Biography of Mr. Strive Masiyiwa

Strive Masiyiwa is a Zimbabwean billionaire who is based in London. He is a business man and philanthropist. He was born into a Christian family in Zimbabwe formerly known as Southern Rhodesia on the 29th of January, 1961. His primary education was obtained in Kitwe, a city in North Central Zambia and his secondary education in Edinburgh, Scotland. He earned a bachelor degree in electrical engineering in 1983 from the University of Wales. He is married to Tsitsi Masiyiwa and they have six children together.

 

Strive Masiyiwa is the founder and executive chairman of the international conglomerate technology group, Econet Global which is popularly known as Econet. He founded Econet as a privately owned company in 1993 and it was initially known as Enhanced Communications Network. Econet Global comprises of Cassava technologies and Econet wireless. Its operations and investments are carried out in Africa, Europe, South America and the East Asia Pacific Rim. Among the services and products offered at Econet are broadband, optical fiber networks , mobile and fixed telephone services , satellite and mobile payment. Its headquarters is located in Johannessburg, South Africa. Before he went on to initiate the establishment of Econet, he worked for a short period in the computer industry in Cambridge, England then moved on to work at ZPTC in Zimbabwe.

He co founded the Higherlife Foundation with his wife, Tsitsi Masiyiwa. The foundation was established to support orphans and poor children of the rural areas of Zimbabwe, South Africa, Burundi and Lesotho.

 

Strive Masiyiwa is a member of board of quite a number of companies and institutions such as Unilever, Netflix, The Asia Society and so on. He is a trustee at the Bill& Melinda Gates Foundation, National Graphic Society and Bank of America. He is also a co founder of Generation Africa, The Africa’s Union Ebola Fund and a co chair at the Pathways for Prosperity Commission on Technology and Inclusive Development. He is a commissioner at the UN commission on Adaptation and the only African Member of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Committee on Conscience.

 

Strive Masiyiwa has been globally recognized by several institutions across the years, some of  them include:

• Forbes Magazine(2015), where he was named as one of the 10 most powerful men in Africa
• Bloomberg (2020), where he was named as one of the 50 world’s most influential people 
• New African Magazine (2020), where he was named as one of the 100 most influential Africans
• Fortune Magazine (2021), where he was named as one of the World’s 50 Greatest Leaders.
  

With a net worth of 1.087 billion euros, Strive Masiyiwa became the first black billionaire to enter the Sunday Times Rich List in 2021.

Mr. Strive Masiyiwa is active on social media. You can connect with him via his official handles on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter

5 Interesting Ways to Teach Children about Money

Why should you teach children about Money?

Financial intelligence is one form of intelligence that should be taught to kids at an early stage. Why? You might ask. Simple. No one ever wants to have a wasteful child. You do not want to watch your child grow into an adult stumbling from one bad financial decision to another. Let’s also face it, while children learn from watching their parents, there are also things that should be taught.

 

I believe by now, we all have agreed on the fact that your child needs to learn about money and how to create and manage wealth, right? But hold on a bit, this is not the time to bust out your secondary school economics textbooks, neither is it the time to load your kid's memories with accounting terms they cannot grasp yet. Your aim is to help your kids get knowledge, not prepare them to write an ICAN exam.

So what should you do? Luckily, today we will be identifying 5 interesting ways to teach children about money.

 

1. Play Money Management Games

Games are a fun way to teach your kids about money. Stephanie W. Mackara, president and principal wealth advisor of Charleston Investment Advisors said “Studies have shown that children learn best when engaged and active,” and what better way to keep children engaged than games. These games could be through a phone, gaming device, or board games. Many adults know about monopoly, but there are countless other games and apps that help children gamify the money learning experience.

2. Piggy Banks are still Fun

Remember back when you were a child and you would have a jar or wooden box for saving the little change visitors gave to you? This has not gone out of date. Encouraging your children to cultivate a savings habit is one sure-fire way to teach them about keeping money. This will help them to be disciplined, and occasional rewards for saving would also help your kids see the benefits of setting asides money they have that is not in active use.

 

3. Help Your children create little Budgets

Having a budget is one of the hallmarks of someone with the right financial knowledge, but compared to gaming, this concept could be a bit tedious for your kids. Since you are trying to make learning fun for your kids, you might not normally go down this route, but there is a way out. When drawing up your family budget, help your kids outline the little things they can afford with their allowances and savings and help them draw up a budget for those things too. They will understand little by little the things they should consider as priorities and how to effectively divide their money.

 

4. Help your Kids Learn Financial terms in bits

An African adage says that if you want to swallow an elephant you start eating it bit by bit, the same goes for educating your children about money. Introduce the to books that break down financial terms for them. Teach them about savings, interests, loans, and investments, and do it using examples they can relate to. Let them watch educational cartoons and draw examples from fun cartoons they have seen. Invariably this means you also have to have a level of financial literacy yourself.

 

5. Gamify the learning experience

Beyond teaching children about finances through games, you can also gamify the learning experience for your kids. Gamifying learning experiences simply means their learning experience into a game in itself. You can do this through setting milestones, using reward systems, and point systems too. There should be ways to earn points and also to lose points too.

Once your children get the hang of the game process, it would be hard to unhook them which would result in a fun lifelong experience for learning about money.

Conclusion

Teaching kids about money early is essential if you want them to better manage finances as they grow. You can easily do this in an attention-catching manner for children. Use games, introduce them to concepts little by little, help them to save, teach them to budget, and help gamify their entire experience. You will gradually watch your kids become proficient with their finances.

 

5 Ways to Boost Your Savings Culture

If you were not born with a silver spoon in the mouth, it is likely that your one very first step to a life of financial wealth is saving. If you doubt it, simply take your time and examine how you got the major personal effects you have or have had in time past. You would quickly discover that you saved; however short the saving period is. 

Many people argue against saving on the basis of how small their income is in the present but any true financially intelligent person would have at some point reaped the fruits of saving.

The reasons why you should save can not be overemphasized. However, what we are concerned with in our financial intelligence series today is how you can increase your savings. There are five basic tips we want to share with you and they will prove valuable if you engage them.

We will get right into how to boost your saving. 

1. SAVE REGULARLY

Saving regularly has a two fold effect on you. First, it helps you to build wealth quickly without even realizing it. Imagine saving 100 Naira everyday for one year; that is 36,000 Naira. That amount even in these times can achieve something tangible in our personal lives. Secondly it helps you to develop the habit of saving. In essence, every time you save it makes you want to save more. When you save regularly, it becomes a habit and there is no need for me to stress that it is a good habit.

2. SAVE FROM EVERY INCOME

It is easy to conclude that not everybody can save because some people earn very little. One of the keys to increase your saving is to save no matter how little that income is. If you own a shop for instance and you think that 1,000 Naira is too small to save something, you should have a re-think. Simply engage the 50:30:20 principle; save at least 20 percent of every little amount that comes in. It may be inconvenient at the moment but it will help you to increase your reserve and save yourself in the future. Pay now, play later.

3. INCREASE YOUR INCOME

This one is both obvious and automatic. When your income increases, it gives you the breathing space to save more. This is why it is important to develop the habit when you still earn little. Mine is not to tell you how to increase the income but to make you understand the importance of the increase to improve your reserve power.

4. HAVE A SEPARATE ACCOUNT FOR SAVING

A number of people around the country have more than one bank account amd use whichever is convenient at any given time. How about having one simply for keeping money. 

This helps you to clear your mind when budgeting and yiu know that any money in that account is strictly reserved for a rainy day or towards a project. You could even refuse to get a debit card for this savings account to reduce your own accessibility to the funds in it.

5. AUTOMATE YOUR SAVINGS

In the 21st century, Fintechs are gradually becoming common place. As a financially intelligent individual, you should take advantage of the automatic saving feature (if present) from any trusted fintech product you find available. This helps you to save without even pressing a button. In most cases, you only need to add your card to the product and select a savings plan so you can be automatically debited at a specific time. What this does is that you don't even need to think of saving. It just happens and you will find that you become less stressed because you do not have to go through the process of fighting the temptation to not save that amount that drops in your account. The point we discussed in number four above also works hand in hand with this. When you automate savings like this, and make your access to it difficult, in no time you will realize that the amount you save within a given period has increased and you get to enjoy the benefits.

Other Useful tips...

The junk we eat daily is the culprit in the case of leaking pockets. Cut back on junk food; save the money instead and reap the fruits later.

 

Saving is a smart way to use money so why not increase its potential in your finances today?