This is serious, very serious and is in no way an exaggeration…African Americans are losing ground as a whole and as a race of people. There is so much I can say but just put it this way, PLAY TIME IS OVER!!!! The time for action is now!

Awesome glimpse into the Recycling Black Dollars organization spearheaded by Muhammad Nassardeen! Do yourself a favor and get familiar with this group, they have been motivating Black Economic Improvement for over 18 years…Respect due to these guys!

www.rdbmedia.net

Source: Owners Illustrated Magazine http://www.ownersillustrated.com/

1. Jay Z - $34 Million
2. 50 Cent - $32 Million
3. Diddy - $29 Million
4. Timbaland - $21 Million
5. Dr. Dre - $20 Million
6. Eminem - $18 Million
7. Snoop Dogg - $17 Million
8. Kanye West - $17 Million
9. Pharrell Williams $17  Million
10. Scott Storch - $17 Million
11. Ludacris - $16 Million
12. T.I. - $16 Million
13. Outkast - $14 Million
14. Lil Jon - $14 Million
15. Ice Cube - $13 Million
16. Jermaine Dupri - $12 Million
17. Swizz Beatz - $12 Million
18. Chamillionaire - $11 Million
19. The Game - $11 Million
20. Yung Joc - $10 Million

These figures are estimated from 2006 but gives a general idea of how much the Hip-Hop Industry is commanding in revenue. The current cashflow of these Hip-Hop Kings are probably much more than these numbers! Unfortunately no women in Hip-Hop made this list, although I am sure they are not far behind…

John H. Johnson, who used his mother’s furniture as security for a $500 loan to start the business empire that eventually included Ebony and Jet magazines and that made him one of the nation’s richest and most powerful black businessmen, died yesterday in Chicago. He was 87.

A company spokeswoman, Latrina Blair, confirmed the death.

Mr. Johnson had major holdings in book and magazine publishing, cosmetics, television and radio and in 1982 was the first African-American on Forbes magazine’s list of the 400 wealthiest Americans.

He sometimes said he was in the business of inspiring people, heralding achievements like the first black woman to become a Rhodes scholar or the black man who sent three daughters through medical school. But his publications could also bristle with indignation over the sting of racial discrimination, as reflected by a 1965 cover: “The White Problem in America.”

As the magazines that Ebony used as models, Life and Look, slipped away, Ebony maintained a large presence in black households and last year had a circulation of 1.6 million. Mr. Johnson also published other magazines, including EM (Ebony Man) and Ebony Jr. His company’s Fashion Fair Cosmetics brand is among the leading makeup and skin-care companies for women with darker skin.

John Harold Johnson, the grandson of slaves, was born in Arkansas City, Ark., on Jan. 19, 1918. He was a boy when his father, Leroy, a sawmill worker, was killed in a mill accident. His mother, the former Gertrude Jenkins, married another mill worker.

He attended a segregated school, but the town lacked a high school for blacks. He repeated eighth grade rather than dropping out. In 1933, he and his mother visited the World’s Fair in Chicago and decided to stay. His stepfather later joined them.

The family lived on welfare, and then on what his stepfather earned in a New Deal public works program. Mr. Johnson got part-time work in the National Youth Administration, another New Deal initiative. He also starred academically at an all-black high school and was president of his class and editor of the school paper.

When he graduated in 1936, he spoke at a dinner held by the Urban League. Harry Pace, president of the Supreme Liberty Life Insurance Company, was so impressed that he offered him a job and a scholarship to attend the University of Chicago.

Mr. Johnson dropped his studies at that university, though he later took course at Northwestern University’s School of Commerce. He became editor of Mr. Pace’s internal company magazine. Since the insurance company catered to blacks, Mr. Johnson spent much time culling and digesting articles on blacks from other publications.

He married Eunice Walker in 1941. She and their daughter, Linda Johnson Rice, president of Johnson Publishing, survive him, along with a granddaughter. His son, John Harold Johnson Jr., who had sickle cell anemia, died at the age of 25 in 1981.

In 1942 while Mr. Johnson was still an employee at Supreme Life, he persuaded his mother to help him borrow $500. He asked 20,000 of the company’s policyholders for $2 to subscribe to what was still a nonexistent magazine. About 3,000 people did so. That June, he published Negro Digest, modeled on Reader’s Digest.

To get the magazine on newsstands, he got 20 friends to ask for it. The newsstands then called distributors and requested it. After his friends bought the magazines, Mr. Johnson resold them.

The same strategy was applied in other cities, and within a year, Negro Digest had a circulation of 50,000.

Inspired by his success, Mr. Johnson began planning a magazine with flashy covers like those of Life. He said that his goal was to “show not only the Negroes but also white people that Negroes got married, had beauty contests, gave parties, ran successful businesses, and did all the other normal things of life.”

His wife came up with the name Ebony. The first 25,000 copies immediately sold out.

Its advertising was distinctive among black publications at the time because it promoted general merchandise, as well as products like hair straighteners aimed at blacks. Ebony strove to glamorize consumption, at first with cover girls, and some suggested the effect was to play down serious issues at a time blacks were still excluded from many areas of American life. But many readers were glad for the uplift.

Mr. Johnson started Jet in 1951 to highlight news of African-Americans in the social limelight, politics, entertainment, business and sports.

In 1973, Mr. Johnson started the Fashion Fair Cosmetics line after models in the Fashion Fair touring fashion show, his wife’s project, had trouble finding dark makeup.

In 1990, Mr. Johnson told The New York Times that he was not altogether happy that 12 percent of the readers of Ebony and Jet were white.

“This is more than I would like to have,” he said. “I want to be king of the black hill, not the mixed hill.”

He also advised young blacks against joining a white-owned corporation unless they were satisfied with being vice president.

“But if, like me, you’re temperamentally unsuited to that and want to reach the top, do something else,” he said.

It is always a pleasure to give thanks, praise and recognize one of our great ancestors, I wish I would have had the chance to meet him. Such a great man, it would be a great benefit to you as African people, to study the lives of people like John Johnson…

Source: http://africanpress.wordpress.com/2007/04/26/ 

The sudden ostentatious display of wealth by Raila Odinga has left many baffled. Unbeknown to the public, Raila is a fabulously wealthy man with a personal fortune estimated to be in excess of Kshs. 4 billion. Read how the man who wants to be Kenya’s next president acquired his wealth which includes investments in the lucrative petroleum industry and in manufacturing.

How Raila acquired his billions.

Raila Odinga’s big break came in 2001 soon after he led his party, NDP, into a merger with Kanu, the then ruling party. As Energy Minister in Moi’s government he was introduced to the family of Sheikh Abdukeder AlBakari, one of the richest families in Saudi Arabia with interests in petroleum drilling, petroleum exploration and export in the Middle East, Asia, USA and Africa.

Through the Saudi contacts, Raila was initiated into the lucrative world of oil business and soon enough he had joined the league of gig independent oil importers via his firm Pan African Petroleum Limited.

Industry sources say that one of the things that helped Raila make a quick buck in the oil business was a concessionary petroleum deal he struck with the Al Bakri Group where he was not only incorporated as a silent partner in the local arm of Al Bakri International but was also supplied with petroleum products from Saudi Arabia at subsidized prices which his firm would sell in the market at normal prices. That way, Raila was able to deftly beat the competition in oil business by occasional price undercutting.

While still Energy Minister, Raila re-established and nurtured his links with the Libyan government of Colonel Muammar Gadaffi where again he not only did good business in oil importation but also got substantial material support during the 2002 general elections.

Besides supporting Raila’s political causes, the Libyans also played a key role in stabilizing Raila in the oil business in a couple of ways. Industry sources say that between 2001 and 2002 when Raila served as Energy Minister, he received at least three consignments of petroleum products at very low prices which were later sold locally at market prices.

The overall turnover from the three Libyan consignments is reliably said to have been in the region of over half a billion shillings, a tidy sum of money in any language, enough to ensure that one crosses the Rubicon once and for all.

Raila’s enviable international links

Reliable sources say that Libyans bankrolled the Narc campaign with some US$ 3 million (about Kshs 210 million), thanks to Raila’s good contacts in the oil-rich land of Gadaffi. There is no doubt that if Raila becomes the ODM presidential candidate he can count on massive financial support from the Libyans once more.

Besides Libya, Raila enjoys good links with the South African government of Thabo Mbeki while in Nigeria he is known to have strong links with Olosegun Obasanjo, who was a close friend of Raila’s late father Jaramogi.

That Libyans, South Africans and Nigerians had enough confidence in Raila to channel campaign funds through him although he himself was not a presidential in 2002 is an indication of how highly regarded he is in some international circles.

Evidently, he could certainly count on even more enthusiastic support from his international contacts should he become the ODM presidential candidate.

For Raila, the linkage between politics and business went much deeper than petroleum business. It is significant that the Odinga family business, Spectre International Ltd, acquired the then state-owned Kisumu Molasses Plant soon after Raila started politically cooperating with Moi.

Raila has consistently argued that the acquisition of the molasses plant was a pure business deal “which had nothing to do with politics”, but his critics point out at the coincidence between the time his family acquired the parastatal and Raila’s shift of political alliance. It is highly unlikely –indeed one may even say impossible-that the Moi government would have sanctioned the Kisumu Molasses Plant deal at the time if Raila had not become an ally of Moi’s.

Former commissioner of Lands Sammy Mwaita offered to sell the 240 acres on which the Kisumu Molasses Plant is built to Spectre International on January 11, 2001 at a price of Kshs 3.6 million at a time when Odinga started working closely with Moi. By June of the same year, Raila was appointed to the cabinet and made Energy Minister.

Significantly, Spectre International had applied for the same land in a letter of February 18, 1999 but the request had been rejected by the government at the time.

Titles were prepared in favour of Spectre International on February 3, 2002 for a 99-year lease backdated to September 1, 2001 and the Odinga family was ready to laugh all the way to the bank.

When the Odinga family started the process that led to the acquisition of the Kisumu Molasses Plant in 2001, Raila had already established good business contacts in South Africa. Energem Resources Incorporated, an international firm quoted at the Toronto Stock Exchange, had been looking for an investment opportunity in Kenya for a long time and the Kisumu Molasses Plant appeared just right.

Soon after taking over the plant from the government, Raila struck a lucrative deal with Energem whereby the Canadian firm bought 55 per cent of the Kisumu Molasses plant. Sources say that the Odinga family was paid over US$ 5 million (about Kshs 420 million) to relinquish the control of the molasses plant. The Odinga family had paid only Kshs 3.6 million for the property.

The Canadians also ploughed in millions of dollars to rehabilitate the plant and it is today one of the largest manufacturing concerns in the country employing hundreds of people and producing at least 60,000 litres of industrial ethanol for local consumption and export.

Ethanol from the Kisumu Molasses Plant is used as a fuel additive in east and Central Africa. Among other products coming out of the plant include yeast, carbon dioxide alcohol and related industrial products.

A valuation of the plant carried out three three years ago placed the Kisumu Molasses Plant at US$100 million (Kshs 7 billion). With the Odinga family owning 40 percent of the plant, putting the family’s stake in the plant in the region of Kshs 7.8 billion. The remaining five per cent shares in the plant are owned by a development trust on behalf of the local community.

Besides Kenya where Energem is in partnership with Raila in the Kisumu molasses plant business, now renamed Kisumu ethanol Plant, other African countries where Energem’s presence is significant include Sierra Leone, Sao Tome, Congo Brazaville, Angola. Zimbabwe, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Chad and Central Africa republic.

Raila’s wealth at a glance.

Company/Property
Estimated Worth

Spectre International Limited (the holding company for Kisumu Ethanol Plant)
Kshs 7 billion of which Odinga family owns 40 per cent whose value is approximately Kshs 2.8 billion

East African Spectre (the gas cylinder manufacturing plant founded by Raila’s late father)
Kshs 500 million

Raila’s family home in Karen Nairobi
Kshs 50 million

Runda House
Kshs 15 million

Pan African Petroleum Company (the firm through which the Odinga family imports and distributes petroleum products)
Has had a turnover in excess of Kshs 500 million.

Some good tips for all of you budding investors out there!

When Bob Johnson speaks you listen…any tidbit of information from this guy is valuable in your efforts to building your wealth!

Taken from http://www.eurweb.com/story/eur35725.cfm 

While many others are talking about African American economic development, at least some Black churches in America are becoming centers of economic growth in their communities.

      The Washington, D.C.-based Taylor Media Services estimates Black church revenue in America last year stood at over $17.1 billion. And a series of media reports suggest that many of the churches are using the funds for rapid building and expansion.
 
      Rev. T.D. Jakes’ Potter’s House is one of the largest Black Mega Churches in the country.
 
      Churches are building apartment buildings and a wide range of other businesses. An investigative report last month in the Buffalo News concluded that Black churches in that city “are utilizing resources from government and non-profits to create economic engines.” The Business Journal of Milwaukee headlined this past Friday that African American churches in that area were undergoing “a construction boom.” And the National Association of Black Hotel Owners, Operators and Developers (NABHOOD) concluded a July conference in Atlanta suggesting “Black churches are an increasing source for partners in the [hotel] business and cause for progress.”
 
      Negatively, however, many of the churches use their funds to simply build larger churches and do little to better surrounding communities. Still others move from inner city areas to suburban sites.
 
      The Black church revenue estimate is based on a 1998 study reported by the Interdenominational Theological Center which found 70,000 Black churches in America with median yearly revenue of $200,000. Assuming only a modest growth in the number of churches and contributions which have at least kept pace with inflation, Black churches at the end of 2006 would have stood at $17.1 billion. The revenue estimate may be an under statement because at the time of the 1998 study, the growth of so-called Black Mega Churches (congregations of 5,000 to 30,000) was just beginning. 

Every single Black person needs to listen to this guy, get familiar with him, he is telling the absolute truth! (and no I am not getting any benefit or kickback by saying that) Basically this should motivate you and open your mind up to really go for yours!!! Get the knowledge, TAKE ACTION! Playtime is OVER…..

Very inspiring young black man which is the youngest black CEO to run a company!