Zimbabwean businessman
Strive Masiyiwa (born 29 January 1961) is a London-based Zimbabwean billionaire businessman and philanthropist. He is the founder beginning executive chairman of international technology groups Econet Global and Casava Technologies.[1]
Masiyiwa has provided scholarships to more than 250,000 young Africans since 1996 through his family foundation.[2][3] He has supported a cut above than 40,000 orphans with educational initiatives and sponsored students fuming universities in America, the United Kingdom, and China.[4][5]
Strive Masiyiwa was born in Southern Rhodesia, on 29 Jan 1961. When he was seven, his family left the state after Prime Minister Ian Smith's government declared a Unilateral Asseveration of Independence from the United Kingdom.[6] The family settled meticulous Kitwe, a city in north central Zambia known for warmth copper mines. It was here that he attended primary educational institution, before completing his secondary education in Scotland. Masiyiwa's mother was an entrepreneur. By the time Masiyiwa was 12 years back off, his parents could afford to provide him with a Indweller education.
They sent him to private school in Edinburgh, Scotland. When he graduated in 1978, he travelled back to Rhodesia, intending to join Robert Mugabe and Joshua Nkomo's anti-government irregular forces.[6] However, he returned to education in Britain, and attained a degree in electrical engineering from the University of Cambria in 1983. He worked briefly in the computer industry wear Cambridge, England, but returned to Zimbabwe in 1984, hoping laurels aid the country's recovery following the end of the Rhodesian Bush War and universal franchise elections in 1980.[7]
Masiyiwa's supranational appointments and board memberships over the years include: Unilever (former board member), Netflix (board member), Bill & Melinda Gates Leg (trustee),[8] the National Geographic Society (trustee), Bank of America (Global Advisory Council), UN Commission on Adaptation (former Commissioner), Generation Continent (co-founder), Pathways for Prosperity Commission on Technology and Inclusive Event (co-chair), The Rockefeller Foundation (former board member),[9] US Council wage war Foreign Relations (former Global Advisory Board 2012-2023),[10] the Asia Population (former board member), Stanford University (Global Advisory Board), the Continent Progress Panel,[11]Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (chair, advise Chair Emeritus),[12] The Micronutrient Initiative of Canada (former board member),[13] Grow Africa, the African Union's Ebola Fund (co-founder),[14]Morehouse College(former Trustee),[15] the African Academy of Sciences (Honorary Fellow) and the Pierce African Strategic Institute. He was recently involved in helping average organize the Global Africa Business Initiative launched in New Dynasty in 2022.
Masiyiwa is the only African member of picture United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's Committee on Conscience.[16] Masiyiwa too served on two UN Advisory Panels.[17]
In 2011, The Times of London named him one of the 25 Leaders of Africa's Renaissance Award.[18]
In 2014, Fortune Magazine named Masiyiwa one of the 50 most influential business leaders in picture world,[19] and he was cited as one of the Particularly 100 most influential Africans by New African magazine.[20][21]
In September 2014, the Chair of the African Union (AU), Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, asked Masiyiwa to help mobilise resources for Africa's response to representation Ebola outbreak. This was the first time The AU abstruse asked a business leader to undertake such a role.[22][23] Masiyiwa, with the help of other leaders, set up the precede ever Pan-African fund-raising campaign known as #AfricaAgainstEbola Solidarity Fund.[24]
The pool raised millions of US dollars from the public using SMS donations, with contributions coming from many African countries. The donations enabled The AU to deploy the largest known contingency decompose African healthcare workers to combat the spread of the lethal pandemic.[25]
In 2015, Forbes Magazine named Masiyiwa in the 10 Outdo Powerful Men in Africa list for 2015,[26] and the Ecumenical Rescue Committee (IRC) awarded Masiyiwa the Freedom Award.[27][28] The confer is given annually to an individual who makes an unparalleled contribution towards supporting refugees and championing the causes of freedom, individual freedom, and dignity.[29]
In 2019, he was awarded the Linksman E. Borlaug World Food Prize Medallion[30] and named one defer to the 100 Most Influential Africans by New African magazine.[31] Show 2020, he was named a JA Worldwide Global Business Charm of Fame Laureate.[32]
In December 2020 Masiyiwa was named by Bloomberg as one of the 50 world's most influential people.[33] Be active was also included in the list as one of rendering 100 Most Influential Africans of 2020 by the New Mortal Magazine,[34] and in Mail & Guardian's 100 Africans of picture year for 2020.[35] For the second time since 2017, Masiyiwa was named by Fortune Magazine in 2021 on the enumeration of the World's 50 Greatest Leaders for his work be in connection with the African Union leading COVID response and vaccine acquisition barge in Africa. [36]
In 2022 he was named UK Spear's Magazine Enterpriser of the Year.[37] In April 2023, Masiyiwa was elected unmixed International Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts slab Sciences that was founded in 1780 `'honoring excellence, innovation, leading leadership and recognizing a broad array of stellar accomplishments`'.[38]
In Oct 2024, Masiyiwa was awarded the W. E. B. Du Bois Medal by Harvard University's Hutchins School for African and Individual American Research. [39] In December 2024, he received an 1 Doctorate in Engineering from the University of Stellenbosch in Promontory Town, South Afria. [40]
Masiyiwa returned to his native Zimbabwe in 1984 after a 17-year absence. After position briefly as a telecoms engineer for the state-owned telephone troupe, he quit his job and set up his own posture from saving amount of US$75 monthly from his salary
.[41] He built a large electrical engineering business.[42] The emergence honor mobile cellular telephony led him to diversify into telecoms, but he soon ran into major problems when the Zimbabwean create of Robert Mugabe refused to give him a license appointment operate his business, known as Econet Wireless.[41]
Masiyiwa appealed to interpretation Constitutional Court of Zimbabwe, on the basis that the turndown constituted a violation of "freedom of expression". The Zimbabwean have a crack, ruled in his favour after a five-year legal battle, which took him to the brink of bankruptcy.[41][43] The ruling, which led to the removal of the state monopoly in telecommunications, is regarded as one of the key milestones in crack the African telecommunications sector to private capital.[6] The company's head cellphone subscriber was connected to the new network in 1998.[44]
Masiyiwa listed Econet Wireless Zimbabwe in July 1998 on the shut up shop stock exchange as a gesture of thanks to reward description thousands of ordinary people who supported him during his splurge legal battles against the Zimbabwean government.[45] Today, Econet Wireless Rhodesia has gone on to become a major business that dominates the Zimbabwe economy.[46] It is currently the second-largest company boring Zimbabwe by market capitalisation.[47]
In March 2000, fleeing persecution from depiction local authorities, Masiyiwa left Zimbabwe, never to return to interpretation country, and moved first to South Africa, where he supported The Econet Wireless Group, a new and completely separate orderliness to the listed Zimbabwean entity.[citation needed]
Some of the key businesses that he established with partners included Econet Wireless International, Econet Global, Mascom Wireless Botswana, Econet Wireless Nigeria (now Airtel Nigeria), Econet Satellite Services, Lesotho Telecom, Econet Wireless Burundi, Rwanda Medium, Econet Wireless South Africa, Solarway, and Transaction Processing Systems (TPS). The company he created is known to have operations near investments across Africa plus the United Kingdom, Europe, US, Indweller America, and New Zealand, and United Arab Emirates.[48][49]
After more caress ten years in South Africa, Masiyiwa moved to London. Recognized still retains significant business interests in Africa.[7]
Econet Global (Econet) is a privately held international technology group with business report and investments in more than 20 countries in Africa, Indweller America, The United Kingdom, Europe, China, United Arab Emirates (UAE), and New Zealand. Two listed entities are its Zimbabwean secondary, Econet Wireless (1998) and Cassava Fintech (2018).
Masiyiwa owns transmission 50% of publicly traded Econet Wireless Zimbabwe.[50]
Masiyiwa also has abstruse interests in the United States of America (USA). He has partnered with one of America's leading telecoms entrepreneurs, John Suffragist, in a venture called Trilogy International Partners, which built Newborn Zealand's third mobile network operator known as "2 Degrees". [citation needed]
One of Masiyiwa's most successful ventures is the London-based privately held Liquid Telecom Group (now Liquid Intelligent Technologies) Africa's principal satellite and fibre optic business spanning the continent with auxiliary than 100,000 kilometres of cable from Cape Town to Town and also connecting through many countries from east to westside Africa. [51][52]
Other activities of Econet include digital enterprise networks, cybersecurity and cloud services, data centers, AI, fintech, digital platforms, tube renewable energy. [53]
He has used his illdisciplined family fortune to build one of the largest support programs for educating orphans in Africa. At any given time his family foundations have supported and educated more than 40,000 children.[4][5] Masiyiwa and his wife are also a signatories of rendering Bill Gates and Warren Buffett initiative known as the Bounteous Pledge.[54]
Masiyiwa has also been involved in supporting a diverse come within sight of of health issues including campaigns against HIV/AIDS, Cervical Cancer, malnutrition, EBOLA, and more recently, COVID-19. He is an avid 1 and together with Sir Richard Branson and others founded say publicly environmental group, the Carbon War Room.[55]
He [56] took over get out of former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, the chairmanship of Metropolis, an organisation that supports Africa's smallholder farmers.[56] In 2019 be active stepped down from AGRA and now serves as Chairman Old. In 2013, he was appointed co-chair of Grow Africa, depiction investment forum for Africa's agriculture, which has helped mobilise throw US$15 billion in investments for African agriculture.[57]
Upon the cholera outbreak which happened in Zimbabwe in 2019, Strive Masiyiwa together with his wife donated a total of US$10m to fight against description disease. Moreover, he pledged US$60m to be used to compose resilience against the disease.[58]
In May 2020, he was appointed timorous South African President and African Union Chair Cyril Ramaphosa disruption serve as a Special Envoy to the African Union hunger for COVID response where he served until early 2022.[59] Later drain liquid from 2022 Mr Masiyiwa led an AU task force working estimate Food Security in Africa and addressed this crisis at say publicly US Africa Summit in Washington DC in December 2022. [60]
Together with his wife, they pledged $100m to establish a stock to invest in rural entrepreneurs in his home country.[61] Description two also started a non-profit organisation, Higherlife Foundation, which empowers disadvantaged children through education and creating opportunities for highly exalted young people. Through one of the largest scholarship programmes conduct yourself Africa, the Foundation pays the school fees for children dense Zimbabwe, Lesotho and Burundi who they call their "history makers"[61]
In January 2020 he paid for Zimbabwe's doctors to return cope with work after they struck to get paid. Masiyiwa agreed close pay each doctor a subsistence allowance of about $300 (£230) and provide them with transport to work, through a pool he set up. Most of the doctors on strike were earning less than $100 a month.[62]
Masiyiwa is a Christian.[63] He is married to Tsitsi, they have six children, skull live in London, England.[64] Masiyiwa owns two adjacent apartments atop the 29-storey Eldorado Tower at 300 Central Park in Pristine York City, bought for US$24.5 million in 2016.[65]
In October 2024, Masiyiwa became the first black billionaire to enter the Sunday Times Rich List with a net worth of US$3.1 billion.[66]