Strive Masiyiwa

According to a report by Forbes, Masiyiwa, 57 is now worth $1.7 billion. Masiyiwa controls Econet Group, a Zimbabwe-listed mobile phone company that also has investments in financial services, insurance, e-commerce, renewable energy, education, Coca-Cola bottling, hospitality and payment gateway solutions. Econet also has a Pay television outfit, Kwesé TV, which is already competing favorably across Africa with Naspers’ DSTV. Strive Masiyiwa founded Econet in 1993, but was granted a telephony license by the Zimbabwean government in 1998, at a time when 70% of the country inhabitants had never heard a ringtone. He and his wife, Tsitsi, are the founders of the Higher Life Foundation which pays the school fees of over 40,000 students across the Primary, High school and Tertiary levels. In February 2013, Tsitsi and her husband established the Ambassador Andrew Young Scholarship, a $6.4 million dollar scholarship fund that sends African students to attend the Morehouse College in the United States. He has signed the Giving Pledge, which Mr. Gates, Ms. French Gates and Mr. Buffett created as a public promise to give away more than half of one’s wealth. A longtime board member of the Rockefeller Foundation, he has also been chairman of the Gates-backed Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa.