25 Facts About Strive Masiyiwa

Strive Masiyiwa was born on 29 January 1961 and is a London-based Zimbabwean billionaire businessman and philanthropist.

Strive Masiyiwa is the founder and executive chairman of international technology groups Econet Global and Cassava Technologies.

Strive Masiyiwa has supported more than 40,000 orphans with educational initiatives and sponsored students at universities in America, the United Kingdom, and China.

Strive Masiyiwa was born in Southern Rhodesia, on 29 January 1961.

Strive Masiyiwa worked briefly in the computer industry in Cambridge, England, but returned to Zimbabwe in 1984, hoping to aid the country's recovery following the end of the Rhodesian Bush War and universal franchise elections in 1980.

Strive Masiyiwa was recently involved in helping to organize the Global Africa Business Initiative launched in New York in 2022.

Strive Masiyiwa is the only African member of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's Committee on Conscience.

In September 2014, the Chair of the African Union, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, asked Strive Masiyiwa to help mobilise resources for Africa's response to the Ebola outbreak.

In December 2020 Strive Masiyiwa was named by Bloomberg as one of the 50 world's most influential people.

In October 2024, Masiyiwa was awarded the W E B Du Bois Medal by Harvard University's Hutchins School for African and African American Research.

Strive Masiyiwa returned to his native Zimbabwe in 1984 after a 17-year absence.

Strive Masiyiwa appealed to the Constitutional Court of Zimbabwe, on the basis that the refusal constituted a violation of "freedom of expression".

Strive Masiyiwa listed Econet Wireless Zimbabwe in July 1998 on the local stock exchange as a gesture of thanks to reward the thousands of ordinary people who supported him during his long legal battles against the Zimbabwean government.

In March 2000, fleeing persecution from the local authorities, Strive Masiyiwa left Zimbabwe, never to return to the country, and moved first to South Africa, where he founded The Econet Wireless Group, a new and completely separate organisation to the listed Zimbabwean entity.

Strive Masiyiwa he created is known to have operations and investments across Africa plus the United Kingdom, Europe, US, Latin America, and New Zealand, and United Arab Emirates.

Strive Masiyiwa has had interests in the United States of America.

Strive Masiyiwa has partnered with one of America's leading telecoms entrepreneurs, John Stanton, in a venture called Trilogy International Partners, which built New Zealand's third mobile network operator known as "2 Degrees".

Strive Masiyiwa has used his own family fortune to build one of the largest support programs for educating orphans in Africa.

Strive Masiyiwa is an avid environmentalist and together with Sir Richard Branson and others founded the environmental group, the Carbon War Room.

Strive Masiyiwa took over from former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, the chairmanship of AGRA, an organisation that supports Africa's smallholder farmers.

Later in 2022 Mr Strive Masiyiwa led an AU task force working on Food Security in Africa and addressed this crisis at the US Africa Summit in Washington DC in December 2022.

Strive Masiyiwa agreed to pay each doctor a subsistence allowance of about $300 and provide them with transport to work, through a fund he set up.

Strive Masiyiwa is married to Tsitsi, they have six children, and live in London, England.

Strive Masiyiwa owns two adjacent apartments atop the 29-storey Eldorado Tower at 300 Central Park in New York City, bought for US$24.5 million in 2016.

In October 2024, Strive Masiyiwa became the first black billionaire to enter the Sunday Times Rich List with a net worth of US$3.1 billion.