TIME Magazine has just released its 2021 TIME100 Next list and six Nigerians made the list. This is the second annual TIME100 Next list—an expansion of the magazine’s flagship TIME100 franchise. They are Davido, Olugbenga Agboola, Nse Ufot and cofounders of the Feminist Coalition – Damilola Odufuwa, Odunayo Eweniyi and Feyikemi ‘FK’ Abudu
TIME100 Next list highlights 100 global emerging leaders who are shaping the future
Davido – Phenom
Davido is an accomplished singer, songwriter based in Lagos.
Laycon (real name – Olamilekan Moshood Agbeleshe), rapper, singer and songwriter and winner of Big Brother Naija season 5 had this to say about the phenom, Davido:
Davido is one of the biggest voices in Afrobeats because his music connects with people, often in ways that transcend his expectations. When he released the song “FEM” in 2020, a title that loosely translates to “shut up” in Yoruba, he didn’t know it would become a major #EndSARS protest anthem, as youth banded together to demand the government take action to end police brutality in Nigeria last October. Officials responded by sending politicians to give speeches. We told the government to keep quiet unless they had something sensible to add—the ethos of “FEM” was directly relatable to that moment.
You can tell Davido puts 100% into every song he makes. And the results are clear: his album A Good Time surpassed a billion streams in 2020. Afrobeats is a worldwide phenomenon, and Davido is one of many Nigerian artists who has made that possible; now more and more artists, from Nicki Minaj to Young Thug, want to work with him.
By bringing Afrobeats to the global stage, he’s paved the way for people like me.
In his reaction to making the list, he tweeted that he was proud to be included in the inaugural #TIME100NEXT list!!! @time
Nsé Ufot – Innovator
Dedicated to working on various civil, human, and workers rights issues, Nsé Ufot is the Executive Director of the New Georgia Project – a civic-engagement nonprofit founded in 2013 by Stacey Abrams. She led the organization to its goal of strengthening the state’s democracy by registering and engaging roughly 1,000,000 eligible, but unregistered African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans.
Ai-Jen Poo, the executive director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, had this to say about Nse:
She helped ensure that Georgia’s diverse communities had what they needed to vote and vote safely in both the 2020 presidential election and the 2021 Georgia Senate runoffs—all while leveraging technology and gaming culture to engage young voters and doing the irreplaceable, hard work of reaching voters behind every door, in every corner of the state. In doing so, she has helped breathe new life into our democracy, showing us that it is both possible and up to us to create.
Olugbenga Agboola – Innovator
Olugbenga Agboola is the co-founder and CEO of Flutterwave. Founder by Iyinoluwa Aboyeji and Olugbenga Agboola, Flutterwave provides the easiest and most reliable payments solution for businesses anywhere in the world.
It provides technology, infrastructure, and services to enable global merchants, payment service providers, and helps banks and businesses build secure and seamless payment solutions for their customers by smoothening the exchange of funds.
He took over as the CEO of the company after co-founder, Iyinoluwa Aboyeji stepped down as CEO in 2018.
Amid lockdown in 2020, Flutterwave expanded from specializing in digital cash registers to hosting digital storefronts, helping some 20,000 small businesses suddenly without foot traffic set up online shops, receive payments and arrange delivery options.
The company processed more than 80 million transactions, worth $7.5 billion, in 2020, establishing it as Africa’s premier payment-solution provider. Now Flutterwave—which already has a presence in 17 African countries—is planning to leverage that momentum into greater expansion, so that a customer in South Africa, for example, can seamlessly use her Kenyan digital wallet to buy products in Senegal. “Africa is not a country,” says Agboola.
Damilola Odufuwa, Odunayo Eweniyi and Feyikemi ‘FK’ Abudu – Advocates
Strong women individually, these three bandied together at the height of the #EndSARS protest, to put up a platform under the auspices of the Feminist Coalition where they raised funds in physical currency and cryptocurrency to assist protesters in medical assistance, legal aid and mental-health support.
Though originally formed in July 2020 Damilola Odufuwa (Head of PR for Africa at Binance) and Odunayo Eweniyi (Co-founder and COO of PiggyVest) and later joined by Abudu, the feminist coalition is a group of young Nigerian feminists has a mission to champion equality for women in Nigerian society with a core focus on education, financial freedom and representation in public office.
As at the 15th of October, it had collected over N62 million and spent about N13 million for the protest.
In giving accounts of the activities at the end of the fund raising period on the 22nd of October, it gave a summary of the total funds we received and disbursed (in Naira) over the past 14 days
- Total received = ₦147,855,788.28 (includes donations in USD, CAD, GBP, EUR, GHS, KES, and BTC)
- Total disbursed = ₦60,403,235.00
- Total left = ₦87,452,553.28
The organisation said that the remaining funds will be channeled through the following initiatives/organizations:
- #EndSARSresponse (Medical) – ₦20,114,087.25
- The Legal Aid Network – ₦15,741,459.59
- Relief for victims of police brutality and families of the deceased – ₦40,228,174.51
- Memorial for the Fallen – ₦5,247,153.197
- #EndSARSMentalHealthSupport – ₦6,121,678.73
According to Edward Felsenthal is the Editor-in-Chief and CEO of TIME,
“Amid a global pandemic, deepening inequality, systemic injustice and existential questions about truth, democracy and the planet itself, the individuals on this year’s list provide ‘clear-eyed hope,’ as actor, composer and director Lin-Manuel Miranda puts it in his tribute to poet and TIME100 Next honoree Amanda Gorman. They are doctors and scientists fighting COVID-19, advocates pushing for equality and justice, journalists standing up for truth, and artists sharing their visions of present and future.”
“Although recognizing the leaders of tomorrow lends itself to a younger group, we intentionally have no age cap, an acknowledgment that ascents can begin at any age. The youngest person on this list, for example, is 16-year-old entertainer Charli D’Amelio, who counts more than 100 million followers on TikTok. Among the eldest is 51-year-old Raphael Warnock, a Democratic Senator from Georgia, whose recent election represents “the dawn of a new South,” writes Rev. Bernice A. King, the CEO of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change.”
“Everyone on this list is poised to make history,” says Dan Macsai, editorial director of the TIME100. “And in fact, many already have.”
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