Zimbabwe Billionaire and Cassava Technologies and Econet Holdings Founder, Strive Masiyiwa, spoke to Eloho Omame on various topics:
Key Points from the discussion
- I have something in common with my grandmother who died at the age of 106 – I have a great memory.
- When I was 32 and established Econet, I wrote the mission statement of Econet, in 1993 – To provide telecommunication services to all the peoples of Africa. And later on when we had to appear before the constitutional court of Zimbabwe in our request for the monopoly of the state owned company to be removed, I said 0.7% of the African population has access to a telephone, And I said to the judges, this is unacceptable.
- Today, our company in Zimbabwe provides Telecommunication services to 90% of the population. So the mission was accomplished. In Africa, over 75% of the people now have access to a cellphone, of course we did not achieve all this by ourselves. We accomplished this with a new generation of entrepreneurs.
- There are other peaks that I see that will be exploited by your generation. Take ecommerce. Only 3% of the African population have made a purchase online and 80% of that 3% are South Africans.
- If you look at what we can do with the internet today, it has not reached our people. Some 15 years ago I became obsessed with this.
- And so began a new vision. Which was we are going to connect every African country together, but as I said, there is a lot of peaks to be climbed.
- Technology must be the bedrock of everything, it doesn’t matter what industry you are in. There is nothing that Technology can not touch. So in the end be comfortable with what you do as an entrepreneur.
- I am only fundamentally interested in the technologies that are the core to my business. So I don’t watch biotechnology, for example, because I don’t have the interest in that field.
- I am very curious, my mother had to literally monitor me because I am generally a curious person. I provide leadership to things that I am concerned about. I bring entrepreneurial leadership and insight to things that I can have a contribution to.
- My own entrepreneurship is almost evangelical. I read a book as a young man, a book by Thiel Osborne, who said if you want to be successful in life you must identify a human need and reach out and address it. And I went on to add, as long as you do it legally and do no harm to your society, community and humankind.
- I never sat down and said Telecommunication, I can make a lot of money. I said “Why are not many people more unable to communicate. So I went out to solve that problem.
- I went out to raise funds, resources to solve that problem, the financial success was consequential.
- In the end, I can only drive one car and I can only sleep in one house. My kids have grown up and I no longer need a 16 bedroom house.
- So fundamentally, if its about having money and piling it up, then that’s not very interesting. But if you can channel that money to philanthropy…We have sent more than 250 000 children to school – that’s more interesting than owning Ferrarris.
- And that is why I was one of the first signatories to the giving pledge.
- In our own family foundation, that is run by my wife, we do not have healthcare as a fundamental area of interest. We are very much interested in education and livelihoods entrepreneurship. I respond to heath related disasters from a leadership perspective.
- My wife and I are friends before we are husband and wife. I am out there because of this partnership and its vis versa. We have a wonderful family together, we have 6 children. We are first and foremost, prayer partners, because there are challenges in life. And many of them will be outside of your own making. You have to build strong marriages. If you are not faithful to those who are close to you, you will never make a good partner.
- The relationship between Africa and any other people of the world is important. We must go into those relationships with open and constructive ideas of our own and not for the agenda of others.
- The relationship with China has been good.
- We love America, its a different relationship.
About Strive Masiyiwa
Strive Masiyiwa is Founder and Executive Chairman of Africa’s leading tech company, Cassava Technologies, which owns and operates some of Africa’s most recognized brands covering fibre broadband networks, data centres, renewable energy, cloud and cybersecurity, fintech, and on-demand digital platforms.
He is also a pioneer of Africa’s mobile telecoms revolution as Founder and Executive Chairman of Econet Wireless, a leading mobile telecoms operator in Africa. Born in Zimbabwe, Masiyiwa left the country in 2000, and is based in London.
He serves on several international boards including Unilever Plc, Netflix, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, National Geographic Society, and the Global Advisory boards of Bank of America, the Council on Foreign Relations (USA), Stanford University, Bloomberg New Economy Forum, and the Prince of Wales Trust. Masiyiwa is the only African member of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Committee on Conscience.
He previously served for 15 years on the board of the Rockefeller Foundation, and over the decades has served on several other prominent international boards and initiatives focused on digital transformation, public health crises, education, youth entrepreneurship, agricultural development, and protecting the earth.
As a philanthropist, Masiyiwa and his wife Tsitsi co-founded the Higherlife Foundation and Delta Philanthropies which for more than 20 years have supported the education of 250,000+ orphaned, vulnerable, and gifted children across Africa, as well as social impact investments in health, disaster relief and preparedness, and rural transformation. They are signatories of the Giving Pledge.
In 2020, Masiyiwa was named amongst Bloomberg’s 50 Most Influential People, New African Magazine’s 100 Most Influential Africans, and Mail & Guardian’s 100 Africans of the Year. In 2014, 2017 and 2021, Masiyiwa was listed amongst Fortune Magazine’s “World’s 50 Greatest Leaders”.
Please watch the video above this post for more details.
