Africa deserves a seat at tech table: It's time for Opera to start giving back

African ladies at a call centre office in South Africa. [Courtesy] Unlike most tech companies, Opera's website offers no clear mission statement or articulated set of values-nothing about climate change, sustainability, giving back, empowering communities, or investing in society. Nothing even about integrity or earning public trust. Instead, it provides only a vague reference to "innovate and inspire, uncover the unexpected...." On the point of "uncovering the unexpected," the company was sued by the Kenyan government around 2020-an outcome that some employees, speaking off the record, described as a surprise to Opera's executives and seen as a fabricated attempt by Kenya to extract money under the guise of regulatory fines. Going back to the earlier Blackberry in Motion metaphor, I would argue it was absolutely expected - unless we are doing business as it was done in the 1950s: take don't give back, and expect good. In June 2023, during a televised interview on Kenya's K24 Live, Opera's Vice President for Africa, ostensibly a non-African, by the name of Richard Monday was asked about the company's Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) efforts. His sole example of companywide CSR was a past collaboration with Worldreader, a modest initiative to promote e-books on Opera Mini. But who even reads e-books on mobile browsers today? The programme likely required de minimis investment-perhaps just a few thousand dollars and in-kind promotion. In 2024, the company reported annual revenues of $480.65 million, reflecting a 21.12 per cent year-over-year growth, according to StockAnalysis. The disconnect raises serious questions about Opera's true commitment to the African markets it claims to prioritize and is gaining business from. Opera's public messaging tells a very different story about its relationship with Africa. In 2018, Opera CFO Frode Jacobsen told Business Insider that Africa was the company's "top priority," citing Opera Mini's dominance and appeal in sub-Saharan Africa. As recently as February 2024, the company reaffirmed its "Africa First" strategy, pledging $100 million to expand internet access and financial tools across the continent. "Africa First means our mobile products and services are developed first and foremost with the African consumer in mind," the company claimed. The initiative was reportedly fashioned by Jorgen Arnesen, SVP at Opera. "Africa First" But the disconnect is glaring: Africa is not in the decision-making room. Opera's Chief Human Resources Officer, David Qi-a Chinese national reporting directly to CEO Yahui Zhou-acts as a gatekeeper, deciding who gets into Opera and who doesn't. From my LinkedIn scan, there are no African team members on the Opera HR team. Once again, there are no Africans in Opera's leadership, senior management, or on its board. "Africa First" may exist as a strategy, but certainly not in terms of decision making. In a continent where the prevailing Zeitgeist is "nothing for us without us," Opera has failed to read the room, after 17 years in Africa. Compounding this, Opera's recent legal troubles-including an embarrassing lawsuit in Kenya and OPay's massive regulatory fines from Nigeria's central bank-highlight a deeper disconnect between Opera, OPay, and African governments. They are not a social stakeholder, just a business one. According to insiders, the fallout from the Kenyan legal case triggered a strategic pivot: away from Africa and toward growth in Asia and Latin America. Internally, some executives reportedly describe African governments as uniformly corrupt and driven by bribes and extortion-leaving no modicum of imagination for more constructive engagement. For Opera, as Nasdaq-listed company, disengagement from Africa's government is seen as the only path forward-not a relationship reset. In stark contrast to firms like Apple and Microsoft-who rebuilt trust with governments through public-interest programmes and social engagement after legal battles with the US DOJ and the EU Commission-Opera has taken the opposite path: avoiding African governments, retreating from investing in social citizenship, and extracting data and existing revenue with minimal accountability. Profit without partnership. One staff member I contacted on LinkedIn told me, "nowhere in Opera leadership's playbook for Africa is there serious consideration of how to engage African leaders beyond cynical assumptions of corruption. I keep hearing them say 'Nasdaq means we can't bribe,'" the staffer told me, "but being Nasdaq listed also means corporate responsibility, long-term partnerships, and participation in global forums like Chatham House or the Edison Alliance." There are many principled Africa government officials ready to engage with us-if Opera's leadership would merely look, and not fixate on corruption. A quick LinkedIn search shows Opera employs just one person globally that works on government affairs. As a company with 30 years of operations, hundreds of staff and global ambitions, only one government affairs official (who appears focused on Spain) tells us all we need to know. Astonishing to me, I've seen no Chief Sustainability Officer or anyone in the company focused on climate change or social impact in their job titles. In 2025? As a Nasdaq-listed tech company, they are an outlier. I don't expect Apple's level of sustainability sophistication from Opera. But Opera's carbon footprint is undoubtedly cross-continental and extensive in Africa. As a result, tokenistic programmes they cite on energy efficient browsing and e-waste reduction won't cut it in 2025. Not when your revenue is in the hundreds of millions USD. Governance table Relatedly, just like their omissions on the climate change front, unlike major Western tech firms, Opera is also not visibly engaged in global policy forums. They are absent from key international platforms such as UN conferences on the digital divide, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), where all tech players are members, and World Bank digital governance initiatives. Despite managing millions of African user journeys each day, they do not participate in multistakeholder initiatives focused on responsible technology for Africa and the global south, including AI ethics, digital inclusion, or data protection. Their silence-and their absence-is, in itself, a statement about priorities: global ethics take a back seat to profit. Consider the Broadband Commission, the Giga initiative, and the UN Partner2Connect programme-platforms where companies like Microsoft, Google, Cisco, Ericsson, Huawei, and even Starlink are actively working to bridge the digital divide. Opera and other named in this article are nowhere to be seen. Take Mozilla-a tech company and, like Opera, a browser firm. Yet unlike Opera, Mozilla is actively investing in digital empowerment and internet health across Africa, including Nigeria, through its Africa Innovation Mradi. Despite being a non-profit-not a commercial tech giant-it funds local organizations through its In Real Life (IRL) Fund, offering $15,000-$50,000 grants for projects that connect technology with social justice. Mozilla also partners with institutions like AFRALTI to build the capacity of young Africans in open-source software and responsible AI, while convening forums and publishing research on AI, human rights and digital inclusion. That a non-profit can do all this without a profit motive makes Opera's inaction harder to justify-and its strained relationships with African governments easier to understand. Think of someone who never shows up at "church"-take that to mean any space the community holds sacred: a venue grounded in values, committed to solving real problems together, and populated by parties who have earned mutual respect through shared purpose. Conspicuous by their absence, this non-attending church person then suddenly appears to you, alone, claiming they deserve your trust and a stake in your most sacred spaces and markets. Naturally, you'd be suspicious. They have not historically been present in the rooms that shape the agenda. They have not stood shoulder to shoulder with others in the global and regional arenas where technology and development values are earnestly debated and upheld. It's no surprise that the Kenyan government is not pursuing legal action against major players like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, or Mozilla-there is simply too much meaningful collaboration happening between them, both globally and in even more intimate, values-driven spaces. "In church". Notably, Kenya is suing Meta, a company whose abrasive, exploitative and often tone-deaf approach has become widely recognized. When you find yourself with poor company, take note-you have something in common. And it's not the cliche answer of corrupt Africans, but what you are trying to take from them without giving back: including data mining the details of their young people's lives. Governance table Relationship that counts While I've chosen not to detail what Apple, Google or Microsoft are doing in Africa-that's an article of its own-Opera cannot hide behind limited resources when even a non-profit like Mozilla is showing up, being seen, and building relationships that count. They're in church-not just loitering outside, waiting to collect from those walking out. White at the top, Africans in the field: The new face of value extraction In fairness, this pattern extends well beyond Opera. Companies like Ringier (Switzerland), Rocket Internet (Germany), and Moove (Netherlands) continue to operate with board, senior leadership and management ranks that are exclusively white, while hiring a handful of African and black staff as envoys to navigate local markets and extract profits. There is no meaningful African inclusion at the leadership, strategy, or board level at any of these companies. African roles are limited to execution-not to shaping the vision or values of companies whose business models depend heavily on African markets. Controlled from Zurich African governments must demand more. Take Ringier, for example-the Swiss media conglomerate behind platforms like Pulse Nigeria and Pulse Kenya, which present themselves as African voices but are owned, led and controlled entirely from Zurich. Ringier's senior leadership is entirely white and non-African, yet the company profits from publishing African news and culture through its regional subsidiaries. The result is a media and tech landscape where foreign actors shape African media and tech-without African leadership, executive input or representation. Unsurprisingly, Germany's Rocket Internet has seen many of its Nigerian ventures crash and fail, including EasyTaxi, as white leadership adopt a model of hiring Black faces to execute strategies in and for Africa, which they didn't shape or envision. Nigerian and Kenyan authorities should take a closer look. Nothing for us, without us. Governance table Governance table The Nigerian and Kenyan governments must demand more from companies like Opera. Opera's model cannot be about extracting profits and chasing quarterly earnings-taking value from Africa while shifting strategic focus to Asia, all the while building consumer data profiles on young and vulnerable Africans for advertisers with little regard for social good in the very markets they exploit. Government agencies in both countries must insist on the meaningful inclusion of Africans and young people in boardrooms and leadership roles at Opera, especially when companies operate under an "Africa First" banner - or have done so at any time. If you are in Nigeria, have a Nigerian board member. If you are in Kenya, have a Kenyan executive in leadership. Chinese regulations for businesses are the same. If you are focused on young people, where is their inclusion in strategy? Governments must lead this regulation. Because as you-government officials-read this, so will they. And if no action is taken, business as usual will persist. These companies won't proactively change course on their own; they'll simply wait and see if they can get away with doing the bare minimum. As a woman raising Nigerian children, I wrote this piece to raise fair questions about the companies shaping their current and future digital world. My message to Opera is clear: don't waste energy being upset that I wrote this or that staff spoke to me. All employees who spoke with me are protected under US laws regulating Nasdaq companies-wherever they may be located, including Sarbanes-Oxley and Dodd-Frank. Opera and OPAY staff have assured me they'll inform me if any witch hunt for informants begins. Instead, the challenge to Opera is to ask whether what's been said is true-and what you're willing to do to set things right. Same goes for other Western, exploitative and value-extracting companies mentioned earlier. That would be a worthwhile outcome for everyone involved. It's no surprise that Opera's stock price on Nasdaq lingers at around US$16 per share, well below the Index average and well below sustainability champions such as Apple, which is at US$198. That gap isn't just about scale-it's about trust, corporate citizenship and the resulting public confidence in its stock. Opera can still close its gap, if it chooses a path of accountability and correction over denial. Opera, OPay, and Ringier and Rocket Internet did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Moove declined to respond. Bernice Lee Edet runs "OpenSecret," an independent investigative journalism project she manages part-time. The views expressed here are solely her own and do not represent the publisher or any organisation she is affiliated with.

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