protect the skin against damage from the sun. The more melanin in the body, the darker the skin.

Greaves found that basal cell and squamous cell carcinomas are not relatively harmless diseases of old age. In African albinos, they kill early and quickly. Skin cancer prevention, he concludes, was a driving force in human evolution to dark skin. Other scientists, including Charles Darwin, have long dismissed skin cancer as a force in evolution because it typically strikes those past childbearing age.

Greaves, who studies the role that disease plays in human evolution, believes his study adds credence to the idea that when earlier hominids shed their shaggy hair about two million years ago, exposing their naked, pale skin to the sun on the sun-drenched savanna of Africa, natural selection favored those who had the darkest variations in skin color to protect against the ultraviolet radiation (UVR) that can cause skin cancer.

Much later, about 50,000 to 100,000 years ago, those who migrated to cold northern climates no longer needed that protection, and evolved back to pale skin. National Geographic talked with Greaves about his research.

You point to skin cancer as a reason that skin color evolved. Among cancers, is skin cancer unique in influencing evolutionary protections?

I can't think of any other cancer and circumstance that would have had a sufficiently large impact on survival and reproduction. You might think that pediatric cancers might have been subject to evolutionary selection, but my guess is that they have always been too rare to provoke protective selection.

Can you explain when and why our human ancestors became black?

The genetic evidence suggests that black skin became the norm in Africa some 1.2 million years ago, around the time that early humans were colonizing the savanna and had lost most of their body hair. Most investigators believe that black pigmentation was an essential adaption to protect naked, pale skin against solar ultraviolet radiation, which is high all year round near the equator.

There has been consensus on some of the life-threatening impacts of UVR via the skin. Ideas have included damage to sweat glands and degradation of folate and other essential nutrients in blood circulating through the skin.

But skin cancer has been universally rejected as a possible selective force for the adaptation of black skin. This is on the grounds that in modern-day Caucasians, it is usually benign or is lethal too late in life to influence evolution. In my paper I suggest this is taking cancer out of the relevant context and that the experience of African albinos illustrates very vividly what the impact of intense UVR might have been on early humans.

Why did some people then evolve back to the white skin that was originally underneath hominids' hair?

As our human ancestors migrated out of Africa, those that moved away from equatorial and tropical regions underwent positive selection for paler skin. This was in part due to the reduced pressure from UVR skin damage, but also because black skin became a disadvantage, possibly because [pale skin is better at generating vitamin D] and dark skin is more susceptible to frostbite.

So you're saying that skin cancer played a part in skin color: Humans were originally white under all their hair, then evolved to black a million or two million years ago, then 50,000 to 100,000 years ago some went back to white as they migrated farther north?

That's exactly what I am suggesting. But unless Jared Diamond and Darwin [two scientists who dismissed skin cancer as a factor in evolution] are right and skin color variation is just incidental and endorsed by sexual preferences, then there has to be an evolutionary logic.

Naturally there is considerable speculation in all of this debate, and coming up with a definitive, unambiguous explanation for events that happened millions of years ago is very difficult, if not impossible. We are trying to come up with the most plausible answer in the light of all the evidence available—which is the way science always works.

Credit: National Geographic

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09:33

Prior to the Sochi Winter Games in Russia, there was a global uproar mainly from the western world directed to Russia due to its draconian laws and views on homosexuality. Fast forward and shift from the massive Eurasian subcontinent to Africa and to Uganda specifically. President Yoweri Museveni was under intense pressure from western powers not to assent the anti-gay bill into law. However, he went ahead and signed the bill into law and face a global backlash with US president Barack  Obama terming it morally wrong and said that it “will be a step backward for all Ugandans.”

Ugandan Strongman Yoweri Museveni

Already, homosexuality is illegal in 83 countries in the world, Kenya included. That is, half the world. Could half the world be blind? Is being a homosexual an acquired trait or an inborne permanent condition and requires special recognition? Proponents will argue for that view while opponents will think otherwise.

As it has been pointed out and again, if homosexuality is a human right, so should sociopathic and psychopathic tendencies such as being a kleptomaniac, a murderer or a rapist and even stealing. Thieves or rapist should argue that they did not acquire their habits but rather were born so. With more than half the world adhering to one of the three Abrahamic religions namely Christianity, Islam and Judaism, the opponents pose that if God plainly and blatantly condemns homosexuality as the worst transgression against him, then how can we claim a right to an evil, sin and crime?

Countries around the Globe with Anti-homosexuality Laws (in black)

Prior to scramble and partioning of Africa, homosexuality was virtually unheard of. Few areas that experienced cases of such, were mainly areas within the coastal strips that were international trade routes. Hence, when a person claims to have been born gay, how came in our forefathers' generations and their forefathers there were no people born gay? Or has there been a genetic mutation leading to people being born gay then and not now?

In my own opinion, there are no simple answers to the topic. Both sides have valid points and just like the case of which religion is better than the other or which is the correct one, it is a debate that cannot and will not end. It is a back and forth rocking. One thing though, Africa has never put the western world under duress to accept a culture that is deeply entrenched on the continent, like circumcision. Thus, it is my feeling that they should not interfere with how Africa wants to go about its cultural practices.

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04:42