Less than a month after&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/justinbirnbaum/2021/08/10/lionel-messis-deal-with-paris-saint-germain-will-keep-him-among-soccers-top-three-earners/">Lionel Messi’s blockbuster exit</a>&nbsp;from FC Barcelona, Cristiano Ronaldo is shaking up the soccer world with a move of his own.



The 36-year-old star has agreed to join Manchester United, which will pay Juventus around $40 million, depending on performance, to facilitate its new striker’s release, sources tell&nbsp;Forbes. Terms of Ronaldo’s new contract have not been disclosed, although sources familiar with the contract have said that some details are still being finalized and that, pending a physical, Ronaldo is set to sign on for the next two seasons.



Ronaldo is one of the most financially successful athletes in history. Last year, his annual earnings of $105 million made him the first soccer player&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/christinasettimi/2020/06/04/ronaldos-105-million-year-tops-messi-and-crowns-him-soccers-first-billion-dollar-man/">to earn $1 billion</a>&nbsp;(before taxes), according to&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;estimates. Messi followed him just a few months later, and the two rivals remain the sport’s only players to have reached that milestone.



This year, Ronaldo ranked as the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/athletes/">third-highest-paid athlete in the world</a>, behind Conor McGregor and Messi, with earnings of $120 million—$70 million of that made on the pitch and $50 million from endorsements. In addition to a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kurtbadenhausen/2016/12/02/cristiano-ronaldos-1-billion-nike-deal-is-a-bargain-for-sportswear-giant/">lifetime deal</a>&nbsp;with Nike, his sponsors include DAZN, Herbalife, MTG and Unilever.



<h1 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-ronaldo-s-riches">Ronaldo&#8217;s Riches</h1>



Cristiano Ronaldo has earned more than $100 million annually in each of his last four appearances on Forbes&#8217; list of the world&#8217;s highest-paid athletes. He was No. 1 in 2017.



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="387" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Screenshot-2021-08-31-at-12.42.33-1024x387.png" alt="" class="wp-image-52355" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Screenshot-2021-08-31-at-12.42.33-1024x387.png 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Screenshot-2021-08-31-at-12.42.33-300x113.png 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Screenshot-2021-08-31-at-12.42.33-768x290.png 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Screenshot-2021-08-31-at-12.42.33.png 1472w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure></div>



While the news is groundbreaking, it’s by no means unexpected. Reports have recently circulated that Juventus was eager to unload Ronaldo’s contract. ESPN reported in June that his representatives were&nbsp;<a href="https://www.espn.com/soccer/soccer-transfers/story/4401924/cristiano-ronaldo-checking-transfer-interest-despite-juventus-talks-sources" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">checking in with other clubs</a>&nbsp;on potential fits, and this week, multiple outlets posited that Manchester City had been angling to sign Ronaldo. Man City struck out in its quest to land Harry Kane from Tottenham Hotspur earlier this summer.



It’s a return to familiar territory for Ronaldo, who played for Manchester United from 2003 to 2009, winning three Premier League titles and the 2007-08 UEFA Champions League final. During his career, Ronaldo has scored 783 <a href="https://www.theweek.co.uk/messi-vs-ronaldo-all-time-goals-career-statistics-red-cards" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">total senior team goals</a> during domestic, cup, continental and international matches, <a href="https://www.espn.com/soccer/blog-the-toe-poke/story/4295456/is-cristiano-ronaldo-soccers-all-time-top-scorer-or-is-it-pele-josef-bican-we-may-never-know-for-sure" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">more than any player in the history of the sport</a>, including Pelé (although challenges to official scoring rules dispute this record). That figure <a href="https://fbref.com/en/players/dea698d9/Cristiano-Ronaldo" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">includes</a> 479 goals in domestic league matches and 109 goals while playing for Portugal <a href="https://www.transfermarkt.us/cristiano-ronaldo/nationalmannschaft/spieler/8198" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">on the international stage</a>. 



By Justin Birnbaum, Forbes Staff



By Christina Settimi, Forbes Staff

Portugal’s football team training session

Cristiano Ronaldo Returns To Manchester, Bringing Career Earnings Of More Than $1 Billion To United

The Global Business Forum Africa in Dubai and Dubai Chamber’s representative offices across the continent have catalysed bilateral trade growth over the last decade.



Dubai’s trade with Africa has grown by leaps and bounds over the last decade, thanks to several important developments that have established new business links between the emirate and promising markets across the continent.



The emirate’s trade and investment relationship with Africa has gone from strength to strength in recent years as more African companies have entered the UAE, while many UAE companies have expanded their presence in Africa.



Among the most crucial factors that facilitated bilateral trade and investment flows is the Global Business Forum Africa in Dubai. Since this high-profile event series was launched by Dubai Chamber in 2013, Dubai’s non-oil trade with Africa has surged by over 71 percent to exceed $50 billion in 2020.



The 6th edition of the Global Business Forum Africa, set to descend on Expo 2020 Dubai October 13th -14th, 2021, comes at a time when UAE-Africa ties are rapidly expanding as the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) and regional integration efforts gain momentum.



Dubai’s trade with Africa is projected to see an annual increase of up to 10% over the next five years following the implementation of AfCFTA, according to recent analysis from Dubai Chamber.



The changing dynamics brought forth by AfCFTA and the Covid-19 situation have created an opportunity for businesses in Dubai to re-position themselves and explore new African markets as they prepare for recovery.



As a world-class business hub located within close proximity to the continent, Dubai is an ideal partner that is well-positioned to unlock Africa’s untapped economic potential and support the next phase of the continent’s development.



From sustainable agriculture to logistics, free zones, finance and advanced technologies, Dubai has the right level of expertise and investment needed to fill market gaps in Africa.



Food security is another area of mutual interest offering a lot of potential as many African countries are major agricultural exporters, while the UAE has a new strategy in place that aims to diversify its food imports.



Yet, there remains huge potential to further expand the scope of bilateral trade and investment to other areas and fields of mutual interest, such as fintech, artificial intelligence, digital transformation, blockchain and smart city solutions.



Dubai&#8217;s strategic position as a thriving transit hub at the intersection of Asia, Europe and Africa makes it an ideal market that African companies can leverage to restart their businesses and boost their global footprint as they position themselves for post-Covid recovery.



With its close proximity to African markets, valuable expertise, and strong appetite for foreign investments, Dubai has all of the advantages and resources needed to support the region’s future growth.



Through its network of representative offices in Ghana, Kenya, Ethiopia and Mozambique, Dubai Chamber is well-positioned to support companies in the UAE that are keen to capitalize on business opportunities emerging across the continent.



The ever-expanding trade links between Africa and Dubai are positive sign that our efforts are bearing fruit. We look forward to exploring investment opportunities in new sectors and areas that UAE companies can benefit from.



The current timing is ideal for African companies to leverage GBF Africa and Expo 2020 Dubai platforms to explore new business prospects, expand their global footprint and foster cross-border partnerships that drive sustainable growth.



<meta charset="utf-8">By: Hamad Buamim



Hamad Buamim is President and CEO of Dubai Chamber

HE Hamad Buamim-President andv CEO, Dubai Chamber

A Turning Point for Dubai-Africa Trade

Thailand Rolls Out Pfizer Vaccine

Covid’s Forgotten Hero: The Untold Story Of The Scientist Whose Breakthrough Made The Vaccines Possible

tennis

Highest-Paid Tennis Players 2021: Federer, Serena And Nadal Win Even When They Can’t Take The Court

TOPLINE People infected with Covid-19 face a much greater risk of developing dangerous blood clots than people receiving a Pfizer or AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine, according to a large study <a href="https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n1931" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">published</a> in the British Medical Journal Friday, underscoring the benefits of vaccination even if they pose limited risks of adverse events. 



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



Using data from some 29 million people in the U.K., the researchers found a higher risk of stroke after the Pfizer shot and a higher risk of rare blood clotting after the AstraZeneca shot but found the risks are “substantially higher and more prolonged” after a Covid-19 infection. 



For every 10 million people receiving their first Pfizer shot, the data showed there would be 143 more cases of ischaemic stroke, compared to around 1,699 for 10 million people after infection.&nbsp;



There would be around 107 additional cases of thrombocytopenia—a form of rare blood clotting—and 66 cases of venous blood clots for every 10 million having their first AstraZeneca shot, according to the data, versus around 934 and 12,614 extra cases respectively for the same number of people after a Covid-19 infection.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



The risks associated with the Covid-19 vaccines are also relatively short-lived, the researchers found, while the risks from a coronavirus infection are more prolonged.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Though the vaccines can increase the likelihood of developing blood clots, the researchers said their findings underscore the importance of getting vaccinated to reduce this risk, given the higher risks with Covid-19.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-crucial-quote">CRUCIAL QUOTE</h2>



Dr. Peter English, a retired communicable disease specialist and the former chair of the BMA’s public health medicine committee, <a href="https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-study-looking-at-risk-of-thrombocytopenia-and-thromboembolism-after-covid-19-vaccination-and-sars-cov-2-infection/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">said</a>: “This is a very important paper…[which] shows clearly that you are far more likely to suffer these adverse events (which are very rare following vaccination) if you get Covid-19.” English said the “final remaining calculation to be made” is whether different vaccines pose different risks. The rarity of the adverse events does, however, make this difficult to calculate precisely, he added.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



A raft of countries and regulators&nbsp;<a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-countries-halt-oxford-astrazeneca-vaccine-rollout-after-blood-clots/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">halted</a>&nbsp;AstraZeneca vaccine rollouts in early March as a precautionary measure following reports of very rare blood clotting. A rare link was found between shots and clots, and while regulators and public health experts overwhelmingly&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2021/03/18/eu-agency-oks-astrazeneca-vaccine-ruling-out-broad-link-to-blood-clotting/?sh=226cfc8968ff">declared</a>&nbsp;the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.who.int/news/item/17-03-2021-who-statement-on-astrazeneca-covid-19-vaccine-safety-signals" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">shot</a>&nbsp;safe and better than contracting Covid-19, it was shunned by both wealthy nations who could afford alternatives and poorer nations who didn’t have&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-08/haiti-is-the-only-country-in-western-hemisphere-without-vaccines" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">any vaccines to begin with</a>. Evidence&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2021/07/28/no-increased-risk-of-blood-clotting-after-second-astrazeneca-shot-study-finds/?sh=893e2c35023d">indicates</a>&nbsp;the risk is only elevated for the first shot, though some nations opted to provide different vaccines for those part way through the immunization schedule.&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/how-astrazeneca-threw-away-its-shot/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">How AstraZeneca threw away its shot</a>&nbsp;(Politico)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/leahrosenbaum/2021/04/13/heres-what-scientists-know-about-covid-19-vaccine-blood-clots-and-how-the-risks-can-be-diminished/?sh=5653215751c4">Here’s What Scientists Know About Covid-19 Vaccine Blood Clots, And How The Risks Can Be Diminished</a>&nbsp;(Forbes)



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2021/07/28/no-increased-risk-of-blood-clotting-after-second-astrazeneca-shot-study-finds/?sh=893e2c35023d">No Increased Risk Of Blood Clotting After Second AstraZeneca Shot, Study Finds</a> (Forbes)



By Robert Hart, Forbes Staff

ICOAST-HEALTH-VIRUS-VACCINE

Covid Infection Has ‘Much Higher’ Risk Of Blood Clots Than Vaccines Do, Study Finds

TOPLINE Apple has agreed to make some changes to its App Store policy as part of a proposed lawsuit settlement which will enable developers to contact customers about alternate payment methods for in-app transactions that will allow them to circumvent Apple’s sizeable commission fee, a move that comes at a time when the iPhone-maker is facing major antitrust and legal challenges around the world.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



Is a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/08/apple-us-developers-agree-to-app-store-updates/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">press release</a>, Apple says it will allow app developers to reach out to their iPhone and iPad customers via email or other communication channels to inform them about alternate payment methods that don’t carry Apple’s fee—something Apple previously did not allow.



One caveat to this allowance is that users will need to consent to the communication and they will have the right to opt-out of receiving such communications.



The proposed settlement also expands the number of price points that developers can charge for subscriptions, in-app purchases, and paid apps.



Apple has also agreed to create a $100 million fund for payouts to small app developers.



The iPhone-maker has also agreed to not raise its commission rate for small developers—which it slashed from 30% to 15% last year—for at least three years.



The proposed changes will have to be approved by a U.S. federal court judge who is also presiding over Epic Games’ lawsuit against Apple.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-chief-critic">CHIEF CRITIC</h2>



The Coalition for App Fairness—a group that includes the likes of Spotify and Epic Games as its members issued a&nbsp;<a href="https://appfairness.org/coalition-for-app-fairness-statement-on-apples-sham-settlement-offer/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">statement</a>&nbsp;dismissing Apple’s settlement offer as a “sham.” Meghan DiMuzio the executive director of the group said: “Apple&#8217;s sham settlement offer is nothing more than a desperate attempt to avoid the judgment of courts, regulators, and legislators worldwide… If this settlement is approved, app makers will still be barred from communicating about lower prices or offering competing payment options within their apps.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-crucial-quote">CRUCIAL QUOTE</h2>



“We truly are proud that a case brought by two developers, standing in the shoes of tens of thousands of U.S. iOS developers, could help to bring about so much important change,” Steve Berman, a lawyer for the plaintiffs in the suit,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/27/technology/apple-settles-app-store-lawsuit.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">told</a>&nbsp;the&nbsp;New York Times.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



Apple’s settlement appears to be a rather minor concession from the world’s richest company as its App Store business practices face&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2021/08/25/south-korea-lawmakers-back-legislative-action-to-curb-google-and-apples-app-store-fees/?sh=7c082ba01813">increasing antitrust scrutiny</a>&nbsp;worldwide. Some app makers, like Spotify, already&nbsp;<a href="https://support.spotify.com/us/article/apple-payments/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">block new customers</a>&nbsp;from signing up for subscriptions inside their iOS app. In the past, the music streamer has also&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theverge.com/2015/7/8/8913105/spotify-apple-app-store-email" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">sent out emails</a>&nbsp;urging existing subscribers to ditch Apple’s payment system for a discount. Apple’s new proposal will simply formalize this for all developers. The company, however, made no concessions about payment methods within iOS itself, and app developers are still forced to only use Apple’s payment system for all in-app transactions taking place on an iPhone or iPad. The proposed settlement comes at a time when Apple is awaiting a decision from a federal judge in a separate lawsuit filed by Fortnite-developer Epic Games which seeks to allow developers to circumvent Apple’s App Store commissions altogether.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tangent">TANGENT</h2>



On Wednesday, a South Korean parliamentary committee&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2021/08/25/south-korea-lawmakers-back-legislative-action-to-curb-google-and-apples-app-store-fees/?sh=7c082ba01813">voted</a>&nbsp;to move forward a key legislative amendment that would ban Apple and Google from forcibly charging app developers a commission on all add-on purchases by requiring them to use their proprietary payment systems. Previously this month, a group of bipartisan U.S. senators&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/us-lawmakers-introduce-bill-rein-apple-google-app-stores-2021-08-11/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">introduced</a>&nbsp;a similar bill that would bar companies from forcing their payment system on app developers. Last year, the European Union&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2020/12/15/new-eu-rules-could-fine-us-tech-giants-billions/?sh=5db2712f6a54">unveiled</a>&nbsp;a set of proposals that would force the likes of Apple and Google to divest parts of their business if they fail to adhere to fair competition rules.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/27/technology/apple-settles-app-store-lawsuit.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Apple Settlement Gives App Developers a Way to Avoid Its Commission</a>&nbsp;(New York Times)



<a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/apple-will-change-app-store-practices-after-settlement-with-small-developers-2021-08-27/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Apple strikes App Store deal with small developers as it waits for &#8216;Fortnite&#8217; ruling</a> (Reuters)



By Siladitya Ray, Forbes Staff

American multinational technology company Apple store seen

Apple Agrees To App Store Policy Changes In Settlement With Small Developers As Antitrust Threat Looms

TOPLINE In year two of the pandemic, as South Africa celebrates Women’s Month, we can’t but look back at the lives impacted and the businesses that have been throttled by a virulent virus. Yet, in all of this, there are rays of hope, as some have shone through, to ideate and innovate and also lend a helping hand by making sure women and girls are at the center of their pandemic-proof enterprises. These female entrepreneurs have businesses in fashion and food, and run NGOs and social reform. For some, these are side hustles, but no matter the nature of their undertaking, they aim to uplift, upskill and empower. FORBES AFRICA sat down with a few such doers to glean their thoughts on how they are making it:



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-1-shared-collective">1. Shared Collective</h2>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/1-2-1024x576.png" alt="" class="wp-image-52325" width="586" height="329" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/1-2-1024x576.png 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/1-2-300x169.png 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/1-2-768x432.png 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/1-2-1536x864.png 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/1-2.png 1920w" sizes="(max-width: 586px) 100vw, 586px" /></figure></div>



“I saw this TikTok that said I couldn’t work a nine-to-five but now I am an entrepreneur who works 24/7!” laughs Kishana Naidoo, co-founder of digital clothing platform Shared Collective or Shared Co.



“But at least we have a creative outlet,” says her business partner and fellow co-founder, Simone Veitch.



Although Veitch is in London and Naidoo in Johannesburg, both cities that are big economic hubs, the pandemic presented an opportunity for them to take advantage of the rising trend in digital spaces.



Shared Co. is a platform for women to share their wardrobe and rent from others. It enables them to monetize their clothing items by renting them out and reducing their retail consumption by renting items from others.



Although this business model will raise many questions such as ‘who rents clothes out to people during a pandemic’, the duo make it clear that security and safety is of utmost importance to them.



“We have a strict dry-cleaning policy that people both renting out and those who rent have to follow,” Veitch says. “Furthermore, with the delivery process, we want people to feel safe when going through our process.”



The inspiration for the brand came when both women working in the corporate sector were forced to pause and think when Covid struck.



“I think a lot of people went through that,” Naidoo says. “We wanted to create something that both helps women get a second income as well as feel empowered.”



“The end goal for us has always been empowering women,” Veitch adds.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">2. Hair For Life</h2>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="alignleft size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/IMG_0462-1024x992.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-52323" width="347" height="336" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/IMG_0462-1024x992.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/IMG_0462-300x291.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/IMG_0462-768x744.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/IMG_0462.jpg 1170w" sizes="(max-width: 347px) 100vw, 347px" /></figure></div>



Getting a business to run successfully during the pandemic has been a hair-raising task for most. But 29-year-old Khanyi Cele believes the magic tool to any successful business these days is utilizing social media. Hair For Life took root when Cele was searching for good quality hair for herself and was not impressed with what salons had to offer. She tells us more:



Q. What has it been like having a business during a pandemic and what has your business trajectory looked like? 



A. I have been fortunate that my business actually started picking up as Covid restrictions eased… my business has honestly not been affected in a major way by the pandemic. My business trajectory has been rather a smooth one if I should say, but with any business, there are always bumps and curves here and there especially if you working with international suppliers.



Q. You use social media as the main tool to promote your product. Do you think the future of business lies in social media?



A. Social media is certainly a platform to be reckoned with. It’s cost-effective and effective in getting your product out to people. The fact that you can reach out to people all over the world is a major selling point as I have customers from all corners asking me if I ship internationally. It is in my opinion the future of direct marketing. The results are almost instant and noticeable.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">3. Team DIMA Global </h2>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/team-dima_-1024x768.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-52331" width="578" height="434" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/team-dima_-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/team-dima_-300x225.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/team-dima_-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/team-dima_-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/team-dima_.jpg 1890w" sizes="(max-width: 578px) 100vw, 578px" /></figure></div>



The University of Pennsylvania said in a report that the stigma and challenges associated with menstruation destabilize over 800 million girls daily.



“One in every ten schoolgirls in sub-Saharan Africa miss school daily. Girls report being bullied and ridiculed about their period by peers and teachers with serious and sometimes fatal consequences,” the report read.



However, they also found that global advocacy for what the world knows as “period positivity” with people demanding access to menstruation products and facilities exposes social and economic inequities and the need for reform.



One of those advocates is social entrepreneur Dima-Thalia Rizk. All the way from the heart of London, Rizk founded her community organization, Team DIMA Global, with her twin-sister Mary. The company launched a long-term project to handle “menstrual hygiene management” in Kenya. The project looks at ensuring that every girl has access to period pads 365 days a year. Period poverty is one of Rizk’s main concerns and the stigmas centered around menstruation.



“Without a doubt, menstruation is one of the most challenging topics in Africa and the world today,” Rizk says to FORBES AFRICA. “It&#8217;s a shame that we&#8217;re in 2021 and still trying to make progress in normalizing menstruation and working to help women and girls access sanitary products. It is a natural process most females have to go through and there is hardly any consideration of their wellbeing; affordable access is a human right.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">4. Khanyalanga Catering </h2>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="alignleft size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/phumi-682x1024.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-52327" width="284" height="426" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/phumi-682x1024.jpg 682w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/phumi-200x300.jpg 200w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/phumi-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/phumi.jpg 853w" sizes="(max-width: 284px) 100vw, 284px" /></figure></div>



Motto You Live By: “I have two – &#8216;Carpe Diem&#8217; and ‘When the going gets tough, breathe, focus and move on&#8217;.”



Deloitte stated in a report in March 2020 that the majority of catering companies (particularly SMEs) “have faced sharp declines in customer numbers, ruptured asset chains, or other momentous challenges”. This was no different during the pandemic for KwaZulu-Natal-born Phumelele Masinga who saw a downward trajectory for her business which she founded in 2018.



“It&#8217;s been extremely challenging for Khanyalanga Catering,” Masinga says. “Seeing that the majority of our clients were in corporates, we took a knock as the work-from-home concept took shape. So the on and off between [lockdown alert] levels has really affected how we do business.”



Most of the challenges that Masinga has experienced has revolved around cancellations and postponements and having to adapt to making more food deliveries, as opposed to simply setting up and serving.



However, this has not demotivated Masinga in any way as she has seen through word-of-mouth that her business has grown, which she says is by “word of taste”.



“Yes, I learned some tough lessons in the beginning and I have had to adapt and be flexible (especially during this period), and I believe that we are agile enough for Khanyalanga to be a sustainable and successful business,” Masinga adds.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">5. La Shadie</h2>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/lashade-1024x768.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-52328" width="516" height="387" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/lashade-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/lashade-300x225.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/lashade-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/lashade-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/lashade.jpg 1890w" sizes="(max-width: 516px) 100vw, 516px" /></figure></div>



Nobody loves a side hustle and a passion for fashion more than sisters Boitumelo Moshugi and Neo Moshugi who founded sunglass brand, La Shadie. Both are practising Candidate Attorneys in Johannesburg aspiring to become successful attorneys and entrepreneurs.



La Shadie was birthed in June last year when Neo was unemployed.



“Boitumelo came to me with the opportunity to start a sunglass business,” Neo says. “I considered it for some time but after she showed me the research she had done, I was convinced. I had a love for sunglasses and as we delved deeper into our research, my love for the business opportunity grew.”



“What inspired La Shadie is our passion for fashion. I was always questioned about my unique sense of style and the choice of sunglasses when pairing my outfits, which led me to want to bring a vision to people in the market place that’s so unique that they cannot be found in retail stores,” Boitumelo adds.



The main marketing tool the Moshugi sisters use is social media which has allowed them to see great demand for their products. More than that, starting a business during Covid has surprisingly helped them in their growth trajectory.



“Having a business during the pandemic has been an incredible experience because of the creativity it has brought to growing our business. Although it was daunting at first, we dove in head first and kept the momentum going.”



(The List is in No particular Order)

Business owner hanging an open sign at a cafe

Survivors and Thrivers: Female Entrepreneurs Redefining Hustle In Africa

OnlyFans’ competitors smell blood—and are going after its adult creators and the piles of money they generate—as the firm waffles on porn. The naked truth behind which platforms stand to gain the most.



Evan Seinfeld, the&nbsp;Brooklyn-born second cousin of comedian Jerry Seinfeld, has been getting his online&nbsp;adult content platform IsMyGirl ready for a great migration. He is expecting an influx of thousands&nbsp;of porn stars and sex workers who are leaving&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/willyakowicz/2021/08/20/why-onlyfans-will-never-shed-its-reputation-for-sexually-explicit-content/?sh=1f93ba185f58">OnlyFans</a>, the category&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2021/06/16/the-shady-secret-history-of-onlyfans-billionaire-owner/?sh=2f625ed65c17">leading London-based platform</a>&nbsp;that&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemimamcevoy/2021/08/19/onlyfans-will-block-sexually-explicit-content-in-effort-to-become-more-mainstream/?sh=6553c7b15730">banned sexually explicit content</a>&nbsp;only to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemimamcevoy/2021/08/25/onlyfans-halts-plan-to-block-sexually-explicit-content/?sh=32c2934d5f6e">reverse its ban</a>&nbsp;a week later.



“We’re at DEFCON 1,” says Seinfeld, who was the vocalist and bass player of thrash metal band Biohazard before getting into the adult entertainment industry. He says that 1,000 creators signed up for IsMyGirl on the first day&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/willyakowicz/2021/08/20/why-onlyfans-will-never-shed-its-reputation-for-sexually-explicit-content/?sh=2b564acd5f58">OnlyFans announced it would block porn</a>&nbsp;starting in October. The next day, Seinfeld says, 1,400 people signed up for his site. Now thousands of people per&nbsp;day&nbsp;are applying, adding, “It’s too many people coming in.”



OnlyFans, which has been&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2021/06/16/the-shady-secret-history-of-onlyfans-billionaire-owner/?sh=2f625ed65c17">under scrutiny</a>&nbsp;for&nbsp;<a href="https://wagner.house.gov/sites/wagner.house.gov/files/FINAL%20-%20Wagner%20Letter%20to%20DOJ%20re%20OnlyFans%20%28102%29.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reportedly</a>&nbsp;having&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-57255983" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">underaged performer</a>s on its site,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ft.com/content/7b8ce71c-a87a-440e-9f3d-58069ca0480b" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">blamed the banks</a>&nbsp;for the porn ban saying they were refusing to process the platform’s transactions. Then six days later OnlyFans did an abrupt volte-face: “We have secured assurances necessary to support our diverse creator community,” the company announced in a new statement, “and have suspended the planned October 1 policy change.”



The flip-flopping&nbsp;—&nbsp;and uncertainty surrounding the future (does “suspended” mean “postponed” or “permanently canceled”?)&nbsp;—&nbsp;has hurt OnlyFans’ reputation in the eyes of both creators and users and whether or not they ban porn in the future, the damage is done. After years of vying for other&nbsp;bodily fluids, OnlyFans’ competition now smells blood in the water.



The financial opportunity—and the battle for a portion of OnlyFans’ 1.6 million creators and 150 million users—is huge. The company reported that users spent $2.3 billion in 2020 on the platform, of which OnlyFan’s keeps 20%. An estimated 85% of those payments were for sexually explicit content, according to industry insiders, or about $390 million a year. Now platforms like ManyVids, IsMyGirl, LoyalFans, Fansly, FanCentro, AVN Stars and more are duking it out and trying to grab as much of that cash, and attract as many creators, as possible.



Mary Moody, who has been in the adult industry for six years and is among OnlyFans’ top earners, says she’s moving to Peach, a new platform associated with webcam site Chaturbate.



“People have already lost thousands of dollars, so even if OnlyFans completely reverses their ban, this has caused harm,” says Moody. “More than anything it’s irreparably damaged the trust fans have in individual creators as a business. I lost 300 subscribers within hours of the original announcement—they’re not coming back.”



Moody says she will be focusing her efforts on the new platform Peach because she now feels that OnlyFans doesn’t respect sex workers. “The de-banking and de-platforming of sex workers is occupational discrimination,” says Moody adding, “Banks are for business, not for religious crusades. J.P. Morgan Chase and BNY Mellon and Mastercard need to get out of people’s bedrooms and work on policies with sex workers that reduce harm.”



“If I could capture 10% of [OnlyFans’] runoff, I could retire in two years,” says Seinfeld, from his home in Tulum, Mexico. To that end, IsMyGirl is offering creators a deal: the platform will only take a 10% cut of total earnings, half as much as OnlyFans charges.



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">FanCentro says it signed up 20,000 creators in the first four days after OnlyFans announced a ban on sexually explicit material.</blockquote>



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



With 5 million users and 30,000 models, IsMyGirl claims it has paid its creators tens of millions of dollars and the most popular stars on the platform make more than $1 million a year. But that’s still a rounding error compared with the $5 billion OnlyFans has paid out to its creators since launching in 2016.



Stan Fiskin, who founded adult content platform FanCentro in 2017 with Alan Hall, believes his platform can grab as much 30% of OnlyFans’ adult revenues. “[The reversal] might slow down the migration, but I don’t think it’ll stop,” says Fiskin. FanCentro says it signed up 20,000 creators in the first four days after OnlyFans announced a ban on sexually explicit material.



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GettyImages-1233527756-1024x683.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-52260" width="597" height="398" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GettyImages-1233527756-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GettyImages-1233527756-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GettyImages-1233527756-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GettyImages-1233527756-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GettyImages-1233527756-2048x1366.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 597px) 100vw, 597px" /><figcaption> Photographer: Gabby Jones/Bloomberg via Getty Images</figcaption></figure></div>



“It’s all hands on deck,” says Fiskin, who says his team has been working 20-hour days to increase server capacity and bandwidth by a factor of ten to make sure the platform can handle the increase in content and traffic. “This is just the beginning. We&#8217;re trying to make sure that this business becomes the new OnlyFans.”



FanCentro, which is run from its offices in Matawan, New Jersey, and Limassol, Cyprus, believes it has a competitive advantage over other platforms because of some vertical integration. It owns its own payment processor called CentroBill, and the company also offers free classes to verified influencers through Centro University to teach them how to make more money. Beyond those opportunities, FanCentro is trying to capitalize on OnlyFans’ initial announcement by offering creators 100% of revenues they earn through October and then 80% after that. Fiskin says OnlyFans might have suspended its ban, but he’s still seeing creators flood his platform.



At Montreal-based ManyVids, co-founder and CEO Bella French says they’ve experienced an “explosion” of growth. ManyVids is also offering creators 100% of revenues until October and then 85% payout “forever,” says French, who was a webcam performer for three years before starting MavTek, ManyVids’ parent company, with her boyfriend in 2014.



For ManyVids, which has more than 100,000 models and 3.6 million users, the race is now on to capture as much market share as possible. But it’s not a recipe for an explosion in profits right away. “To be honest, once you take out 85%, pay your employees, your rent, there&#8217;s not much left,” says French. “But the way we’re set up makes sense for us. We run here with a very efficient team.”



Tyga, the hip-hop artist who runs one of the most popular OnlyFans accounts, is also looking to fill the vacuum. The 31-year-old performer&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/abigailfreeman/2021/08/20/tyga-deletes-onlyfans-account-to-launch-competitor-myystar/">told&nbsp;Forbes</a>&nbsp;that he deleted his OnlyFans account and is building his own platform called Myystar, which is expected to launch in October and take a 10% cut of creators’ revenue.



Not everyone is leaving, of course.&nbsp;Sophie Dee, a successful porn actress who has become a social media influencer and investor, says she makes more than $1 million a year on OnlyFans. About half of her income is derived from sexually explicit content, mostly from selling “vintage” porn videos from before she stopped shooting scenes, and the other half she makes by selling shoutouts, or short custom videos (a la Cameo) in which she talks to a fan by name and maybe does a quick striptease. After the latest announcement, Dee says she is unlikely to look for a new platform.



“I don’t think it’ll be a blow to my business,” says Dee. “We’re used to it in this world of social media and technology, there’s constant changes and when something shuts down, you adapt to new rules and it opens the door to new opportunities.”



Others are staying but feel insecure. For Maya Morena, the site helped transform her life. In 2017, she was an escort who made ends meet by crashing on her friend’s couch in Brooklyn. After three years of making and selling thousands of pieces of explicit content on OnlyFans, she now earns enough money to rent a two-bedroom apartment and plans to attend college in the fall. She was searching for another platform but is worried about giving up her sole source of income.



“My partner and sisters were happy about OnlyFans’ reversal: ‘The whores won!’ they said. But I don’t really feel like we ever truly do,” she says. “It all feels temporary, like temporary work visa that you know they want to revoke in the future. I know society roots for our downfall.”



Even if most of the creators stay on OnlyFans, Evan Seinfeld says that there’s enough skin to go around because the platform has helped change the cultural stigma and scrubbed much of the shame associated with producing and watching porn.



“People are consuming more porn than ever before and people are creating more porn than ever before,” says Seinfeld, who has been in the adult industry for 20 years. “Your mom said go to college or else you’ll be living like a bum. But maybe it pays better to be hot in this weird post-pandemic world.”



By Will Yakowicz, Forbes Staff

VENEZUELA-CRISIS-ONLYFANS

Inside The $390 Million Battle For OnlyFans’ Insatiable Audience

The shortage, stockpiling and slow deployment of Covid-19 vaccines means the pandemic is far from over for the continent. Where do the poorer countries stand?



Computer engineer David Osei recalls how he passionately argued with his friends when they debated whether getting the Covid-19 vaccines was a smart idea or not six months ago. Osei believed it was not. His argument at that time was that there was a wider conspiracy going on where wealthy nations would trial non-tested doses on people in developing countries.



“I said it was too quick to create a vaccine for a disease that was still developing and no one knew how it would turn out. In fact, I still had my doubts about whether Covid was real or not,” recalls Osei.



But then Covid-19 took the lives of two of his closest friends and his fiancé within the space of a month. Now, he has joined the rush to get vaccinated in Ghana. The problem is, there are not enough vaccines for him and millions of Africans on the continent.



“I believe it is important to protect ourselves as nobody knows how things will turn out tomorrow. I am afraid of how bad things can get for everyone,” says Osei.



According to the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the continent has now received more than 103 million Covid-19 vaccine doses with about 70% of these vaccines already distributed. However, this accounts for just 1.7% of the African population. For that number to reach 10%, the World Health Organization (WHO) says the continent needs another 183 million more doses by the end of 2021.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-style-large is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">“More than half of the vaccines that have been received so far in Africa is through bilateral donations from other wealthy countries like the United States or the United Kingdom. So yet again, Africa is now relegated to depending on donations and the charity of developed economies to save lives.”</blockquote>



Dr Ngozi Okonko-Iweala, the newly-appointed Director-General of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in a recent FORBES AFRICA interview highlighted the importance of African nations receiving vaccinations on time so as not to get left behind as in pandemics of the past such as H1N1.



To ensure this doesn’t happen again to Africa, Okonjo-Iweala and her team have developed the Access to Covid-19 Tools (ACT) accelerator with the WHO, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, to look at vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics for impoverished countries.



Within this framework, the organization has also developed the Covax facility, which is the vaccines pillar of the ACT accelerator to make vaccines available to poor countries.



But this has not gone exactly according to plan. For one, wealthier countries had already signed multi-million dollar deals with manufacturers for vaccines as early as July 2020 while they were still in development and undergoing trials.



“Big pharma will always prioritize those who have money to pay and unfortunately that means that the Covax scheme will never get the required doses they need until those who have deeper pockets are



serviced. Africa was always going to be playing catch-up to these vaccines,” says Dr Jason Lamptey, a pulmonologist operating in Ghana.



These deep-pocketed countries have vaccinated over 40% of their population, while Africa, with an estimated population of over 1.3 billion people, has only managed to vaccinate about 2% of the population, according to the WHO.



The WHO is now reviewing its vaccination targets for Africa estimating that nine out of 10 African countries will not manage to inoculate 10% of their populations by September, according to a report published by the BBC.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-style-large is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">“Why are some states stock-piling the few vaccines we have until they expire and we have to destroy them when there are people who urgently need it?”</blockquote>



Under the Covax program, which started in February, the goal was to deliver some 520 million doses to Africa by the end of 2021. These vaccines were initially acquired from the Serum Institute of India but that plan went sideways when India stopped vaccination export due to the devastating effects of the pandemic in the country. The effect of this has led to a reported shortage of 225 million vaccine doses.



“More than half of the vaccines that have been received so far in Africa is through bilateral donations from other wealthy countries like the United States or the United Kingdom. So yet again, Africa is now relegated to depending on donations and the charity of developed economies to save lives,” says Lamptey.



The African Union has a target to supply 400 million vaccine doses to Africa and by so doing reaching a third of the population.



According to Phionah Atuhebwe, the New Vaccines Introduction Medical Officer at WHO’s regional office in the Congo, 12 million doses of vaccines were supplied through Covax in July.



“We are continuing to push to get more delivered within the next couple of months. Vaccines came to a halt after the issues with India but we are building new partnerships that will see more positive inflow of the vaccines,” says Atuhebwe.



Africa has some 7.2 million confirmed Covid-19 cases as of August, according to figures from the Africa CDC.



While hundreds of millions of vulnerable Africans wait for their first shot, rich countries now have the luxury to moot booster doses.



“We cannot accept countries that have already used most of the global supply of vaccines using even more of it while the world’s most vulnerable people remain unprotected,” said WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in a press briefing reported by Reuters.



This has led the WHO to call for a moratorium on all booster shots until the end of September to enable poorer countries in Africa to reach their minimum goal of a 10% vaccination rate.



One year into the Covid-19 pandemic, the threat of the Delta Variant is real in addition to the vaccine shortage coupled with fear sparked by fake studies and conspiracy theories.



According to the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), just over 718,412 Nigerians and foreigners alike have received the first dose of Covid-19 vaccine.



“Even with the changing variants of Covid-19, I believe the biggest problem we have is the slow reaction from health protocols as well as the even slower distribution of these vaccines. Why are some states stock-piling the few vaccines we have until they expire and we have to destroy them when there are people who urgently need it?” says Dr Joshua Hayman, a medical practitioner based in Victoria Island, Lagos.



Professor Oyewale Tomori, a virologist and Chairman of the Expert Review Committee on Covid-19, concurs with that assessment.



“I have said it several times that Nigeria is a place where the impossible happens and that is not exactly a good thing when it comes to Covid-19. We have mass hoarding of vaccines by officials and people who are supposed to be receiving priority not getting the doses in time. We have no clear monitoring system to determine who gets the vaccine in time and when. The whole system is flawed and needs an overhaul to ensure we save lives.”



The country’s minister of state for health, Olorunnimbe Mamora, in a virtual conference on ‘Nigeria and the next pandemic: preparedness, response and vaccines’ asserted that Nigeria will be focusing on vaccine development to cater for the shortage of vaccines in the country through a joint venture between the government and a private firm called Bio-Vaccine Nigeria Limited. Hopefully, more lives will be saved then.

Pop-up Vaccination Bus as South Africa Weathers Third Covid Wave

A Long Shot Getting Africa Fully Vaccinated

TOPLINE One person involved in the Tokyo Paralympics has been hospitalized with Covid-19, the games’ organizing committee announced on Thursday, an incident that takes place amid Japan’s worst surge in infections since the start of the pandemic which has severely strained its medical resources.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



<a href="https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2021/08/6671facb7488-tokyo-paralympics-confirm-1st-covid-19-hospitalization.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">According to</a>&nbsp;the games’ organizing committee, the hospitalized individual was a foreign individual but not an athlete.



The patient is not displaying severe symptoms, organizing committee spokesperson Masanori Takaya added.



The organizers also reported 15 new Covid-19 cases linked to the games, including two athletes residing in the Games village.



Since the start of the games on Tuesday, at least&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/aug/26/paralympics-first-tokyo-games-participant-in-hospital-with-covid-19" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">five Paralympians</a>&nbsp;have tested positive for Covid-19.



The event featuring over 4,400 athletes is taking place at a time when Japan witnesses its worst Covid-19 outbreak, fueled by the more infectious delta variant.



<a href="https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2021/08/6671facb7488-tokyo-paralympics-confirm-1st-covid-19-hospitalization.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">According to</a>&nbsp;Kyodo News, health experts have warned that the country’s medical system is close to a breaking point with hospital beds becoming scarcer.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-big-number">BIG NUMBER</h2>



184. That’s the total number Covid-19 cases that have been linked to the Tokyo Paralympics since August 12,&nbsp;Kyodo News&nbsp;reports.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga and the International Olympic Committee (IOC)&nbsp;<a href="https://www.dw.com/en/japans-pm-olympics-have-not-caused-covid-19-spike/av-58788340" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">claimed</a>&nbsp;that the Olympic games, which ended earlier this month, did not aggravate Tokyo’s Covid outbreak. But health officials remained skeptical and tensions between them and the games’ organizers have remained high. The latest controversy has emerged around IOC chief Thomas Bach’s decision to fly back into Japan to attend the opening ceremony of the Paralympics. Bach, who left Japan on Wednesday night, was&nbsp;<a href="https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2021/08/25/national/omi-bach-tokyo-return-criticism/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">criticized</a>&nbsp;by the country’s top Covid-19 advisor Shigeru Omi. Omi said Bach&#8217;s decision to briefly return to Japan ran counter to “common sense” as Covid infections continue to rise in the country. In response, the International Paralympic Committee said that Bach was invited by them to attend and his itinerary was approved by the Japanese government.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2021/08/6671facb7488-tokyo-paralympics-confirm-1st-covid-19-hospitalization.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Tokyo Paralympics confirm 1st COVID-19 hospitalization</a>&nbsp;(Kyodo News)



<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/aug/26/paralympics-first-tokyo-games-participant-in-hospital-with-covid-19" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Paralympics: first Tokyo Games participant in hospital with Covid-19</a> (The Guardian)



By Siladitya Ray, Forbes Staff

Paralympics – Opening Ceremony

Tokyo Paralympics Reports First Covid-19 Hospitalization

FORBES AFRICA lists the top 10 contemporary South African golfers by their career earnings to date on the two major tours.



WHEN THE 103rd PGA CHAMPIONSHIP WAS played in May, South Africa boasted a record 11 entrants in the field, a sign of the competitiveness of the country’s golfers on the international stage and a nod to local courses that continue to develop outstanding players. South Africa currently has 10 golfers ranked in the top 100 in the world, behind only runaway leaders the United States, who have 46, and England’s 11.



But given the investment dollars spent on the game in the respective countries, it makes South Africa pound-for-pound arguably the second most successful golfing nation at present, a huge achievement that amplifies the success of the local Sunshine Tour.



FORBES AFRICA lists (in no particular order) the South Africans currently in the global top 10 by their career earnings to date on the two major tours*



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-louis-oosthuizen">LOUIS OOSTHUIZEN</h2>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GettyImages-1333072873-1024x683.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-52288" width="599" height="399" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GettyImages-1333072873-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GettyImages-1333072873-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GettyImages-1333072873-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GettyImages-1333072873-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GettyImages-1333072873-2048x1366.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 599px) 100vw, 599px" /><figcaption> (Photo by Sam Greenwood/Getty Images)</figcaption></figure></div>



PGA Tour Earnings: $26,274,723 European Tour Earnings: $26,158,152



Oosthuizen has just recently surpassed his European Tour winnings on the United States-based PGA Tour, boosted by two second- placed finishes in consecutive Majors at the PGA Championship and the US Open.



Despite his eye-watering earnings, the Mossel Bay-born player has never actually won on the PGA Tour, losing three times in a play-off. But he did enjoy success by winning The British Open in 2010, which remains his sole triumph to date in one of the ‘big ones’ after those recent close shaves. In fact, he now has six runner-up finishes in Majors.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">BRANDEN GRACE</h2>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GettyImages-1334335413-1024x683.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-52290" width="526" height="351" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GettyImages-1334335413-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GettyImages-1334335413-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GettyImages-1334335413-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GettyImages-1334335413-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GettyImages-1334335413-2048x1365.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 526px) 100vw, 526px" /><figcaption> (Photo by Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images)</figcaption></figure></div>



PGA Tour Earnings: $11,071,441 European Tour Earnings: $16,714,032



Grace has been a stalwart of both tours for some years and picked up his second victory on the PGA in April when he won the Puerto Rico Open to go with his 2016 success at the RBC Heritage.



He has nine further wins on the European Tour, including the South African Open in 2020. He finished tied for seventh at the US Open this year, but his best Major finish was at the 2015 PGA Championship when he finished third.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">CHARL SCHWARTZEL</h2>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GettyImages-1333917542-1024x683.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-52289" width="543" height="362" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GettyImages-1333917542-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GettyImages-1333917542-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GettyImages-1333917542-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GettyImages-1333917542-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GettyImages-1333917542-2048x1365.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 543px) 100vw, 543px" /><figcaption> (Photo by Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images)</figcaption></figure></div>



PGA Tour Earnings: $1,605,985 European Tour Earnings: $20,674,161



A heavy earner on the European Tour during his career, his one Major triumph actually came in the United States when he lifted the Masters trophy in 2011.



He has only one more win there in the last decade, but an impressive 10 on the European Tour, eight of which have come in South Africa and the other two in Spain.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">DYLAN FRITTELLI</h2>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GettyImages-1335094389-1024x682.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-52295" width="654" height="435" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GettyImages-1335094389-1024x682.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GettyImages-1335094389-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GettyImages-1335094389-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GettyImages-1335094389-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GettyImages-1335094389-2048x1365.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 654px) 100vw, 654px" /><figcaption>(Photo by Stacy Revere/Getty Images)</figcaption></figure></div>



PGA Tour Earnings: $4,499,473 European Tour Earnings: $3,392,853



Fritelli’s one and only PGA Tour win came at the John Deere Classic in 2019, to go with two successes on he European Tour in the Lyoness Open in Austria and the Mauritius Open.



His best finish at a Major was tied fifth at the Masters in 2020.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><meta charset="utf-8">ERIK VAN ROOYEN</h2>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GettyImages-1335986246-1024x683.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-52297" width="550" height="367" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GettyImages-1335986246-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GettyImages-1335986246-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GettyImages-1335986246-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GettyImages-1335986246-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GettyImages-1335986246-2048x1365.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 550px) 100vw, 550px" /><figcaption> (Photo by Stacy Revere/Getty Images)</figcaption></figure></div>



PGA Tour Earnings: $1,596,939 European Tour Earnings: $5,325,617 



Van Rooyen has shown great consistency despite a single professional win outside of South Africa in his career – at the Scandinavian Invitation in 2019. He is often found high up the leaderboard though, with his best Major finish an eighth place at the 2019 PGA Championship.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">BRANDON STONE</h2>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GettyImages-1335010802-1024x683.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-52296" width="556" height="371" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GettyImages-1335010802-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GettyImages-1335010802-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GettyImages-1335010802-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GettyImages-1335010802-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GettyImages-1335010802-2048x1365.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 556px) 100vw, 556px" /><figcaption> (Photo by Oisin Keniry/Getty Images)</figcaption></figure></div>



PGA Tour Earnings: $295,257 European Tour Earnings: $4,980,169



Stone has three wins on the European Tour, though none since 2018. He claimed his first victory at the SA Open in 2016 and the closest he has come recently was a play-off loss in the Oman Open last year.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">CHRISTIAAN BEZUIDENHOUT</h2>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GettyImages-1335489628-1024x669.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-52293" width="592" height="386" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GettyImages-1335489628-1024x669.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GettyImages-1335489628-300x196.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GettyImages-1335489628-768x502.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GettyImages-1335489628-1536x1003.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GettyImages-1335489628-2048x1337.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 592px) 100vw, 592px" /><figcaption> (Photo by Steve Dykes/Getty Images)</figcaption></figure></div>



PGA Tour Earnings: $974,608 European Tour Earnings: $4,107,928



An emerging star of South African golf, Bezuidenhout won three European Tour events between June 2019 and December 2020, but has yet to make his mark in the Majors. It feels like it is just a matter of time though. He was banned for two years in 2014 after testing positive for using ‘beta blockers’, which he claimed was to control his anxiety and a stutter. The sanction was later reduced to nine months.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">DEAN BURMESTER</h2>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GettyImages-1335437065-1024x566.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-52294" width="539" height="298" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GettyImages-1335437065-1024x566.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GettyImages-1335437065-300x166.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GettyImages-1335437065-768x424.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GettyImages-1335437065-1536x849.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GettyImages-1335437065-2048x1131.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 539px) 100vw, 539px" /><figcaption>PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC &#8211; AUGUST 21: Dean Burmester of South Africa on the 14th hole during Day Three of The D+D Real Czech Masters at Albatross Golf Resort on August 21, 2021 in Prague, Czech Republic. (Photo by Oisin Keniry/Getty Images)</figcaption></figure></div>



PGA Tour Earnings: $46,826 European Tour Earnings: $3,931,356



Born in Zimbabwe but playing under the South African flag, Burmester claimed the European Tour’s Tenerife Open in May and has been a stalwart of the local Sunshine Tour.



He has yet to crack it in the United States, and has not yet played at either the British Open or the Masters.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">GARRICK HIGGO</h2>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GettyImages-1335953221-1024x682.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-52292" width="541" height="360" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GettyImages-1335953221-1024x682.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GettyImages-1335953221-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GettyImages-1335953221-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GettyImages-1335953221-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GettyImages-1335953221-2048x1365.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 541px) 100vw, 541px" /><figcaption>(Photo by Stacy Revere/Getty Images)</figcaption></figure></div>



PGA Tour Earnings: $1,358,316 European Tour Earnings: $1,076,625



The ‘next big thing’ in South African golf, and possibly the global game, Higgo has had his breakthrough year in2021andattheageofonly22is as exciting a prospect as you will see on tour.



All four of his professional wins outside of South Africa have come since September 2020, and in June, he won the Palmetto Championship in just his second start in the United States.



Higgo has been mentored by nine- time Major winner Gary Player and turned professional in 2019.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">DANIEL VAN TONDER</h2>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GettyImages-1334990119-1024x683.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-52291" width="487" height="325" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GettyImages-1334990119-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GettyImages-1334990119-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GettyImages-1334990119-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GettyImages-1334990119-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GettyImages-1334990119-2048x1365.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 487px) 100vw, 487px" /><figcaption>(Photo by Oisin Keniry/Getty Images)</figcaption></figure></div>



PGA Tour Earnings: $31,300 European Tour Earnings: $562,094



A player who has enjoyed great success on the Sunshine Tour, especially recently with four wins in 2020 alone.



His single success on the European Tour came at the Kenya Savannah Classic in March this year.



By Nick Said



*Earnings as of July 5, 2021

Close-up of golf bag with people in background

South Africa’s Highest-Earning Current Golfers

Olagoke Balogun replicated the local farmers market which ended up as a business selling slick salads and smoothies for the Nigerian on the move.



WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A PANDEMIC shuts down offices and heaving traffic of daily commuters? People no longer want meals-on-the-go.



So Olagoke Balogun had to look at his business afresh.



In under 13 years, Balogun has grown his premium brand, So Fresh, from a small startup to become a leader in the fresh juice and salad category, boasting 12 stores across Africa’s most populous country.



In 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic didn’t allow further expansion. But consumers in Nigeria still wanted fresh, nutrient-rich and healthy juices and meals.



And So Fresh, says its founder, is on course to turn over a billion naira ($2.5 million) in sales this year with plans of expanding to a further 20 stores in the coming years.



Balogun didn’t always aspire to become a businessman. He initially thought he was going to have a career in medicine, but that never materialized. After graduating with a biochemistry degree from the University of IIorin in Nigeria, he spent the early years finding his feet in different sectors; this included a brief stint as a manager at a restaurant, followed by nine years in the oil and gas industry.



“There was a five-month break when I was looking for a job and I traveled from IIorin to Lagos. I then started thinking about business and [started] selling fruits and vegetables because I grew up eating fresh foods and Ilorin is an agrarian state so I thought it might be good to do that,” he says.



That idea never took off though until epiphany struck on a trip to South Africa where he discovered that fruits and vegetables were packaged and sold in supermarkets like Shoprite and this was not the case in Nigeria, back in 2010.



“So, when I came back, I started thinking about that business and I shared the idea with my wife and she liked it and that was it. We decided to give it a try and see what we could do with it. The original vision was to have a farmers’ market where we sold fruits and vegetables in an organized format and that is how we started.”



The first store was in Ogba, Lagos. The idea was to replicate the local Nigerian market but in a more serene and clean environment. There were just a few potholes or problems to overcome first.



“When we started, we realized the type of customers we were attracting was the busy working class who wanted prepared meals like salads and fruit already cut. So, in 2010, we started experimenting and it was a time when eating salads and smoothies was not a thing in Nigeria. We started making juices and smoothies and customers liked them so we gave fruit packs a try and salads a try and the business evolved from there.”



The second hurdle was the location.



“We struggled for a long time because the location wasn’t too great. We actually considered closing down the business a couple of years in because we had put in a lot of money and effort and it wasn’t yielding [results] and we were supporting the business with my salary and my wife’s money from her private law practice,” recalls Balogun.



In 2013, the tardy growth of the business led to a risky decision to relocate it from the mainland to the wealthy, affluent suburbs of Ikoyi in Victoria Island, Lagos.



It was a gutsy move for the entrepreneur as it required the startup to double the investment already made into the business.



“We believed that there was potential and we found out that the type of people we were attracting were more on the Island and after the move, in less than six months, the business [had] a turnaround and revenues started growing astronomically and it was so good at that point that we couldn’t manage the two stores and we closed the Ogba store and focused on Ikoyi,” says Balogun.



In 2018, the company reached a major milestone raising over €360,000 ($424,000) of external finance that helped it scale from one to 12 stores. Balogun’s success is based on the premise of first to market. More firsts await.

GOKE5

From Farm to Fortune: The Nigerian Entrepreneur Who is On A Course To Turn Over a Billion Naira in Sales

Five years ago, from her prison cell, trans whistleblower Chelsea Manning sketched out a new way to protect online privacy. Now, she is helping an MIT-affiliated cryptographer bring the next generation of privacy software online.



Chelsea Manning’s long blonde hair catches in a cool summer breeze as she turns the corner into Brooklyn’s Starr Bar, a dimly lit counter-cultural haunt in the heart of the hipster enclave of Bushwick. The 33-year-old best known for leaking hundreds of thousands of top-secret government documents to Julian Assange in 2010, then coming out as a transgender woman, walks past a poster depicting sea turtles, humans and geese merging to form the outline of a dove. Beside the image are the words, “Your Nations Cannot Contain Us.”



Dressed in a black suit and wearing a silver Omega watch, she makes her way to a small wooden table illuminated by a shaft of sunlight. She orders a coke. Contrary to what one might expect, this whistleblower turned trans-icon looks uncomfortable in the hip surroundings. A fan reverently approaches her and welcomes her back. “This is my life,” she says after he leaves, expressing both gratitude for the well wishes, and lamenting the loss of her privacy. “I’m not just famous, I’m in the history books.”



While serving the longest sentence ever doled out to a whistleblower after she used the privacy protecting Tor Network to anonymously leak 700,000 government documents, she used her time in incarceration to devise a better way to hide the tracks of other online users. Knowing that the non-profit Tor Project she used to send files to Wikileaks had become increasingly vulnerable to the prying eyes of intelligence agencies and law enforcement, she sketched out a new way to hide internet traffic using blockchain, the technology behind bitcoin, to build a similar network, without troublesome government funding. The entire plan was hatched in a military prison, on paper.



The privacy network industry, including the virtual-private networks (VPNs) familiar to many corporate users, generated $29 billion in revenue in 2019, and is expected to triple to $75 billion by 2027. Fixing the known weaknesses of these networks is about more than just protecting future whistleblowers and criminals. Private networks are also vital for big businesses who want to protect trade secrets. Manning thinks that not-for-profit efforts like Tor, which relies on U.S. government funding and a worldwide network of volunteers to run its anonymous servers, aren’t robust enough. “Nonprofits are unsustainable,” says Manning casually, sipping from her Coke. “They require constant upholding by large capital funds, by large governments.”



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://thumbor.forbes.com/thumbor/960x0/https%3A%2F%2Fspecials-images.forbesimg.com%2Fimageserve%2F61252ad46f47d2194c1d0d80%2F20210621-162555%2F1960x0.jpg%3Ffit%3Dscale" alt="20210621_162555"/><figcaption>Nym Technologies founder Harry Halpin sips on a “homojito” at Brooklyn’s LGBTQ-friendly Starr Bar, as he and Chelsea Manning discuss their nascent partnership, formalized in July.&nbsp;MICHAEL DEL CASTILLO FOR FORBES</figcaption></figure>



By January 2017, she was seven-years into a 35-year sentence at Fort Leavenworth, home to the likes of former Army Major Nidal Hasan, who killed 14 fellow soldiers in 2009. As President Barack Obama prepared to leave office, he granted Manning an unconditional commutation of her sentence. Newly tasting freedom, she was contacted by Harry Halpin, the 41-year-old mathematician who worked for World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee at MIT from 2013 to 2016 helping standardize the use of cryptography across web browsers.



Halpin asked Manning to look for security weaknesses in his new privacy project, which eventually became Nym, a Neuchâtel, Switzerland-based crypto startup. Halprin founded Nym in 2018 to send data anonymously around the Internet using the same blockchain technology underlying Bitcoin. To date, Nym has raised some $8.5 million from a group of crypto investors including Binance, Polychain Capital and NGC Ventures. The firm now employs 10 people and is using its latest round of capital to double its team size.



Halpin was impressed by Manning’s technical knowledge. More than just a famous leaker who happened to have access to secret documents, Manning struck Halpin as someone with a deep technological understanding of how governments and big business seek to spy on private messages.



“We&#8217;ve very rarely had access to people who really were inside the machine, who can explain what they believe the actual capabilities of these kinds of adversaries are, what kinds of attacks are more likely,” says Halpin. “She&#8217;ll help us fix holes in our design.”



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



Born in Oklahoma on December 17, 1987, Manning had her first exposure to network traffic analysis in high school. She and her Welsh mother Susan had moved to Haverfordwest, Wales in 2001, when Manning was 13. In a computer class there, in 2003, she first learned to circumvent blocks put in place by the school to prevent students downloading certain files—and got caught pirating music by Linkin Park, Jay-Z and others. The headmaster had been watching remotely.&nbsp;“It was the first moment where it dawned on me, ‘Oh, this is a thing. You can do this.’”



By 2008 Manning’s interest in what’s called network traffic analysis first brought her to The Onion Router (Tor), a volunteer network of computers that sits on top of the internet and helps hide a user’s identity. The non-profit organization leveraged something called onion routing which hides messages beneath layers of encryption. Each message is only decipherable by a different member of the network, which routes the message to the next router, ensuring only the sender and receiver can decipher it all. Ironically, the network colloquially known as the Dark Web, and used by Manning to send classified documents to WikiLeaks, was developed by the U.S. government to protect spies and other government agents operating online.



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://thumbor.forbes.com/thumbor/960x0/https%3A%2F%2Fspecials-images.forbesimg.com%2Fimageserve%2F6123cdbdc986a89368d58199%2FChelsea-MAnning-by-Jamel-Toppin-for-Forbes-DSC7733%2F1960x0.jpg%3Ffit%3Dscale" alt="Chelsea MAnning by Jamel Toppin for Forbes_DSC7733" width="710" height="887"/><figcaption>Much of Manning’s consulting work comes with mutually binding non-disclosure agreements that make it difficult for her to market her business.&nbsp;JAMEL TOPPIN FOR FORBES</figcaption></figure></div>



At around the same time Manning discovered Tor, she joined the U.S. Army. As a young intelligence analyst her job was to sort through classified databases in search of tactical patterns. After becoming disillusioned with what she learned about the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, she plugged into her computer, put in her headphones, and loaded a CD with music from another of her favorite musicians: Lady Gaga. Instead of listening to the album though, she erased it and downloaded what would eventually be known as the largest single leak in U.S. history, ranging from sensitive diplomatic cables to video showing U.S. soldiers killing civilians, including two Reuters journalists.



In prison she studied carpentry, but she never stopped exploring her earlier vocation. “I&#8217;m a certified carpenter,” she says. “But when I wasn&#8217;t doing that, I would read a lot of cryptography papers.” In 2016, she was visited in prison by Yan Zhu, a physicist from MIT who would later go on to become chief security officer of Brave, a privacy-protecting internet browser that pays users in cryptocurrency in exchange for agreeing to see ads.



She and Zhu were concerned with vulnerabilities they saw in Tor, including its dependence on the good will of governments and academic institutions. In 2020 53% of its $5 million&nbsp;<a href="https://blog.torproject.org/transparency-openness-and-our-2019-and-2020-financials" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">funding</a>&nbsp;came from the US government and 27% came from other Western governments, tax-subsidized non-profits, foundations and companies. Worse, in their opinion, the technology to break privacy was being funded at a higher rate than the technology to protect it.



“As the dark web, or Tor, and VPN, and all these other services became more prolific, the tools to do traffic analysis had dramatically improved,” says Manning. “And there’s sort of been a cold war that&#8217;s been going on between the Tor project developers, and a number of state actors and large internet service providers.” In 2014 the FBI learned how to decipher Tor data. By 2020 a single user reportedly controlled enough Tor nodes to steal bitcoin transactions initiated over the network.



Using two lined pieces of composition paper from the prison commissary, Manning drew a schematic for Zhu of what she called, Tor Plus. Instead of just encrypting the data she proposed to inject the information equivalent of noise into network communications. In the margins of the document she even postulated that blockchain, the technology popularized by bitcoin, could play a role. In the notes below she wrote the words: “New Hope.”



Then, this February Halpin woke her up late one night with an encrypted text message asking her to take a look at a paper describing Nym. Developed completely separately from Manning’s jailhouse sketch, the paper detailed an almost identical system disguising real messages with white noise. A hybrid of the decentralized Tor that relies on donor support, and a corporate owned VPN that requires trusting a company, this network promised the best of both worlds. Organized as a for-profit enterprise, Nym would pay people and organizations running the network in cryptocurrency. “The next day I cleared my schedule,” she says. By July she’d signed a contract with Nym to run a security audit that could eventually include a closer look at the code, the math, and the defensive scenarios against government attacks.



Unlike Tor, which uses the onion router to obscure data sent on a shared network, Nym uses what’s called a mix network, or mixnet, that not only shuffles the data, but alternates the methods by which the data is shuffled making it nearly impossible to reassemble.



“Imagine you have a deck of cards,” says Manning. “What&#8217;s really unique here is that what&#8217;s being done is that you are taking essentially a deck of cards, and you are taking a bunch of other decks of cards, and you are shuffling those decks of cards as well.”



And, as it, turns out, not every government is comfortable using a privacy network largely funded by the U.S. government. Despite Halpin’s commitment to build a network that doesn’t require government funding to operate, in July Nym accepted a 200,000 euro grant from the European Commission, to help get it off the ground.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-style-large is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">&#8220;Knowing that Wikileaks had become increasingly vulnerable to prying eyes from intelligence agencies and law enforcement, she sketched out a new way to hide internet traffic using blockchain, the technology behind bitcoin.&#8221;</blockquote>



“The problem is that there was never a financial model that made any sense to build this technology,” says Halpin. “There was no interest from users, venture capital, and big companies. And now you&#8217;re seeing what we consider a once in a lifetime alignment of the stars, where there&#8217;s interest in privacy from venture capital. There&#8217;s an interest in privacy for users. There&#8217;s interest in privacy from companies. And most of the interest from the venture capital side and the company side, and the user side has been driven by cryptocurrency. And this was not the case even five years ago.”



Even Tor itself is exploring how to use blockchain to create the next generation of its software. After receiving 26% of its total donations in cryptocurrency last year, the Tor Project received a $670,000 grant from advocates of the zcash cryptocurrency and sold a non-fungible token (NFT) representing the first .onion address for $2 million in May, 2021. Now, Tor’s cofounder, Nick Mathewson&nbsp;says the Seattle-based non-profit is exploring some of the same techniques developed by cryptocurrency companies to create Tor credentials that let users develop a reputation without revealing their identity. What he calls an “anonymous blacklistable credential.”



“If you&#8217;ve got a website, and somebody does something you don&#8217;t like, you can ban them,” says Mathewson. “You can ban the person who did that activity without ever finding out what other activities they did or figuring out who you banned.”



Though Mathewson is interested in the possibility of using blockchain to upgrade Tor itself, he warns that making privacy infrastructure for-profit could lead to more money being spent on marketing than product development. “Our mission is to encourage the use of privacy technology,” says Mathewson. “I don&#8217;t really care whether that privacy tool is the one I made or not.”



Ironically, the same cryptocurrency culture Halpin says brought so much attention from investors, deterred Manning from getting involved earlier. Though she counts herself among the earliest bitcoin adopters, claiming to have mined cryptocurrency shortly after Satoshi Nakomoto activated it in 2009, she sold her bitcoin last year for decidedly non-monetary reasons.



“I am not a fan of the culture around blockchain and cryptocurrency,” she says. “There&#8217;s a lot of large personalities that are very out there like your Elon Musk&#8217;s and whatnot,” she says. “And it&#8217;s very, like, ‘Oh, we&#8217;re going to get rich off of blockchain.’ It&#8217;s very nouveau riche. Like a new-yuppies-bro-culture that&#8217;s surrounded it. It has gotten a little bit better in some corners. But I think that culture is what I&#8217;m talking about. It&#8217;s like Gordon Gekko, but blockchain.”



By Michael del Castillo, Forbes Staff

Chelsea Manning Appears Before Second Grand Jury In Wikileaks Investigation

Chelsea Manning Is Back, And Hacking Again, Only This Time For A Bitcoin-Based Privacy Startup

TOPLINE U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday hit out at China, accusing it of using  “coercion” and “intimidation” to  back unlawful claims in the South China Sea and affirmed U.S. support for allies in the region as the Biden administration shifts its attention and resources to the Indo-Pacific region to counter Beijing’s advances.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-facts">KEY FACTS</h2>



Speaking in Singapore in the middle of an important seven-day tour to Southeast Asia, Harris said that Beijing&#8217;s activities in the region continue to undermine “the rules-based order” and threaten the sovereignty of nations.



Harris, who is scheduled to visit Hanoi on Tuesday, added that the U.S. “stands with our allies and our partners” in the face of threats from China.



Harris’ trip to the region comes at an important time for the Biden administration as it begins to pivot its attention towards the Indo-Pacific and away from the Middle East.



She noted that the Indo-Pacific was “critically important” to America’s national security and prosperity.



While the vice president’s remarks were her sharpest rebuke against China so far, she appeared to acknowledge Singapore’s neutrality in the U.S.-China rivalry by noting that Washington isn’t trying to “make anyone choose between countries.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-background">KEY BACKGROUND</h2>



Washington’s pivot towards the Indo-Pacific comes at a time when the Biden administration is winding down America’s decades-long presence in the Middle East with a messy exit from Afghanistan. The botched withdrawal from Afghanistan has raised several concerns among U.S. allies about its commitment to support them. Acknowledging the situation, Harris said the U.S. is evacuating as many people as possible but added that it was also imperative to “continue to advance our interests in other regions, including this region.” In her speech on Tuesday, Harris emphasized the significance of the Southeast Asia region to the U.S. both in terms of security and trade. Harris will begin the second leg of her tour in Hanoi where she is scheduled to meet top officials from the Vietnamese government.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-chief-critic">CHIEF CRITIC</h2>



On Monday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin accused the U.S. of doing “unscrupulous and dishonest things” in Afghanistan and called on Washington to help rebuild the country. “The United States is the root cause and the biggest external factor in the Afghan issue. It cannot just run away like this.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-further-reading">FURTHER READING</h2>



<a href="https://apnews.com/article/middle-east-business-969fe25162023468754e57746d6da80d" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Harris rebukes China in major speech on Indo-Pacific</a>&nbsp;(Associated Press)



<a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/kamala-harris-says-beijing-continues-coerce-south-china-sea-2021-08-24/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">U.S. VP Harris says China intimidates to back South China Sea claims</a> (Reuters)



By Siladitya Ray, Forbes Africa

President Biden Delivers Remarks On Status Of Afghanistan Evacuation

Kamala Harris Accuses China Of ‘Coercion’ And ‘Intimidation’, Vows U.S. Support For Allies In Indo-Pacific

Did the pursuit of venture capital millions lead to a shocking pivot by OnlyFans? The creator platform surprised the online world on Thursday when it <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-19/onlyfans-to-block-sexually-explicit-videos-starting-in-october" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">announced</a> that it would ban sexually explicit content from its site starting in October after such content propelled the site to cultural relevance — and runaway sales growth — during the pandemic.



The move&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/21/tech/onlyfans-creators-react-sexually-explicit-ban/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">came as a surprise</a>&nbsp;for the sex workers who had come to depend on OnlyFans as a source of income. It also happened amidst a<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-58255865" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">&nbsp;BBC investigation</a>&nbsp;that OnlyFans was looking the other way about illegal content. And hours before, Dan Primack at Axios reported that the company was struggling to find name-brand investors that would bolster its credibility – even despite a reported run-rate of $1.2 billion in revenue in 2021 and doubling, and free cash flow of about half of that. “In short, OnlyFans has a porn problem,” Primack&nbsp;<a href="https://www.axios.com/newsletters/axios-pro-rata-54e49d2e-0527-429d-bb54-7b113c4275f6.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">wrote</a>.



But was venture capital a realistic option for OnlyFans, and does that equation change given its move? Conversations with venture capitalists who met with OnlyFans or have knowledge of its meetings paint a picture of limited, but at least lukewarm interest — and challenges that would face any would-be startup successor leaning into the adult content the company’s abruptly abandoned.



A version of this story first ran in our Midas Touch newsletter on Saturday.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/newsletter/midastouch/">Sign up here</a>&nbsp;to be part of the conversation first.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-the-vice-clause">The vice clause</h3>



To understand OnlyFans’ VC prospects, one must first consider the “vice clause,” or covenant, that venture capital firms make with the investors whose money they deploy (venture capitalists typically only play with a relatively smaller pool of their own cash, in exchange for a somewhat larger share of the upside). These agreements limit how venture firms can invest away from their core focus. (Such restrictions on holding public equities and cryptocurrency investments, among others, are a big reason name-brand firm Andreessen Horowitz <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2019/04/02/andreessen-horowitz-is-blowing-up-the-venture-capital-model-again/">moved in 2019</a> to re-designate itself as technically not a VC firm.)



Larger and more established VCs seek out universities, endowments and non-profit institutions as backers of their funds. And for those organizations, the nightmare scenario is this: a<a href="https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/cornell-university-early-investor-massive-183901542.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">&nbsp;headline</a>&nbsp;like “Cornell University Early Investor in Massive Online Porn Firm: Report,” one of several that ran after a deep dive into PornHub’s owner by<a href="https://www.ft.com/content/b50dc0a4-54a3-4ef6-88e0-3187511a67a2" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">&nbsp;The Financial Times</a>&nbsp;added to the scrutiny on the porn site last winter, and swiftly forced major changes to what content the company kept on its site. As such, the most common such clauses make taboo any investments in areas such as sex, tobacco or historically illegal drugs.



Some firms have no vice clause. Even then, such investments can face extra scrutiny due to the potential for government investigations, crackdowns by payments processors, and backgrounds that don’t fit the pattern matching of Silicon Valley software businesses. (Forbes&nbsp;has previously<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-58255865" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">&nbsp;</a><a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2021/06/16/the-shady-secret-history-of-onlyfans-billionaire-owner/">reported</a>&nbsp;on OnlyFans’ majority owner Leonid Radvinsky’s roots in adult entertainment’s sketchy early era online.)



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Chasing dollars</h3>



OnlyFans met with some of venture capital’s biggest names in its early days (it was a fledgling site when Radvinsky bought control in 2018). One firm passed when it became clear that the site’s future appeared to be mostly porn, says an investor with knowledge of the meeting; at Founders Fund, a firm with no vice clause, former investor Cyan Banister, now a partner at Long Journey Ventures, remembers the firm meeting with OnlyFans and passing because of concerns about its lack of record-keeping on its performers and creators, from age verification to tax information.



“A lot of companies with user-generated content, think that because they are community-driven, they are not responsible, but they are,” Banister says.



OnlyFans did not respond to a request for comment.



More recently, firms have met with OnlyFans during its boost in cultural relevance and a sense from investors of its fast pace of growth, sources say. But many were more interested in meeting OnlyFans out of curiosity, speculates a partner at one top-tier firm. “I’ve met with companies because I think they’ll be really cool meetings, knowing there is 0% chance I’d want to invest,” that investor says. “Some VCs just love business stories, hearing how it happened and what they were thinking.”



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">OnlyFans 2.0</h3>



If OnlyFans is yielding the adult content category — something Banister isn’t so sure of, noting that the company’s announcement gave itself plenty of time for sentiment or decisions to change — would another startup be able to capitalize on VC interest to take up the mantle?



At Vice Ventures, firm founder and former 30 Under 30&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/catharine-dockery/">callout</a>&nbsp;Catharine Dockery invests explicitly in vice companies that make other firms shy away. While Dockery disagrees with some VC investors who told&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;that such a company would have limited possibilities to find buyers, she notes that OnlyFans follows in a history of other companies like Snap and Tumblr of clamping down on adult content over time.



“A company of their size and scale would usually have a lead for their round with minimal fuss,” Dockery says. “Why are profitable businesses leaving the space and pivoting to unproven business models?”



The history of venture capital investing in such businesses remains limited. Perhaps the most notable example is Arsenic, billed as a Playboy for the Snapchat era and full of suggestive photos and videos of models that could live on the social media platform. Arsenic&nbsp;<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/arsenic-snapchat-based-playboy-competitor-raises-seed-round-of-3-million-2016-8#:~:text=Arsenic%2C%20the%20Snapchat%2DBased%20Playboy,Seed%20Round%20of%20%243%20Million" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">raised $3 million</a>&nbsp;in seed funding in 2016 from Crosslink Capital and CrossCut Ventures. The investment appears defunct now: the venture partner who led the investment for CrossCut, Clinton Foy, didn’t respond to a request for comment; Omar El-Ayat, who talked up the investment at the time for Crosslink, is no longer with the firm. He declined to comment.



Interest is there from entrepreneurs, says Dockery, but little substance so far. “I’ve been pitched about 100 different OnlyFans 2.0 startups,” says Dockery. “We would definitely invest in something like that, but OnlyFans is truly the only one with market share.”



Banister, who once ran a website for pin-up photography, says she has gotten countless messages in the past several days asking her to launch her own version. “If I had the stamina and the energy to start another company in the space, and certainty I wouldn’t go to jail, I would do this in a heartbeat,” she says.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">The bet</h3>



&nbsp;OnlyFans’ investment options may have opened up with its announcement, while paradoxically shrinking due to their pending loss of growth by shutting off a major vertical on the platform. The biggest risk factors to a business like OnlyFans remain the likes of Visa and MasterCard cutting it off, as well as a high level of charge-backs and fraud — not Sand Hill Road cutting a check.



But for now, those suffering most from the announcement are creators, especially sex workers, who find themselves&nbsp;<a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/digital/onlyfans-adult-content-creators-1235000760/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">scrambling after the sudden news</a>. “They are good people, they are adults, and this cuts them off at the knees,” says Banister. “I am not sure where they go next after this.”



Would anyone back OnlyFans now, without its problematic golden goose? The company may struggle to overcome its reputation, even if growth rebounds, investors say. But several investors said they were confident that enough peers would be interested in its financial upside to accept its history, provided it can show a path for growth again. “Anyone who would back [vaping business] JUUL would back OnlyFans,” one quipped.



By Alex Konrad, Forbes Staff

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