Two sperm donation centres in China recently announced that they will be giving away the latest iPhone or its equivalent in cash, to willing sperm donors. Expectedly, the announcement was met with skepticism. However, considering that the country is arguably Apple’s biggest fan base, the bait has more potential for a catch than skeptics would like to think.

Chinese citizens have been known to queue for hours on end upon the release of new iPhones; and more than once, launch dates have been shifted due to violence of prospective buyers as they wait in line. In less than 24 hours after the advert was posted, it garnered over 400,000 views, proving that the sperm donation centres understood the community they operated in.

While Africans are not new to the organ trade business, there is a lot of speculation surrounding if African men will willingly donate their sperm at all, much less at the price of almost a thousand dollars. The bigger question that has arisen since the adverts came out is if the worth of a man’s sperm can really be quantified in iPhones.

So really, what is sperm worth?

The obvious answer to this is a baby. African cultures are generally family oriented, and issues of fertility and childcare are taken so seriously it’s almost spiritual. Consequently, things like sperm and ovum cannot in any way be quantified. However, with technological breakthroughs in areas relating to infertility, sperm donors in the United States can expect to be paid as little as $30 for each sample they give and some make as much as $6000 in a year from a series of donations.

On Africans and infertility

In 2014, reports emphasized that there is a stalled decline in Africa’s fertility rate and predicted a population increase of up to 2.7 billion if the current trend holds. Despite the in-depth analysis of why this population growth is bad for Africa’s prospects, it was recorded that a lot of African women, especially in West and South Africa, want an average of 5 children each. The need for Africans to have big families is one that has been deemed by many to be a relic of a bygone era, made unnecessary by modernity.

However, even with reports of a population explosion, infertility still remains a major issue for a large number of Africans. The pressure to conceive and raise children is traditionally placed on women and remained un-shifting until recent revelations of the prevalent nature of male infertility. It is reasonable to expect that a culture that is as family-oriented as ours would be more receptive to alternative methods of boosting fertility, but that is not the case. The stigma that accompanies childless couples is almost manageable when compared to the stigma that comes with people knowing your ability to conceive was “assisted”. It is almost as though children born as a result of assisted fertility are somehow less of the parents’ child because they were not conceived “naturally”.

The harsh economic climate that pervades the continent, and other factors which many claim include greed and general discontent, has severely tested the limits of what people will do to make extra money. The implication of this is that if sperm donor centres open up in a country like Nigeria, they might openly garner a lot of criticism, but with the right incentive record unexpectedly high levels of secret patronage.

It might even be said that maybe the price we put on our reproductive gametes is more than they are truly worth. These gametes do not accumulate over time. Instead the body reproduces them periodically whether they are used or not.

Undeniably, sperm and ovum donor centres are open in various parts of the country. However, we still live in a clime where donors have to do so in secret. The bigger question now is if African societies will be more receptive to assisted fertility as exposure grows.

Would you donate your sperm or ovum? If yes, at what cost?

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