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
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