BETA
A Kenyan startup, BitPesa, which is seeking to have an impact in the global remittance business, said it has raised $1.1 million in a second round of funding from Pantera Capital of San Francisco. The CEO and founder of Pantera, Dan Morehad has joined BitPesa’s board. BitPesa has raised a total of $1.7 million. The startup began last spring with the U.K.-Kenya business. Currently it has operations in Ghana and is planning further expansion to Tanzania and Uganda this year.
Roughly 100 million people saw the “Kony 2012” clip that Invisible Children posted on YouTube in early March, making it one of the most viral videos ever. “Joseph Kony, the Ugandan warlord and leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), recently gained a sudden fame which he probably would have preferred to do without,” Cameroonian freelancer Julie Owono writes in a commentary for Al Jazeera. “He became the No. 1 enemy of Internet users around the world.”
While Owono, a Paris-based international relations consultant, believes that Kony “must be brought to justice,” she and others find fault with the campaign.
“The propaganda used by the organization to ‘raise awareness’ is highly questionable, and allows dangerous and misleading messages to be spread,” Owono contends. “One such message is that the African continent, and, in this specific case, the northern part of the Great Lakes region, is a playground where international law and respect of sovereignty have no place.”