Strive Masiyiwa was born on the 29th January 1961 in Zimbabwe, and is an entrepreneur and philanthropist, best known as the founder and chairman of the diversified telecommunications group entitled Econet Wireless. Masiyiwa has been honoured with a number of awards for his expertise in business as well as philanthropy, as he is regarded to be one of the most generous humanitarians. He has been active in business since 1993.
How rich is the entrepreneur? It has been estimated by authoritative sources that the overall size of Strive Masiyiwa’s net worth is as much as $280 million, as of the data presented in the middle of 2017. Econet Wireless is the major source of Masiyiwa’s wealth.
Strive Masiyiwa Net Worth $280 Million
To begin with, the boy was raised in Zimbabwe, but received his primary education in Zambia, yet matriculated from high school in Scotland. Later, he studied at the University of Wales from which he graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering, after which he briefly worked as an engineer in teleco, before deciding to start his own business.
In 1993, Strive founded the private company Econet Wireless in Zimbabwe. However, it took five years to get a licence for telephony – the fact was that in 1998 the bigger part of the residents in Zimbabwe had never even spoken on the phone. To get the license Strive had to appeal to the Constitutional Court of Zimbabwe, which took five years to be completed. The same year (1998), Masiyiwa was listed as one of 10 most outstanding young leaders of the world by the World Junior Chamber of Commerce.
In 2000, the entrepreneur left Zimbabwe to expand the company and temporarily settled down in South Africa. In 2014, the company expanded after purchasing the Telecel in the Central African Republic and in Burundi moreover, the company has a license in UK and operates there under the name of Econet Satellite Services. Overall, the company provides fixed telephony and mobile telephony, satellite, broadband and mobile payment services in South America, Europe and Africa.
In 2014, Strive was listed as one of the 50 most influential business leaders in the world by Fortune Magazine. The following year, he appeared in the list of the 10 Most Powerful Men in Africa by Forbes. In 2015, the businessman and philanthropist was honoured with the Freedom Award by International Rescue Committee. Recently, he was inducted into the list of the World’s Greatest Leaders 2017 by Fortune Magazine.
Concerning his philanthropic and humanitarian efforts, Strive is known as the most active supporter born in Africa. He is known to have educated (through various foundations and programs) more than 40,000 children living in Africa. Masiyiwa is known to have launched a number of initiatives against cancer, ebola, HIV/AIDS. He has also invested more than $15 million into agriculture in Africa.
Finally, in the personal life of Strive Masiyiwa, he is married to Tsitsi Masiyiwa. They have six children, and currently the family is based in London, England.
