Forbes’ <a href="https://www.forbes.com/power-women/#60d299915e25" target="_blank" rel="noopener">100 World’s Most Powerful Women 2017 ranking</a> features only one Trump—and it’s not the First Lady. Since its inception in 2004, this is the first time our annual directory of the women who matter most on the global stage does not include the wife of the U.S. president. It is also the only time a First Daughter has found herself in the ranking: Ivanka Trump lands as the <a href="https://www.forbes.com/power-women/#60d299915e25" target="_blank" rel="noopener">No. 19 </a>Most Powerful Woman. As Ivanka—a senior advisor to President Donald Trump —has risen as a weighty voice in the White House, Melania Trump appears to have assumed a far quieter role.
Officially advising her father since March, Ivanka has been both praised and criticized for her influence in the Trump Administration. The First Daughter (and wife of Jared Kushner, also a senior advisor to the president) is known to have more liberal views than 45. While it’s widely contested how much she has been able to tip her father’s policies to the left, she is one of the few women who are close to the highest office in the country.
<a href="https://www.forbes.com/power-women/#60d299915e25" target="_blank" rel="noopener">See Full List: 100 World&#8217;s Most Powerful Women</a>
“I am a real estate developer and an entrepreneur. More important, I’m a wife and a mother,” Ivanka wrote in her 2017 self-help book called Women Who Work. “I design and build iconic properties all over the world; I have also created and am growing a business that seeks to inspire and empower women in all aspects of their lives. I’m busy teaching my children the value of hard work and the importance of family.”
As the founder of her eponymous retail brand, Ivanka Trump has been a self-proclaimed women’s rights advocate long before her role at the White House. She launched the initiative Women Who Work in 2014 (a precursor to her 2017 book), highlighting the lives of working American women and mothers. By the time she joined the family quest to the ultimate frontier; the White House, she had already taken the reins of the family business as the executive VP at the Trump Organization, and the cofounder of Trump Hotels and their more affordable hotel line, Scion. In June 2015, however, she took on a different role and introduced her father when he declared his candidacy in New York City. A little over a year later, she set the stage for him at the Republican National Convention.
“My father values talent. He recognizes real knowledge and skill when he finds it. He is color blind and gender neutral,” the soon-to-be first daughter said as she addressed 50,000 people in Cleveland, “he will fight for equal pay for equal work, and I will fight for this too, right alongside of him.” Since her father announced he would pursue a ticket to the White House, Ivanka has claimed women’s rights would be central to the Trump presidency—even after the Washington Post released an Access Hollywood tape from 2005 which revealed Trump’s lewd remarks about women.
Whether the extent of Ivanka’s influence has been what many have anticipated remains unclear, however. Ivanka, who identifies herself as a political independent, joined congressional Republicans like Marco Rubio in October to call for an increase in the child tax credit, one of her projects under her father’s presidency. She also spearheaded a memorandum in September that set aside at least $200 million to prioritize teaching coding in U.S. schools, especially for girls and minorities.
Yet, the senior advisor has also been widely scrutinized, especially by those who thought she would challenge some of her father’s social views. In July—a month after Ivanka declared her support for the LGBTQ community—many took to Twitter to criticize her lack of apparent response to Trump’s proposed ban on transgender individuals serving in the army. “I am proud to support my LGBTQ friends and the LGBTQ Americans who have made immense contributions to our society and economy,” she had tweeted during the NYC Pride Week.
In the first months of his presidency, Trump also took a lot of heat for withdrawing from the Paris climate accord, for extending the “global gag rule,” and for not immediately denouncing neo-Nazis and the KKK after a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, causing Ivanka to be depicted as “complicit,” especially by those who disapprove of the current trajectory of the Trump presidency.
“If being complicit is wanting to, is wanting to be a force for good and to make a positive impact then I’m complicit,” <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ivanka-trump-interview-what-it-means-to-be-complicit/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">the advisor told CBS This Morning</a> in April. “I don’t know that the critics who may say that of me, if they found themselves in this very unique and unprecedented situation that I am now in, would do any differently than I am doing.”
&#8220;The musical Hamilton showed us that it matters to be in the ‘room where it happens.’ Ivanka wants everyone to know she was in the room, but was not responsible for whatever happens,” said Andrea Purse, former White House communications staffer during the Obama Administration. “On issue after issue—on climate, LGBT issues, ‘women&#8217;s’ issues that she claims to care about, she has failed to deliver when it mattered most.&#8221;
In August, Ivanka was under heavy fire again due to her support for the halt of a planned Obama-era rule that would have required businesses to begin collecting data to combat pay discrimination, a cause she has championed. “Whether my contribution ultimately lives up to the expectations of some of the harshest critics? Only time will tell,” <a href="https://www.ft.com/ivanka" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">she told the Financial Times </a>in September.
Unlike Ivanka, Melania Trump fails to join the Most Powerful Women list as D.C. insiders claim that she hasn’t completely stepped up to the challenge yet. The First Lady trails powerful women who have trodden the White House like Laura Bush (who came on the list in 2004) and Michelle Obama (who came on in 2009). The expectations are high for the second immigrant First Lady of the U.S. (Louisa Adams, first lady in 1825, was the first) especially with President Trump’s stance on immigration, according to Kelly Gibson, a political consultant at the media firm in D.C.. “I think the role that [she] plays on the administrations’ opinions about immigration and access to what makes people successful in this country could make for very interesting conversation,” Gibson said.
While the skepticism persists, insiders – especially Democrats – expect First Lady Melania Trump, who according <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2017/09/21/politics/melania-trump-polling/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">to the latest CNN poll from September</a> is the most favorable Trump, to become a more significant voice. “On the campaign trail, she said that her main focus if she were first lady would be to take on bullying. Now that she’s FLOTUS, we haven’t seen her do much on bullying,” political analyst Cartney McCracken said. “But finally, this past Thursday we saw Melania step up in tackling one of the biggest threats to Americans— fighting the opioid epidemic.”
At the White House event in October where President Trump declared the opioid crisis a nationwide public health emergency, Melania made the first remarks, a rare occasion thus far. “And I have recently taken a larger interest in what I can do to help fight this epidemic,” she told the crowd, evoking an applause. “I have been participating in meetings and listening sessions, and I have been visiting with people who have been affected by this disease.”
As Melania Trump becomes a voice in addressing the drug addiction epidemic, her critics want to see her do more. “This first lady has not used her position to effect the public good yet,” Kelly Gibson said. “I think the office, FLOTUS, deserves to be on the most powerful list. I don’t think [Melania Trump] has stepped up and fully realized the potential for the good she can do, but am hopeful she will.” &#8211; Written by <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/denizcam/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-ga-track="contrib block byline">Deniz Cam</a>, FORBES STAFF

Why Ivanka Trumps Melania As A World’s Most Powerful Woman

Lessons And Ideas By The 100 Greatest Living Business Minds

This past weekend, audiences were treated to the debut of CBS special Michael Jackson’s Halloween, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/zackomalleygreenburg/2017/10/27/michael-jacksons-halloween-claiming-another-crown-for-the-king-of-pop/#2938a5a143dc" target="_blank" rel="noopener">an hourlong magical adventure</a> in which the King of Pop comes to life in animated forms including that of a dancing pumpkin, an arachnid security guard and a feline scientist, set to a soundtrack of Jackson’s music.
“Michael&#8217;s songs are very important to people,” says Mark Dippé, the program’s director. “We just wanted to sort of tell a story that was based around the world that Michael had created with his music, and his dancing, and his performances.”
That level of continued interest is precisely why Jackson tops our Halloween-spooky list of the 13 highest-paid dead celebrities for the fifth year in a row &#8211; with earnings of $75 million. His postmortem empire is going strong, boosted by the Halloween special and new album Scream joining a list of ventures including a Cirque du Soleil show in Las Vegas and a stake in the EMI music publishing catalogue.
Golf legend Arnold Palmer claims the No. 2 spot with $40 million. Barely a year after his death, more than 400 stores still sell Palmer-branded apparel in Asia, and AriZona Beverages produces 400 million cans of its Arnold Palmer line annually. Peanuts creator Charles Schulz ranks third with income of $38 million—MetLife recently retired Snoopy and Charlie Brown from its ad campaigns, but the cartoonist’s contract does not expire until 2019.
Elvis Presley finishes fourth with $35 million, up from last year’s $27 million sum thanks to the new $45 million Elvis Presley’s Memphis entertainment complex and recently-opened hotel The Guesthouse at Graceland. Bob Marley rounds out the top five with $23 million, boosted by sustainability-focused House of Marley audio products and the Marley Beverage Co.
“When we decided to start that movement, it was [to] add relevancy to who we are as a family,” says Marley’s son Rohan. “We started that to really hone in on our legacy and protect what our father has given us.”
<a href="https://www.forbes.com/pictures/59ee26294bbe6f37dda0f050/highest-paid-dead-celebri/#415eeb85324f" target="_blank" rel="noopener">GALLERY: Highest Paid Dead Celebrities Of 2017</a>
Our list measures pretax income from October 15, 2016 through October 15, 2017 before deducting cuts for agents, managers and lawyers. Sources include Nielsen SoundScan, IMDB, Pollstar Pro and interviews with celebrity estate experts.
Some names on the list passed just before the end of our scoring period—namely, rocker Tom Petty, who died on October 3. His inclusion on the list (No. 6, $20 million) reflects earnings from the past year on the road, where his band was grossing north of $1 million per night. Petty and fellow musicians Prince (No. 7, $18 million) and David Bowie (No. 11, $9.5 million) also got a boost from increased music consumption in the wake of their relatively-recent passing.
There are more ways than ever to earn money from beyond the grave, as our list members can attest. Elizabeth Taylor (No. 12, $8 million) lives on through top-selling fragrances such as White Diamonds, while Albert Einstein (No. 10, $10 million) lends his name and likeness to products ranging from dorm-room posters to tablets designed by Israeli tech company Fourier Systems.
Frank Zappa didn’t make the list, but perhaps he will soon. His son Ahmet recently announced <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/zackomalleygreenburg/2017/10/30/rock-is-dead-zappa-dio-and-the-burgeoning-business-of-postmortem-touring" target="_blank" rel="noopener">plans</a> to bring the rock star back in the form of a hologram-like illusion. The phantom Zappa will hit the road, most likely in 2018, in partnership with the firm Eyellusion. The goal is to make “the bizarre world of Frank come to life,” says the younger Zappa. “And I wake up every single day excited.”
To be fair, Frank Zappa won’t be the first celebrity to perform in such a manner. Tupac Shakur started the trend at Coachella in 2012, and Jackson currently appears in similar style in the grand finale of his Vegas show.
As for the King of Pop, his 2017 earnings pale in comparison to last year’s $825 million haul—the highest annual total for any entertainer dead or alive—mostly from the sale of his half of the Sony/ATV catalogue. But his $75 million tally this year still places him on par with the seventeenth-best-paid living entertainer, Bruce Springsteen. &#8211; Written by <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/zackomalleygreenburg/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-ga-track="contrib block byline">Zack O&#8217;Malley Greenburg</a>, FORBES STAFF

The Top-Earning Dead Celebrities Of 2017

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is now the richest person in the world for the second time.
On Friday morning, Amazon stock opened up more than 8% higher than Thursday’s close, adding nearly $7 billion to Bezos’ net worth. But thanks to a 7% spike in Microsoft’s stock overnight, it wasn’t quite enough to put him ahead of Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates on <a href="https://www.forbes.com/billionaires/list/#version:realtime" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Forbes’ Real-Time Billionaire Rankings</a>. Bezos had a net worth of $89.7 billion, as of the start of trading on Friday, while Gates had a net worth of $90.1 billion, up $550 million from Thursday. Then by 10:15 a.m. Eastern, Amazon stock had climbed nearly 2% since the market opened, adding $900 million to Bezos’ net worth and putting him in the No. 1 spot with a net worth of $90.6 billion versus Gates’ $90.1 billion at that time.
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Amazon stock surged in after-hours trading on Thursday after the company reported strong third quarter earnings. Amazon reported $43.7 billion in revenue, well above the $42.1 billion analysts expected. Whole Foods, which Amazon acquired in August, made up $1.3 billion of total revenue for the quarter.
Bezos became the richest person in the world for the first time three months ago as Amazon stock hit an all-time high on July 27, just before Amazon reported its second quarter earnings. But Bezos’ first time at the top of Forbes’ Real-Time Billionaires List only lasted a few hours. That same day, Amazon reported a big miss on earnings in its second quarter, leading to a drop in the e-commerce giant’s stock. Only today has Amazon stock returned close to its previous high, as the stock market responded positively to Amazon’s third quarter results.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/billionaires/2017/07/28/amazon-ceo-jeff-bezos-reign-worlds-richest-lasted-just-hours/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ Reign As World’s Richest Lasted Just A Few Hours</a>
When Forbes published The FORBES 400 list of richest Americans earlier in October, Bezos was the second richest person in America, worth $7.5 billion less than Gates. Bezos first joined the Forbes 400 in 1998, one year after Amazon went public, with a net worth of $1.6 billion. &#8211; <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/katevinton/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-ga-track="contrib block byline">Kate Vinton</a>, FORBES STAFF

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos Is The Richest Person In The World – Again

The average member of The Forbes 400 is, at 67,  old enough to retire. But 14 members of the new Forbes list of America&#8217;s 400 richest people &#8211; including the fourth richest person on the list &#8211;  are under 40. Ten are self-made tech entrepreneurs, four inherited their fortunes from their families, and all of them are men. The youngest member of The Forbes 400 for the third year in a row is 27-year-old Evan Spiegel, the founder of Snapchat and the CEO of its parent company, Snap.
The youngest members of The Forbes 400 are more likely to drop out of college than The Forbes 400 as a whole: 28% of list members under 40 are college dropouts, compared to only 11% of the overall list. Two of these dropouts are Harvard roommates and Facebook cofounders Mark Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz, both 33, who left college after their sophomore year to work on building Facebook full-time.
Zuckerberg is the richest member of The Forbes 400 who is under the age of 40. With a $71 billion fortune, he is worth more than the rest of the under 40’s combined. At only 33, Zuckerberg controls a social media platform used by more than a quarter of the world’s population. In the wake of the 2016 presidential election, he is grappling with the role Facebook played in spreading Russian-sponsored ads and fake news. His second daughter, August, was born in August 2017. At the birth of his first daughter, Max, in December 2015, Zuckerberg pledged to give away 99% of his Facebook stock in his lifetime and formed the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative as an entity to do so. In September, Zuckerberg said he would sell up to 75 million Facebook shares (worth up to $12.8 billion on the day he made the announcement) in the next 18 months to fund his philanthropy.
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The second richest under-40 on the list is Facebook cofounder Moskovitz, who is just a few days younger than Zuckerberg. In 2008, Moskovitz left Facebook and founded software start-up Asana, but his estimated $13.6 billion net worth still stems mainly from his Facebook stock.
The only newcomer among the under-40s this year is Rishi Shah. He became a billionaire after his start-up, Outcome Health, which places tablets in doctors’ offices so that pharmaceutical companies can advertise their drugs, raised $600 million at a $5 billion valuation in May. But the start-up’s lofty valuation is already in question: <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2017/10/04/sizzling-startup-outcome-healths-drug-marketing-shows-signs-of-struggle/#5eebd7435ac1" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Forbes reported in October</a> that some drug companies are dissatisfied with Outcome’s results and that Pfizer got a full $4 million refund for one ad campaign. Outcome says it provides “meaningful returns” and that the majority of its customers renew their deals.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/lists/2017/10/18/forbes-400-2017-meet-richest-people-america/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Forbes 400 2017: Meet The Richest People In America</a>
The youngest Forbes 400 member, Evan Spiegel, has had a rollercoaster year. In March 2017, Snap had its initial public offering and the net worths of cofounders Spiegel and Bobby Murphy, 29, initially rose as high as $5.4 billion on the first day of trading. But Snap stock dropped nearly 40% from its IPO through late September as user growth slowed and Facebook&#8217;s Instagram launched copycat features. Over the summer, Spiegel married former Victoria&#8217;s Secret model Miranda Kerr.
With a $13.2 billion fortune, Wal-Mart heir Lucas Walton is the richest under 40 who inherited his fortune. He is a grandson of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton, and inherited his stake in the retail giant after his father, John Walton, died in a place crash in 2005.
The number of billionaires under 40 on this year’s list is the same as it was last year. While Shah joined the list this year, beer heir Alejandro Santo Domingo turned 40 in the past year. His brother Andres Santo Domingo and nephew Julio Mario Santo Domingo III, who are both Forbes 400 members, are still under 40.
Here are all of The Forbes 400 members under the age of 40:
Mark Zuckerberg, Age 33
Net worth: $71 billion
Dustin Moskovitz, Age 33
Net worth: $13.6 billion
Lucas Walton, Age 31
Net worth: $13.2 billion
Scott Duncan, Age 35
Net worth: $5.5 billion
Andres Santo Domingo, Age 39
Net worth: $4.8 billion
Nathan Blecharczyk, Age 36
Net worth: $3.8 billion
Brian Chesky, Age 36
Net worth: $3.8 billion
Joe Gebbia, Age 34
Net worth: $3.8 billion
Rishi Shah, Age 31
Net worth: $3.6 billion
Robert Pera, Age 39
Net worth: $3.2 billion
Bobby Murphy, Age 29
Net worth: $3.1 billion
Evan Spiegel, age 27
Net worth: $3.1 billion
Sean Parker, age 37
Net worth: $2.6 billion
Julio Mario Santo Domingo III, age 32
Net worth: $2.4 billion
Net worths for The Forbes 400 were calculated using closing stock prices from September 22, 2017.
&#8211; Written by <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/katevinton/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-ga-track="contrib block byline">Kate Vinton</a>, FORBES STAFF

14 Under 40: Meet The Youngest Billionaires On The Forbes 400 2017

It was another record year for the wealthiest people in America, as the price of admission to the country’s most exclusive club jumped nearly 18%. The minimum net worth to make The Forbes 400 list of richest Americans is now a record $2 billion, up from $1.7 billion a year ago. The group’s total net worth climbed to $2.7 trillion, up from $2.4 trillion, and the average net worth rose to $6.7 billion, up from $6 billion.
Even at these new heights, entrepreneurs are breaking into the ranks for the first time as they mint fortunes in everything from telecom to booze to fishing. There were 22 newcomers, 14 of whom are self-made entrepreneurs. Among the most notable: Arizona iced tea cofounder Don Vultaggio; Netflix cofounder Reed Hastings; Tito Beveridge, the creator of Tito’s Handmade Vodka; Chuck Bundrant, whose Trident Seafoods sells his fish to places like McDonald’s and Burger King; and Rocco Commisso, founder of cable TV and broadband firm Mediacom and owner of the New York Cosmos, a soccer club based in Brooklyn.
Every person in the top 10 got at least $1 billion richer in the past year.  Number one for the 24th consecutive year is Bill Gates, who is now worth $89 billion, up $8 billion from a year ago. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, whose fortune rose $14.5 billion in a year, retains the number two spot for the second consecutive year with a net worth of $81.5 billion, while Warren Buffett holds onto the number 3 spot. His net worth increased by $12.5 billion, despite giving away more than $3 billion of Berkshire-Hathaway stock in July. The biggest gainer (in dollar terms) is Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg. His fortune jumped $15.5 billion, but in a crazy year like this one, it’s only good enough for him to hold onto his ranking as fourth richest.
<a href="https://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/list/#version:static" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: The Richest People in America List</a>
Gainers (there were 289) since last year’s list outnumbered losers (just 51) by more than five to one.  A strong stock market was the main reason for this record-breaking year. The S&amp;P 500, for instance, was up roughly 17% in the 12 months since the 2016 Forbes 400 list.
The most notable loser was President Donald Trump, whose fortune fell $600 million to $3.1 billion. A tough New York real estate market, particularly for retail locations; a costly lawsuit and an expensive presidential campaign all contributed to the declining fortune of the 45th president.
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A record 169 billionaires were too poor to make the cut, including well-known figures such as activist investor Nelson Peltz and Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg. Twenty-six members of the 2016 class fell out of the ranks. Among the most notable dropouts is Under Armour’s Kevin Plank, whose fortune fell to $1.7 billion, down from $3 billion, as the stock price of his sports apparel company unraveled by 60%. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross also fell out of the ranks, after filing disclosure forms showing a net worth of less than $1 billion. He told Forbes that he shifted billions to trusts for his family members, but did not provide evidence of having done so.
Our estimates are a snapshot of the fortunes of America’s wealthiest people using stock prices from September 22. Some of The Forbes 400 become richer or poorer within weeks, even days, of publication. We track these changes at <a href="https://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/list/#version:realtime" target="_blank" rel="noopener">forbes.com/forbes-400</a>. That&#8217;s where you&#8217;ll find more information on list members, as well as photos, videos, and coverage of these influential billionaires.
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Methodology: This is the 36th year of the flagship Forbes 400. Though we’ve been at it a long time, it’s always a challenge. Our reporters dig deep. This year we started with a list of more than 600 individuals considered strong candidates. When possible, we met with Forbes 400 members and candidates in person or spoke with them by phone. We also interviewed their employees, handlers, rivals, peers and attorneys. Uncovering their fortunes required us to pore over thousands of SEC documents, court records, probate records and web and print stories. We took into account all types of assets: stakes in public and private companies, real estate, art, yachts, planes, ranches, vineyards, jewelry, car collections and more.
We factored in debt. Of course, we don’t pretend to know what is listed on each billionaire’s private balance sheet, although some candidates did provide paperwork to that effect. Some billionaires presiding over private companies were happy to share their financial figures, but others were less forthcoming. To value the private businesses, we couple revenue or profit estimates with prevailing price-to-revenue or price-to-earnings ratios for similar public companies.
We didn’t include dispersed family fortunes. We did include wealth belonging to a member’s immediate relatives if the wealth could be traced to a single living person. In that case you’ll see “&amp; family.” We also include married couples who built fortunes and businesses together. In those instances, we list both names. The Forbes 400 is a list of American citizens who own assets in the U.S. &#8211; Written by By <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kerryadolan/#4a466b153523" target="_self">Kerry A. Dolan</a> and Luisa Kroll, FORBES STAFF

Forbes 400 2017: Meet The Richest People In America

The numbers are in, and if an actor’s character doesn&#8217;t have a friend named Sheldon or a relative named Pritchett (or if he isn’t named Sheldon or Pritchett), chances are he didn&#8217;t make this year&#8217;s list of top-paid TV actors.
The stars of The Big Bang Theory and Modern Family dominate our list, with Big Bang&#8217;s Jim Parsons nabbing the top spot thanks to $27.5 million earned in the year to June 1.
“When I read Big Bang it was definitely special to me. I would definitely not presume to say I thought it was going to be a hit show or be picked up, but I know that I was being presented with a character that was, in its own weird way, a really good fit, that I thought I could do,&#8221; Parsons <a href="http://variety.com/2016/tv/news/big-bang-theory-jim-parsons-sheldon-oblivious-1201715273/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told Variety</a>.
As a member of the top-paid cast on television, and the top-rated show, Parsons makes $1 million per episode, as do fellow listees Johnny Galecki (No. 2, $26.5 million), Simon Helberg (No. 3, $26 million) and Kunal Nayyar (No. 4, $25 million). That means each earns $24 million per season from the show &#8211; plus a chunk of backend. Their salaries will decrease next year, as they, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/maddieberg/2017/09/26/the-worlds-highest-paid-tv-actresses-2017-sofia-vergara-leads-with-41-5-million-total-2/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">along with castmate Kaley Cuoco,</a> each took a $100,000-per-episode pay cut for the upcoming season to give co-stars Mayim Bialik and Melissa Rauch higher salaries.
Though he has the same salary as other Big Bang stars, Parsons edges them out in total earnings thanks to a seven-figure endorsement deal with Intel, a role in Oscar-nominated Hidden Figures and a short stint on Sirius radio. Next year, we can expect to see his earnings increase (even with that Big Bang salary decrease) thanks to Young Sheldon, the new CBS comedy which he narrates and produces.
Combined, the 10 actors on this year’s list made $185 million. Earnings estimates are based on data from Nielsen, Box Office Mojo and IMDB, as well as interviews with industry insiders. All figures are pretax; fees for agents, managers and lawyers are not deducted.
The Modern Family cast takes four spots on the list, led by Ty Burrell (No. 6, $13.5 million). Like the cast of The Big Bang Theory, the Modern Family stars negotiated together for their salary &#8211; nearly $4 million per episode, plus profit participation &#8211; so they each earn the same amount.
Burrell, like Parsons, out-earned his castmates thanks to lucrative endorsement deals with the likes of Gain and The National Association of Realtors, as well as roles in the animated films Storks and Finding Dory.
“I had been running from this moment for years—a deeply personal rejection from the one thing I loved and could do—knowing we were going to meet down the road,” Burrell wrote in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/13/arts/television/ty-burrell-modern-family-the-first-time.html?_r=0" target="_blank" rel="noopener">an op-ed for the</a> New York Times earlier this year about his first meeting with an agent. The agent, who told Burrell his features were too big for TV and that he should shave his arms, was apparently wrong.
Rounding out the list are Mark Harmon (No. 5, $19 million) and Kevin Spacey (No. 8, $12 million), who serve as executive producers on NCIS and House of Cards, respectively. For Harmon, that role is particularly lucrative; he not only gets per-episode salaries for acting and producing, but also a piece of the show’s profit, as well as a share of the profits of NCIS: New Orleans, for which he also serves as an executive producer. With NCIS extremely popular in syndication, this money adds up.
While the <a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/life/2017/09/27/worlds-highest-paid-tv-actresses-2017-sofia-vergara-leads-41-5-million/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">top-earning TV actress, Sofia Vergara</a>, managed to out-earn her male counterpart Parsons by $14 million, the combined earnings of the TV actors—$185 million—is still more than the $156.5 million of the TV actresses. This has more to do with the lack of high-paying roles for women on TV than a salary difference once they&#8217;ve achieved those roles. For example, the core cast members of The Big Bang Theory each gets paid $1 million per episode, guaranteeing them spots on these lists, but that core cast includes four men and only one woman. <a href="http://womenintvfilm.sdsu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/2016-17_Boxed_In_Report.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">According to a recent report by San Diego State University,</a> only 42% of speaking characters on television are women or girls, and only 11% of all programs feature casts with more female than male characters.
The same problem &#8211; a lack of roles &#8211; accounts for the lack of diversity on the list, which features only one actor of color: Big Bang&#8217;s Kunal Nayyar. But the landscape of television is shifting, and TV seems to be getting more diverse: Minority actors comprised 11.4% of the lead roles on broadcast scripted television, according to <a href="http://expre.ss.ucla.edu/index.php/2017/02/new-2017-hollywood-diversity-report/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">UCLA&#8217;s 2017 Hollywood Diversity Report</a>. That&#8217;s an increase of more than 3 percentage points over 2016.
The longer shows with diverse casts are on air, the more leverage their stars will have to negotiate higher salaries. So don&#8217;t be surprised to see stars like Anthony Anderson, Terrence Howard and Sterling K. Brown on the list in years to come. &#8211; Written by <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/maddieberg/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-ga-track="contrib block byline">Madeline Berg</a>, FORBES STAFF
<a href="https://www.forbes.com/pictures/59c9b63331358e542c02de24/the-highest-paid-tv-actor/#472ae1ca582f" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Full List: The Top-Earning TV Actors 2017</a>

The World’s Highest-Paid TV Actors: Jim Parsons Leads With $27.5 Million

Sean “Diddy” Combs got his first job at age 12 delivering newspapers, nestling each delivery inside the screen door of every home instead of tossing it in the front yard. These days, he brings that same attention to detail with products like Ciroc vodka, DeLeon tequila and Aquahydrate water, involving himself in every aspect of the product down to the font of each logo.
“I’ve always understood that if I give the customers my best and service them differently, whether music, clothing or vodka, I’ll get a return on my hard work,” he recently <a href="https://www.forbes.com/100-greatest-business-minds/person/sean-combs" target="_blank" rel="noopener">explained</a> to Forbes. Earnings from those brands &#8211; plus proceeds from his Bad Boy Reunion Tour and selling a chunk of his Sean John clothing line for an estimated $70 million &#8211; puts Diddy atop the hip-hop heap once again with total pretax earnings of $130 million in the 12 months to June.
Drake, the world’s most-streamed artist over the past two years takes the No. 2 spot with $94 million. Despite his gaudy recorded music numbers, the Canadian emcee made the bulk of his bucks on the road during his wildly successful Boy Meets World Tour. He also earns millions for shilling Apple, Sprite and Nike. Jay-Z ranks third with earnings of $42 million, and there’s more on the way: this summer he signed a new pact with touring giant Live Nation that will pay him $200 million through the coming decade.
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Hip-hop’s top 20 acts earned a grand total of $619.5 million last year, up 38% from last year’s $448.5 million total. Even without Diddy’s $70 million windfall, overall earnings are up 22.5%, thanks in large part to hip-hop’s dominance in the burgeoning world of streaming: over the first half of 2017, it&#8217;s the most popular genre in terms of consumption, <a href="http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/hip-hop/7964815/hip-hop-power-list-2017" target="_blank" rel="noopener">accounting</a> for a quarter of all digital spins.
Our list reflects this new reality, particularly though the presence of newcomers like Chance the Rapper (No. 5, $33 million) and Lil Yachty (No. 20, $11 million). Though 24-year-old Chance has never sold a physical album, instead distributing his music freely via streaming services, he smartly uses musical ubiquity to cash in on festival gigs and arena dates, as well as deals with brands like Apple and Kit Kat. The 20-year-old Yachty, meanwhile, rode gaudy streaming numbers and 100 live dates to his debut as a Cash King.
Other big names include Kendrick Lamar (No. 6, $30 million), whose new album Damn. came out in April and soared to the top of the charts; the critics&#8217; darling now grosses more than $1 million per tour stop. On the more pop-oriented end of the spectrum is DJ Khaled (No. 9, $24 million), boosted by six-figure DJ gigs and millions in earnings from deals with Champ Sports, Apple, Mentos and others.
“People probably thought I was crazy to just spend my last penny to invest in myself,” Khaled <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/zackomalleygreenburg/2017/09/27/how-dj-khaled-rolls-hip-hops-boldest-star-shows-off-his-major-keys/#2638b34732ee" target="_blank" rel="noopener">tells Forbes</a>. “Now it&#8217;s paying off … one thing I learned is some investments might take years to kick in, and they are kicking in.”
<a href="https://www.forbes.com/hip-hop-cash-kings/#49c52a8b5bce" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Full Coverage: The World&#8217;s Highest-Paid Hip-Hop Acts 2017</a>
Other notable names on the list include Cash Money Records founder Bryan “Birdman” Williams (No. 12, $20 million), who gets a boost from having three acts in the Top 20: the aforementioned Drake; Nicki Minaj (No. 16, $16 million), the only female rapper on the list; and Lil Wayne (No. 17, $15.5 million).
To create our list, we add up pretax income from touring, record sales, streaming, publishing, merchandise sales, endorsements and other business ventures. Fees for managers, agents and lawyers are not deducted. Earnings are calculated from June 2016 to June 2017 and based on data from Nielsen SoundScan, Pollstar, Songkick, Bandsintown and the RIAA, as well as interviews with inside sources and a handful of the artists themselves.
Meanwhile, the next generation of hip-hop stars &#8211; younger even than Lil Yachty &#8211; is already on the move. Khaled&#8217;s son, Asahd, turns one this fall but already has 1.5 million Instagram followers, closing in on his dad&#8217;s 7.7 million. Says Khaled: &#8220;My son got a Rolls-Royce already&#8230; a Rolls-Royce car seat.&#8221; &#8211; Written by <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/zackomalleygreenburg/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-ga-track="contrib block byline">Zack O&#8217;Malley Greenburg</a>, FORBES STAFF

The World’s Highest-Paid Hip-Hop Artists 2017

HBO&#8217;s Big Little Lies and Hulu&#8217;s Handmaid&#8217;s Tale may be winning awards, but when it comes to money, it’s all about good old-fashioned broadcast television. Just ask Sofia Vergara, the world’s highest-paid TV actress for the sixth year in a row.
Vergara banked $41.5 million before taxes and fees in the 12 months to June 1, some $15 million more than second-ranked Cuoco of CBS&#8217; The Big Bang Theory, who earned $26 million during the same period.
Her Emmy-nominated role as Gloria Delgado-Pritchett accounts for roughly a quarter of Vergara&#8217;s income, while more than half comes from licensing and endorsement deals with brands such as Head &amp; Shoulders, Pepsi and CoverGirl. (The rest comes from a variety of sources, including movie roles, her talent management agency and speaking engagements.) She now focuses on licensing deals, rather than straightforward endorsements. In licensing deals, she can control the product and enjoy a stake in its sales, with three perfumes she produces in a partnership with Avon, a line of furniture at Rooms To Go and a coffee machine she helped design with SharkNinja.
“Our endorsement department is a well-oiled machine,” Luis Balaguer, Vergara’s manager and business partner for over 20 years, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/maddieberg/2016/09/14/how-a-business-first-mentality-earned-sofia-vergara-43-million-this-year/#2759056d2b8b" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told Forbes</a>. “Even now, our attention is on the people watching Modern Family and how to appeal to them outside of the show, too.”
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Vergara&#8217;s business-first mentality has put her way ahead of her fellow stars when it comes to earnings. With per-episode earnings of $1 million, Kelly Cuoco&#8217;s Big Bang Theory income, for example, is more than two times Vergara&#8217;s Modern Family paycheck. But Cuoco (No 2; $26 million) doesn&#8217;t have nearly as many endorsements or licensing deals.
Combined, the world’s 10 highest-paid TV actresses made $156.5 million between June 1, 2016, and June 1, 2017. Earnings estimates are based on data from Nielsen, Box Office Mojo and IMDB, as well as interviews with industry insiders. All figures are pretax; fees for agents, managers and lawyers are not deducted.
All but two of the 10 highest-earning leading ladies in television hail from the original broadcast networks thanks to long-running series with 20-plus episodes per season. With longer seasons, networks demand more time from their stars but with their more limited slates, they can pour more money into their hit shows. As a result, salaries on these series can soar up to an estimated $1 million an episode, compared to an estimated $350,000 an episode for a limited series such as Big Little Lies.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/lists/2017/08/21/worlds-highest-paid-actresses-2017-emma-stone-leads-26-million/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The World&#8217;s Highest-Paid Actresses 2017: Emma Stone Leads With $26 Million</a>
Ellen Pompeo of ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy and Mindy Kaling of Hulu’s The Mindy Project tie for third place on the list, with earnings of $13 million each. Pompeo’s earnings, like Cuoco’s, are almost entirely from her TV work. Her high per-episode fee allowed her to out-earn Kerry Washington (No 7; $11 million), the only other Shonda Rhimes star on the list, mainly thanks to endorsement work. Kaling has begun a lucrative transition to film &#8211; she has Oceans 8 and A Wrinkle in Time opening soon &#8211; and padded her earnings with a seven-figure campaign for McDonald&#8217;s.
Robin Wright (No. 9; $9 million) joins Kaling from the streaming world. The Netflix star of House of Cards banked big for her role as Claire Underwood on one of the first shows to bring cinematic names to streaming services. Wright has since been joined by the likes of Nicole Kidman, Reese Witherspoon and Emma Stone in terms of film actresses trying out the small screen.
“It used to be that films are the prestigious ones and that television was more the junk food, but that’s not true at all anymore.They are definitely on equal footing,” Paul Verna, eMarketer’s chief video analyst, told <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/maddieberg/2017/08/16/for-prestige-and-paychecks-actresses-head-to-the-small-screen-emma-stone-nicole-kidman-reese-witherspoon/#f9116921950e" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Forbes</a>.
Despite her Emmy-nominated performance and attempts to negotiate equal pay, <a href="http://www.unitedmags.com/robin-wright-plays-the-long-game" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Wright couldn’t squeeze out quite</a> the half-a-million dollars per episode salary of her costar Kevin Spacey. Still, it is generally easier to find pay-equality in television than in film, because small-screen casts often negotiate as a group. In TV, all the stars of a show, whether male or female, tend to make the same amount. Take Julie Bowen (No. 6; $12 million) who earns the same amount from Modern Family as Vergara and her male costars Ty Burrell, Eric Stonestreet, Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Ed O’Neill.
The problem remains that there are fewer star roles for women on TV to make that money. <a href="http://womenintvfilm.sdsu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/2016-17_Boxed_In_Report.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">According to a recent report by San Diego State University,</a> only 42% of speaking characters on television are women or girls, and only 11% of all programs feature casts with more female than male characters. Luckily, this seems to be shifting as legacy series with strong female characters like Mariska Hargitay (No. 5; $12.5 million) on Law and Order: SVU remain popular, and newer shows including the Priyanka Chopra (No 8; $10 million)-fronted Quantico gain buzz.
As<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/maddieberg/2017/09/17/the-2017-emmy-award-winners/#de339f344d52" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> Witherspoon said at the Emmys</a>, “It’s been an incredible year for women in television.” And that doesn’t seem to be changing anytime soon. &#8211; Written by <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/maddieberg/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-ga-track="contrib block byline">Madeline Berg</a>, FORBES STAFF

The World’s Highest-Paid TV Actresses 2017: Sofia Vergara Leads With $41.5 Million

<a href="http://www.forbes.com/profile/serena-williams/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Serena Williams</a> has dominated her sport for 15 years, in a way that few other athletes have. She was the top-ranked player in the world in 2002 at age 20 and as recently as May at 35 (the oldest ever to hold the No. 1 spot). She’s won 86% of her matches, with an Open era-record 23 Grand Slam singles titles. Her career prize money of $84 million is more than twice as much as any other female athlete&#8217;s.
<a href="http://www.forbes.com/profile/michael-jordan/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Michael Jordan</a>, Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown, <a href="http://www.forbes.com/profile/usain-bolt/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Usain Bolt </a>and others are often hailed as the greatest athlete of all-time. Williams needs to be in the conversation, too.
Williams has been sidelined since January, when she won her 23rd Slam title with a win over sister Venus at the Australian Open. She revealed three months later that she was pregnant during the tournament. Despite the layoff, Williams still finds ways to dominate her peers. Her earnings between June 2016 and June 2017 of $27 million from prize money and endorsements are twice the total from any other female athlete in the world.
Williams rules <a href="http://www.forbes.com/profile/maria-sharapova/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Maria Sharapova</a> on the court, with a streak of 18 straight wins against her rival, and for years earned more than double Sharapova&#8217;s prize money. But Williams typically lagged her among the top-earners because of lower off-the-court earnings. Sharapova was the highest-paid female athlete for 11 years until Williams unseated her in FORBES’ <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kurtbadenhausen/2016/06/06/serena-tops-sharapova-as-the-worlds-highest-paid-female-athlete/#1fa39a521fda" target="_blank" rel="noopener">2016 look at the top-paid women</a> in sports.
Williams&#8217; endorsement earnings soared in recent years as marketers flocked to her while she became the elder stateswoman of tennis and approached the Open-era Grand Slam record of 22 held by Steffi Graf. Williams currently has more than a dozen endorsement partners, including Beats by Dre, Gatorade, JPMorgan Chase, Nike and Tempur-Pedic. Intel added her this year for a campaign with the message that high-tech equals high performance.
There has been a break in Williams’ tennis schedule, but she’s remained engaged with her sponsors and business interests. She joined SurveyMonkey’s board in May at the recommendation of fellow board member and Facebook chief operating officer <a href="http://www.forbes.com/profile/sheryl-sandberg/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Sheryl Sandberg</a>. Williams and her fiancée, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, are expecting their first child sometime in the next month. Williams expects to be back on the court early in 2018.
<a href="http://www.forbes.com/profile/angelique-kerber/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Angelique Kerber</a>, who finished 2016 as the WTA Tour&#8217;s No. 1 player, ranks second with earnings of $12.6 million, including $7.6 million in prize money. The German tennis ace is not the most marketable player in tennis, but she secured lucrative bonuses from sponsors Adidas and Yonex for her top world ranking, US Open title and Wimbledon finals appearance. She also inked five new deals over the past 12 months, with SAP, Generali, Rolex, Slim Secrets and bareMinerals.
Tennis players dominate the highest-paid female athletes with eight of the top 10. It is the one major sport where, when comparing men and women, the money is in the same stratosphere. Williams trails <a href="http://www.forbes.com/profile/roger-federer/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Roger Federer</a> ($64 million) in tennis, but she is not too far behind <a href="http://www.forbes.com/profile/novak-djokovic/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Novak Djokovic</a> ($37.6 million), who ranks second in the sport for earnings. The gap is massive in golf, where <a href="http://www.forbes.com/profile/rory-mcilroy/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Rory McIlroy</a> ($50 million) out-earns Lydia Ko ($5.9 million) by more than eight-to-one. The divide is even worse in soccer, with <a href="http://www.forbes.com/profile/cristiano-ronaldo/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Cristiano Ronaldo</a> ($93 million) and Alex Morgan ($3.5 million) the top earners.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/sport/2017/06/09/ronaldo-lebron-top-worlds-highest-paid-athletes-2017/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Ronaldo, Le Bron Top World&#8217;s Highest-Paid Athletes Of 2017 </a>
<a href="http://www.forbes.com/profile/danica-patrick/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Danica Patrick</a> ($12.2 million) and <a href="http://www.forbes.com/profile/ronda-rousey/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Ronda Rousey</a> ($11 million) are the two non-tennis players in the women&#8217;s top 10, ranking third and fourth overall. Both have made inroads as marketable athletes in male-dominated sports.
Patrick has one more year left on her contract at Stewart-Haas Racing, but it is contingent on having a sponsor for her car in 2018. A sponsor is not lined up as of now. Patrick has 10 personal sponsors, including giants like Coca-Cola, Ford and Nationwide.
Rousey was the headliner at UFC 207 in December and secured a record-tying $3 million guarantee for the bout, plus her cut of the 1.1 million pay-per-view buys. She pocketed a sizable check for her role as coach this summer in the reboot of &#8220;Battle of the Network Stars&#8221; and endorses Reebok and Pantene. Next up: marrying fellow MMA fighter Travis Browne and filming &#8220;Mile 22&#8221; alongside <a href="http://www.forbes.com/profile/mark-wahlberg/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Mark Wahlberg</a>.
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Rounding out the top five is Venus Williams ($10.5 million), who reached her first Grand Slam final since 2009 in January when she fell to Serena at the Aussie Open. Williams has her own apparel line, Eleven, so her endorsement portfolio lacks the big Nike/Adidas deal that other top tennis players have. But Williams is still a big draw at 37 and commands hefty fees for tournaments and exhibitions.
Williams is also a hit on the speaking tour, with six-figure checks for revelations about her two decades in tennis, her fight for equal pay and her battle with the autoimmune disease Sjogren&#8217;s syndrome. Her endorsements include American Express, Jamba Juice, Silk and Wilson. In addition to shilling for Jamba Juice, Williams owns 10 of the smoothie and juice shops in the Washington, D.C., area. Her career prize money of $38 million ranks second all-time behind her sister&#8217;s.
<a href="https://www.forbes.com/pictures/5988cc8c31358e60d775930f/the-worlds-highest-paid-f/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Full List: The Highest-Paid Female Athletes</a>
The biggest drop-off among the top female earners is Sharapova, who ranked No. 2 last year after ranking first for 11 years. Sharapova was sidelined for most of our 12-month tracking period while serving her 15-month suspension for use of the banned substance meldonium. American Express, Avon and Tag Heuer did not renew their sponsorship deals with Sharapova. She still maintains Nike, Head, Evian and Porsche in her endorsement portfolio, but those deals included massive reductions that kicked in with Sharapova off the tour for over a year and pushed her earnings below the $6 million cutoff.
Our earnings estimates include prize money, salaries, endorsements, bonuses, appearance fees and royalties for the 12 months between June 1, 2016, and June 1, 2017. The top 10 women made a combined $109 million, down 13% from last year. Other drop-offs besides Sharapova include <a href="http://www.forbes.com/profile/ana-ivanovic/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Ana Ivanovic</a>, who retired from tennis in December, and <a href="http://www.forbes.com/profile/victoria-azarenka/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Victoria Azarenka</a>, who had a baby in December. &#8211; Written by <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kurtbadenhausen/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-ga-track="contrib block byline">Kurt Badenhausen</a>, FORBES STAFF

Serena Williams Heads The Highest-Paid Female Athletes 2017

The cutoff to qualify among the world&#8217;s most valuable sports franchises is higher than ever, up 18% this year to $1.75 billion. There are 36 franchises worth at least $1 billion that did not make the top 50. Credit soaring TV contracts for the rising franchise values, as well as labor deals with players that almost ensure profitability barring outrageous spending on payroll by an owner.
No sports league is as profitable as the NFL where the average team earned an operating profit (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) of $91 million and no one banked less than $26 million. The boffo profits helped 29 NFL teams rank among the 50 most valuable franchises (only the Bengals, Lions and Bills missed the cut). Other sports include eight MLB clubs and seven each from the NBA and European soccer.
The Dallas Cowboys lead for the second straight year at $4.2 billion. Jerry Jones&#8217; team unseated Real Madrid last year as the most valuable sports team. The Spanish soccer powerhouse had ranked No. 1 for three straight years.
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Below is the full list of the most valuable teams across all sports (51 this year thanks to a tie at $1.75 billion between the New Orleans Saints and Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim). Values are based on Forbes valuations done over the past year for NFL, NHL, NBA, MLB, F1, soccer and Nascar (no NHL, F1 or Nascar teams made the top 50).
Rank, Team, Value, 1-Yr change (Sport)
1. Dallas Cowboys, $4.2 billion, 5% (NFL)
2. New York Yankees, $3.7 billion, 9% (MLB)
3. Manchester United, $3.69 billion, 11% (Soccer)
4. Barcelona, $3.64 billion, 2% (Soccer)
5. Real Madrid, $3.58 billion, -2% (Soccer)
6. New England Patriots, $3.4 billion, 6% (NFL)
7. New York Knicks, $3.3 billion, 10% (NBA)
8. New York Giants, $3.1 billion, 11% (NFL)
9. San Francisco 49ers, $3 billion, 11% (NFL)
9. Los Angeles Lakers, $3 billion, 11% (NBA)
11. Washington Redskins, $2.95 billion, 4% (NFL)
12. Los Angeles Rams, $2.9 billion, 100% (NFL)
13. New York Jets, $2.75 billion, 6% (NFL)
13. Los Angeles Dodgers, $2.75 billion, 10% (MLB)
15. Bayern Munich, $2.71 billion, 1% (Soccer)
16. Chicago Bears, $2.7 billion, 10% (NFL)
16. Boston Red Sox, $2.7 billion, 17% (MLB)
18. Chicago Cubs, $2.68 billion, 22% (MLB)
19. San Francisco Giants, $2.65 billion, 18% (MLB)
20. Houston Texans, $2.6 billion, 4% (NFL)
20. Golden State Warriors, $2.6 billion, 37% (NBA)
22. Philadelphia Eagles, $2.5 billion, 4% (NFL)
22. Chicago Bulls, $2.5 billion, 9% (NBA)
24. Denver Broncos, $2.4 billion, 24% (NFL)
25. Miami Dolphins, $2.38 billion, 28% (NFL)
26. Green Bay Packers, $2.35 billion, 21% (NFL)
27. Baltimore Ravens, $2.3 billion, 19% (NFL)
28. Pittsburgh Steelers, $2.25 billion, 18% (NFL)
29. Seattle Seahawks, $2.25 billion, 19% (NFL)
30. Minnesota Vikings, $2.2 billion, 38% (NFL)
30. Boston Celtics, $2.2 billion, 5% (NBA)
32. Indianapolis Colts, $2.18 billion, 16% (NFL)
33. Atlanta Falcons, $2.13 billion, 27% (NFL)
34. Oakland Raiders, $2.1 billion, 47% (NFL)
35. Manchester City, $2.083 billion, 8% (Soccer)
36. Los Angeles Chargers, $2.08 billion, 36% (NFL)
37. Carolina Panthers, $2.075 billion, 33% (NFL)
38. Arizona Cardinals, $2.025 billion, 31% (NFL)
39. Tennessee Titans, $2 billion, 34% (NFL)
39. Los Angeles Clippers, $2 billion, 0% (NBA)
39. New York Mets, $2 billion, 21% (MLB)
42. Jacksonville Jaguars, $1.95 billion, 32% (NFL)
43. Arsenal, $1.93 billion, -4% (Soccer)
44. Kansas City Chiefs, $1.88 billion, 23% (NFL)
45. Cleveland Browns, $1.85 billion, 23% (NFL)
46. Chelsea, $1.845 billion, 11% (Soccer)
47. Tampa Bay Buccaneers, $1.8 billion, 19% (NFL)
47. Brooklyn Nets, $1.8 billion, 6% (NBA)
47. St Louis Cardinals, $1.8 billion, 12% (MLB)
50. New Orleans Saints, $1.75 billion, 16% (NFL)
50. Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, $1.75 billion, 31% (MLB)
Written by <a class="link preload-hidden ng-binding" href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/kurtbadenhausen/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Kurt Badenhausen</a>, FORBES STAFF

Full List: The World’s 50 Most Valuable Sports Teams 2017

<a href="http://www.forbes.com/profile/lebron-james-1/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">LeBron James</a> entered the NBA in 2003 out of high school and within three years established himself as the most dominant force in the game. He&#8217;s racked up four MVP awards and 11 first-time All-NBA selections. But it was not until the 2016-17 season that James had the NBA’s top salary.
James signed a three-year, $100 million contract extension with the Cleveland Cavaliers in July after leading the club to their first NBA title in franchise history a month earlier. His $31 million salary this season made him just the third NBA player after <a href="http://www.forbes.com/profile/michael-jordan/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Michael Jordan</a> and <a href="http://www.forbes.com/profile/kobe-bryant/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Kobe Bryant</a> to earn $30 million. The salary bump pushed his total earnings, including endorsements and playoff bonuses, to $86.2 million.
James has become a global icon in a sport with massive worldwide appeal, but he still can’t quite match the earnings of the biggest star in the most popular sport on the planet. Real Madrid’s <a href="http://www.forbes.com/profile/cristiano-ronaldo/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Cristiano Ronaldo</a> banked $93 million over the past 12 months to retain the crown of the world’s highest-paid athlete for the second straight year. James moves up one spot to second this year with his career-high haul.
Ronaldo has had 12 months for the ages. He was named FIFA’s best player in the world for the fourth time, scored his 600th career goal and secured a contract extension with Real that will pay more than $50 million annually for the next four years. Ronaldo inked a lifetime deal with Nike worth upward of $1 billion, and on Sunday he led Real to a second straight Champions League title. Real is the first team to win back-to-back Champions League titles.
Ronaldo earned $58 million from Real in salary and bonuses, while sponsors kicked in another $35 million. The Portuguese forward has endorsements deals with Nike, Tag Heuer, Herbalife, Abbott Labs and others. Meanwhile, his growing line of CR7 branded products now include shoes, underwear, fragrance, jeans and a line of hotels.
Sponsors get a good bang for their buck from Ronaldo thanks to his 277 million followers across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. His 121 million Facebook fans are more than any other person in the world. Ronaldo posts actively with mentions or logos of his sponsors displayed. His posts highlighting Nike <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kurtbadenhausen/2017/02/16/cristiano-ronaldo-generated-500-million-in-value-for-nike-in-2016/#313267edc3e9" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">generated $500 million</a> in media value alone for the sportswear giant during 2016, according to <a href="http://www.hookit.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Hookit</a>, which tracks the social engagement of athletes.
James’ salary jumped $8 million this year and his off-court income is up slightly to $55 million. He replaced Samsung and Tencent in his endorsement portfolio with Intel and Verizon. Other sponsors include Nike, Coca-Cola, Beats by Dre and Kia Motor. His business empire is growing through his production company, SpringHill Entertainment. He is also part of an investment group in the fast-growing Blaze Pizza chain with 17 franchises in Chicago and South Florida. James has made $680 million during his 14-year NBA career, with only 29% from his playing salary.
<a href="http://www.forbes.com/athletes/list" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">See Highest Paid Athletes List Here</a>
Rounding out the top five highest-paid athletes are <a href="http://www.forbes.com/profile/lionel-messi/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Lionel Messi</a> ($80 million), <a href="http://www.forbes.com/profile/roger-federer/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Roger Federer</a> ($64 million) and <a href="http://www.forbes.com/profile/kevin-durant/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Kevin Durant</a> ($60.6 million). The top five is the same as last year with only James and Messi swapping places.
The 100 highest-paid sports stars earned a cumulative $3.11 billion over the past 12 months, down 1% from last year. But the threshold to make the list rose $600,000 to $21.4 million.
Our earnings figures include salaries, prize money and bonuses earned between June 1, 2016, and June 1, 2017. Endorsement incomes are an estimate of sponsorships, appearance fees and licensing incomes for the same 12-month period based on conversations with dozens of industry insiders. We do not deduct for taxes or agents’ fees, and we don’t include investment income (click <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/kurtbadenhausen/2017/06/07/the-worlds-highest-paid-athletes-2017-behind-the-numbers" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">here</a> for a more detailed methodology and the numbers behind the top 100).
Athletes from 21 countries are represented among the top 100, but Americans dominate the list with 63 entries thanks to soaring salaries in the NBA, NFL and MLB. A record 32 NBA players made the cut, up from 18 in 2016. Credit the league’s new $24 billion TV contract, which pushed the salary cap up 34% this season. Twenty-nine NBA players made at least $20 million in salary during the 2016-17 season.
Endorsements and appearance fees make up 29% of the total pie for the top 100 athletes with Nike the more prolific with 48 athletes under contract. The Swoosh has committed $9.4 billion in future endorsement contracts to athletes, teams and leagues per its 2016 financial filings.
The makeup of athletes’ earnings run the gamut. Take golfer Tigers Woods (No. 17, $37.1 million). He generated 99.7% of his earnings from sponsors with only $107,000 in prize money as the 14-time Majors winner was sidelined by injuries. Similarly, track star <a href="http://www.forbes.com/profile/usain-bolt/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Usain Bolt</a> (No. 23, $34.2 million) earns $32 million from sponsors, accounting for 94% of his income. On the other end of the spectrum is pitcher <a href="http://www.forbes.com/profile/zack-greinke/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Zack Greinke</a> (No. 67, $24.1 million), who makes only $50,000 off the field or 0.2% of his income.
The top 100 athletes are a boys’ club more than ever. Two or three female tennis players qualified each year since Forbes expanded its athlete ranking to 100 names in 2012, but <a href="http://www.forbes.com/profile/serena-williams/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Serena Williams</a> (No. 51, $27 million) is the lone female athlete to make the cut this year. Mainstay <a href="http://www.forbes.com/profile/maria-sharapova/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Maria Sharapova</a> failed to make the grade after reductions in her endorsement contracts due to her 15-month suspension for a failed drug test.

Ronaldo, LeBron Top The World’s Highest-Paid Athletes Of 2017

It started 20 years ago, when farmers from a small seaside town in Africa took a sea snail slithering through the swaying kelp forests under the ocean and tried to farm it inland. They grew this small-town idea into a thriving $35.3-million aquaculture business. This is the story of abalone in Africa, reared on the shores of Hermanus, 120 kilometers southeast of Cape Town, which ends up on dinner plates in Hong Kong.
“We are lucky our species has got a very good taste, a very good texture. Our processing techniques are of a very high standard and we are able to compete with the best.”
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-5026" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/AbbaGold_WernerPiek_JC-1-of-11-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" />
So says Werner Piek, Executive Marketing Manager of Abagold, a man who grew up eating abalone long before it was farmed in Africa.
“I knew abalone since I was very small. We had a holiday house in Franskraal, just past Gansbaai. In those days there were no wetsuits, or flippers or anything like that. You had your pair of old tekkies (trainers), goggles and a screwdriver and you would go diving. In those days we were allowed to take five abalone per day. Nice big ones. On Saturdays we would go diving and bring back the abalone and cook it in a poitjie [slow cooked stew]. That was our weekend.”
In years of jet-setting between Hong Kong and South Africa, the 50-year-old Piek has adjusted his palate. Nowadays the man who started working as a factory manager in 2006, when abalone began to boom, prefers dried abalone, cooked with Asian flair.
“That’s a South African style of doing [abalone]. Asians have a very different way of eating it. It has to be whole abalone. They don’t like it minced. It’s cooked with a Chinese-style sauce, served with a piece of broccoli. They are looking for the toughness and the chewiness. South Africans want seafood with garlic butter.”
Like a good wine, abalone is as a varied as the grape. With over 100 species, of which 15 are commercial, abalone has different characteristics.
“What is the price of red wine? It depends, you have the pairing; where it comes from; what the taste and texture was; and the method it was made. From a world perspective French wine is considered the best, with abalone – its Japanese. It has the longest history of export to our main market. South Africa has been in the business for 50 years, but we have only been farming abalone for the last 15 to 20 years,” says Piek.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-5024" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_1190-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" />
Abalone is eaten during Chinese New Year or during the Dragon Boat Festival. It is a high-end product, used as a symbol of wealth. It isn’t, despite what people believe, an aphrodisiac.
“It is a famous gift is to give your potential mother-in-law, as a gift on Mother’s Day, to show respect. So it’s definitely not an aphrodisiac, no one wants to give their mother-in-law that kind of a present,” says Piek.
There is plenty of room to grow. The South African abalone farms account for 1% of the 120,000 tons of abalone produced in the world.
“You can’t go to Hong Kong and miss it. The branding is everywhere, on taxis, on billboards and on buildings. With all my experience I prefer the very high-end dried abalone. It produces all the flavor of the abalone. It’s not easy to prepare, it takes three to four days to cook it,” says Piek.
From the 1950s, the abalone industry went global and Hermanus was right in there; all because of canning technology making export into Asia easier.
At the time, South African commercial divers were hauling 2,000 tons per year from the seabed. Authorities realized this wasn’t going to last and introduced something called total allowable catches (TAC), restricting catches to 600 tons by 1970.
“1994 was at that stage that poaching started to pick up in South Africa. The policing around the coast became a lot more lax. People felt more freedom and felt they could take out of the sea, whereas before the police would do horrible things to them if they were caught. Also around that period, South Africa became a lot more international and the Chinese who came saw that there was abalone.”
The doors to China were open and the small-time abalone pickers tried their hands at farming. The latest data released in the Aquaculture Yearbook 2014, by the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, showed businesses in the seas were on the rise. In 2013, the value of the aquaculture sector, based on sales of products, grew by 38.1% to $46.5 million. Abalone accounted for $35.3 million.
A drop in the ocean when compared with South Africa’s gross value of agricultural production which was almost $12.5 billion in 2013.
Gavin Johnston, head of Aquaculture Consulting and Management Services, who has built aquafarms over the last 20 years, says that abalone is one of Africa’s great success stories.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-5027" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/AbbaGold_WernerPiek_JC-2-of-11-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" />
“Abalone is a niche within a niche. It’s the high-end of society that wants our species. There is lots of different species. The market is complex. The price can fluctuate by as much as 200 percent depending on how it was dried and its slight color differences. Guys are paying $400 a kilogram.”
“It’s an interesting market, with a capacity of 80,000 tons a year. [South Africa is] currently producing 1,200 tons. We are a small fry that supplies a small portion, but it’s got a high value on the market. It’s going to be interesting to see when we there are more farms on the market,” says Johnston.
The small crustacean in the kelp forest is going to become an even bigger money maker as the years go on. Piek expects that by 2020 South Africa will produce 3,000 tons a year. It seems the dinner plates of Hong Kong can’t get enough.

The Sea Snail Business That’s Worth  $35 Million

The daughter of liberation fighters, I was born in Russia, raised in Angola as a refugee, and was blessed to witness the independence of my country Namibia. My parents, both of whom are lawyers, taught me determination and the value of service for the greater good. Their passionate belief in a nation’s right to self-determination imprinted upon me from a young age and they instilled in me the significance of harnessing natural resources as a catalyst for unlocking national development. As a young girl, my late father, Handupula Shimutwikeni, taught me my gender is only a barrier if I chose to see it as thus. My mother, Panduleni Shimutwikeni, by her example, taught me that the world is my oyster and that forging ahead against all odds is the only way forward.
My upbringing influenced my education odyssey across three continents. While in high school, I was awarded a scholarship to pursue a Business Management and Computer Information Systems degree in the United States. After obtaining my Bachelor’s, I returned home and worked in the diamond industry in a public-private partnership, under the pioneering Inge Zaamwani-Kwami, the former MD of Namibia Diamond Corporation. This experience sparked my interest in natural resources. Recognizing the need to bolster the national voice in the international world of negotiations, I went on to attain a LLM degree from Leeds University and a LLM in Mineral Law and Policy at Dundee University, making me one of a handful of Namibians with such a qualification.
However, when I returned home, I was in for a surprise as it was difficult to get a job! I was told I was too young, overqualified and a woman! A ‘triple threat’ as some professionals labelled me. It was discouraging and made me question my purpose. I drew on my mother’s strength and decided to forge ahead, rise above the inequalities and in the process empower others with this truth. Thus I embarked on my entrepreneurial adventure and opportunities opened up in support of my vision. I leapt at the opportunity to consolidate my skills through a contract with the International Telecommunication Union and European Commission to co-draft Namibia’s cybercrime bill under the ‘Harmonisation of ICT Policies in Sub-Sahara Africa’ project.
In 2011, with a fellow Dundee alumnus from Angola, I birthed Rich Africa Consultancy. The Consultancy specializes in natural resources law and policy, and facilitates investment linkages in the sector. A key objective of Rich Africa is to be a trusted advisor and catalyst to unlocking our resource potential. Its creation was inspired by the need to invoke a sense of pride in Africa and its vast natural resources.
Rich Africa launched the Namibia International Oil and Gas Conference in 2012; an initiative I conceptualized and led to fruition with the endorsement of the Namibian government. Themed the ‘Road to Discovery &amp; Beyond’, the inaugural conference brought together decision-makers, and international and national thought leaders to share best practices associated with the discovery of oil in Namibia.
This biennial conference was followed in 2014 with ‘Unlocking and Optimising Our Resource Potential’ which focused on the evolution in the industry. It is a humbling honor that these initiatives have received recognition placing Namibia on the international oil and gas platform.
On this journey, I was often confronted by scepticism because Namibia is considered a frontier territory in the oil and gas arena and such an undertaking was too big for “a petite young woman”. This only strengthened my resolve. I also used this platform to inspire women by presenting a new avenue to transformation through natural resources, a sentiment shared by Bridgette Radebe, one of South Africa’s successful black female mining entrepreneurs, and keynote speaker at our 2014 conference.
Not surprisingly, I do face moments of self-doubt but have been fortunate to have an extensive and supportive network of mentors.
A guiding tenet of my life has been, ‘when writing the story of your life, don’t let someone else hold the pen’. I believe I am here to finish the work my parents started.
&nbsp;
– The writer is one of two mineral lawyers in Namibia, is CEO of Rich Africa Consultancy and an oil and gas entrepreneur.

Selma-etch-1

‘Young,  Over Qualified  And A Woman!’

On May 7, 1945, just before midnight, Private First Class Domenic Mozzetta of the United States Army’s 97th Division shot at a German sniper near Klenovice, Czechoslovakia. He couldn’t know it at the time, but he had just fired the last official bullet in World War II’s European theater of operations.
The Japanese would finally surrender in August of that year, bringing the entire war – which cost more than 80 million lives if the aftershocks of disease and famine are taken into account – to an end.
The silencing of the guns sounded the death knell for Europe’s African empire and fuelled the wave of decolonialization that swept across the continent from the mid-1950s through the 1960s.
When war broke out in Europe in 1939, the French army recruited around 300,000 North African and 197,000 West African men, with more being pulled into the conflict as it spread around the globe. On top of this, nearly 400,000 African soldiers from Britain’s colonies were called up to fight.
British units from the Gambia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and the Gold Coast (now Ghana) comprised the 81st and 82nd West African Divisions and the famous King’s African Rifles (KAR) was made up of men from Kenya, Uganda, Nyasaland (now Malawi), Somaliland (now Somalia) and Tanganyika (now Tanzania).
<div id="attachment_3594" style="width: 215px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-3594" class="size-medium wp-image-3594" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/GettyImages-138601664-205x300.jpg" alt="" width="205" height="300" />UNITED KINGDOM &#8211; JANUARY 01: BRITISH OFFICIAL PHOTOGRAPH N.K.1528 (Ministry of Information) (See companion picture K.1528) Corporal of a Kenya Battalion of the King&#8217;s African Rifles. A corporal of the 5th Battalion of the King&#8217;s African Rifles wearing drill order &#8211; khaki shorts, blue jersey with yellow chevrons and a felt hat introduced into the Colonial Forces about 1938, similar to those worn by Gurkha regiments. Formerly the Askaris (soldiers) of the KAR wore red tarbushes on drill or ceremonial parades, marching order and fighting order, the hat was a small round khaki affair like a pill-box, with a neck protection cover. (Photo by Planet News Archive/SSPL/Getty Images)</div>
More than 90,000 West Africans played a crucial role in driving the Japanese out of Burma, helping stave off an invasion of British India, and the KAR fought the Italians in Abyssinia (now Ethiopia), the Vichy French in Madagascar and the Japanese in Burma. French West African soldiers, fighting with the Free French forces, invaded Sicily and Italy.
White South Africans and Rhodesians (now Zimbabwe) fought alongside their Allied peers but, with the exception of the Rhodesian African Rifles (RAR) which fought with distinction in Burma, their non-white counterparts tended to be relegated to auxiliary roles and did not face combat.
When the war ended, an immediate programme of ‘whitening’ the war effort began. The fact that Europe had been forced to use African fighting forces was a source of great discomfort for many Europeans who were, to put it mildly, discomfited by the idea of black men killing white.
As John Morrow, a University of Georgia historian, points out in his paper Black Africans in World War II: The Soldiers’ Stories, “African soldiers proved to be highly capable troops in… difficult conditions” and despite high levels of illiteracy were able to fight independently of their white commanders, striking fear into the hearts of their enemies.
Yet after the war, “a politically expedient policy of ‘whitening’” began. French leader Charles de Gaulle replaced black soldiers with French conscripts and partisans – but only after stripping them of their uniforms and weapons and grouping them with African POWs being liberated from German camps.
This was actively supported by British and American leaders. Brave African soldiers who fought alongside the British, especially in Burma, were denied the ultimate military honor of the Victoria Cross.
These soldiers, many of whom had fought with great courage and distinction on foreign battlefields, returned home after 1945 to the reality that once the war was won, their colonial rulers wanted to revert to their old ways, breeding resentment and distrust.
In 2009, a BBC documentary team tracked down some of Africa’s forgotten wartime heroes to hear their stories and, even though the war had been over for 64 years by then, the fact that their contributions had not been adequately acknowledged still rankled. It also found that, having fought alongside white soldiers, any sense that whites were in some way superior was challenged by their battlefield experiences.
“Initially, I saw the white man as someone better than me. But after the war, I considered him an equal,” former infantryman Dauda Kafanchan told the BBC.
Morrow says that “British and French attempts to omit, diminish, or discredit the achievements of African soldiers stemmed from their intent to ignore or limit African demands for equality and independence, in the same fashion that white Americans’ refusal to acknowledge the combat service of African-American soldiers was intended to keep the latter ‘in their place’ and forestall the granting of equal rights to black citizens under the law.”
But this wouldn’t be allowed to stand. As historian Tom Hartley wrote in Sheffield University’s ‘New Histories’ magazine, “the old colonial powers Britain and France had won the war but lost the battle – their statuses as the biggest names on the world stage was now over.”
Having fought to preserve freedom across Europe, it became very difficult for proponents of colonialism to continue to support the oppression of Africans.
“These moral issues, along with the financial cost of propping up an empire with Europe so devastated, led to a movement away from colonialism.”
This movement was supported by the Atlantic Charter, signed by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and US President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1941, which spelled out their justification for going to war with Germany and its allies, became a rallying point for African nationalists and gave them a powerful political tool.
Clause 3 of the Charter states that “[the British and American governments and people] respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live; and they wish to see sovereign rights and self government restored to those who have been forcibly deprived of them.”
In The Saylor Foundation’s World War II and the Road to Independence, this “was intended to apply only to the European countries which were overrun by German Nazi forces [but] Africans appropriated it and used it for their own purposes,” leading to the “vast politicization of the African masses.”
Rather than arguing for better treatment, less discrimination and greater opportunities, African nationalists were now demanding a complete end to colonial rule.
In 1945, when the fifth Pan-African Congress took place in London, Kwame Nkrumah and Jomo Kenyatta, the future leaders of independent Ghana and Kenya, stood up and demanded an end to British colonialism.
In an essay entitled ‘To what extent was World War Two the catalyst or cause of British Decolonisation’, hosted on his Active History website, teacher and academic Russell Tarr argues that the war did so much damage to the British economy that that the Empire was forced to break up.
At the time, as The Saylor Foundation and others note, European powers had no intention of granting independence to their colonies – they thought it was too soon for self-governance. Africans, in their view, needed more training and education before they could be trusted to rule themselves.
In fact, Herbert Morrison, the post-war Labour Party Deputy Prime Minister, said that giving the colonies independence would be “like giving a child of ten a latch-key, a bank account and a shotgun.” The fact that the British wanted the process to be slow had more to do with the economic benefits of an almost endless supply of cheap raw materials than any inherent concern for the wellbeing of their African subjects, but the gradual change was never going to be acceptable to battle-weary and hardened veterans.
While the history of colonial and post-colonial Africa has generally been well recorded, it is only in recent years that the role that Africans played in World War II, and the subsequent impact that this would have on the continent in the wake of the conflict, is getting the attention that it deserves.
These forgotten soldiers are at last being properly remembered – not only for the significant part they played in defeating the scourge of fascism but also for their role in winning independence for their native lands.

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