Strive Masiyiwa was born in 1961 in Zimbabwe,
which was then called Rhodesia. When he was seven, his family fled the country
as Ian Smith's embattled government began to crumble. The family settled in
Kitwe, a city in north central Zambia known for its copper mines. Masiyiwa's
mother was an entrepreneur
preneur with interests in retail sales,
small-scale farming, and transportation. His father worked at first in one of
the nearby mines but later joined the family business. By the time Masiyiwa was
12 years old, his parents could afford to provide him with a coveted European
education. They sent him to private school in Edinburgh, Scotland. When he
graduated in 1978, he traveled back to Zimbabwe, intending to join the
anti-government guerilla forces there. "One of the senior officers told me
'Look, we're about to win anyway, and what we really need is people like you to
help rebuild the country'" ( Time , December 2, 2002). Masiyiwa took the
man's advice and returned to school in Britain, earning a degree in electrical
and electronic engineering from the University of Wales in 1983. He worked
briefly in the computer industry in Cambridge, England, but soon returned to
Zimbabwe in 1984, hoping to aid the country's recovery after the war of
independence it had won in 1980.
Masiyiwa joined the Zimbabwe Posts and
Telecommunications Corporation (ZPTC), the state-owned telephone company, as a
senior engineer. ZPTC quickly promoted him to the position of principal
engineer. Masiyiwa became frustrated with the government bureaucracy, however,
and left ZPTC in 1988 to start an electrical contracting firm named Retrofit
Engineering. He was chosen as Zimbabwe's youngest-ever Businessman of the Year
in 1990.
Masiyiwa recognized the great potential for
wireless telephones in sub-Saharan Africa because the region had only two
fixed-line telephones for every hundred people in the 1990s. He saw that
wireless networks would be quicker and less expensive to build than land-based
networks that required stringing miles of telephone lines across rough terrain.
Wireless telephone service would also be less vulnerable than traditional
landlines to the theft of copper wire for resale. Masiyiwa first approached
ZPTC about forming a mobile telephone network in Zimbabwe. The company wasn't
interested, however, saying that cell phones had no future in the country.
Masiyiwa then decided to create a cell phone
network on his own. He sold Retrofit Engineering in 1994 and started to finance
Econet Wireless through his family company, TS Masiyiwa Holdings (TSMH). He met
with fierce opposition, first from ZPTC, which told him it held a monopoly in
telecommunications, and second from the Zimbabwean government, which swamped
him with red tape and demands for bribes. As a devout Christian, Masiyiwa was
opposed to paying bribes and kickbacks to government officials. He decided to
pursue his case through the courts. After a landmark four-year legal battle
that went all the way to the nation's Supreme Court, Econet finally won a
license to provide cell phone service in Zimbabwe. The court declared that the
government monopoly on telecommunications had violated the constitution's
guarantee of free speech. Econet's first cell phone subscriber was connected to
the new network in 1998.
While Masiyiwa waited to gain the government's
approval for operations in Zimbabwe, he was able to start a cell phone network
in neighboring Botswana. Econet Wireless Holdings then established a presence
in over 15 countries, including other African nations, New Zealand, and the
United Kingdom. The company also diversified into satellite communications,
fixed-line telephone services, and Internet service.
Masiyiwa decided to relocate his family and the
Econet headquarters to the Republic of South Africa in 2000. Some observers
suggested that he was going into exile from his homeland once again. Masiyiwa
himself said simply that South Africa was the best place from which to launch a
multinational corporation because it had the continent's most vibrant economy.
Masiyiwa further antagonized the Zimbabwe
government when TSMH bailed out the financially strapped opposition newspaper,
the Daily News . Masiyiwa eventually became a major shareholder in the
newspaper's parent company, Associated Newspapers of Zimbabwe, as well as the
company's chairman. The government responded by shutting down the newspaper in
the fall of 2003. The paper continued to publish sporadically, though, through
early 2004, and maintained an online version from South Africa. Masiyiwa sued
for permission to restart the presses in Zimbabwe. The Zimbabwean government
countered by starting criminal proceedings against four Daily News directors in
June 2004 on charges of illegally publishing the paper without a license.
Government officials also threatened to revoke Econet's license to operate in
Zimbabwe at that time.
The board of directors of Econet Wireless Nigeria
(EWN), a company in which Masiyiwa held a stake, ousted him in 2003 when he
failed to acquire necessary financing. A critic told South Africa's Financial
Mail that Masiyiwa "'talks up a storm' but often falls short on his
promises to raise capital" (December 5, 2003). The board turned instead to
Vodacom, a large South African telecommunications firm, which agreed to provide
capital in return for management rights. According to the New York Times ,
however, Masiyiwa vowed to regain control of EWN. He said, "We've taken on
Goliaths before" (January 15, 2004).
"Strive is driven by focus, determination and
passion," Norman Nyazema told the Financial Mail . "Failure is not an
option, no matter how many obstacles are thrown in his way" (December 5,
2003). Nyazema, who was a professor of pharmacology at South Africa's
University of the North and chairman of Econet Wireless Zimbabwe (EWZ), had gone
to school with Masiyiwa.
In the early months of 2004 Econet signed a 50/50
joint-venture agreement with Allied Technology (Altech), a South African
information technology company. With Altech's capital and Econet's experience
in telecommunications, the new company—dubbed Newco—announced its intention to
pursue an aggressive expansion strategy in the developing countries of Africa
and Asia.
Masiyiwa became a role model for other young
African entrepreneurs through his vision and persistence. He won numerous
national and international honors, including a place on Time magazine's list of
the world's most promising young executives in 2002. Masiyiwa attributed his
success in part to the ethical integrity he developed through the devotional
practice of reading the Bible for an hour every morning. He served on the
boards of such international development agencies as the Southern African
Enterprise Development Fund and the Rockefeller Foundation. He and his wife
Tsitsi also founded and funded a charitable trust that had provided
scholarships for more than five thousand AIDS orphans as of 2003.
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