Zimbabwe’s richest man and telecommunications tycoon Strive Masiyiwa is one of Africa’s 55 billionaires with a combined fortune of $143.88 billion. The average net worth of the members of this exclusive club is $2.6 billion according to Ventures magazine.
Kenyan industrialist, Manu Chandaria, and Egyptian property tycoon, Mohammed Al-Fayed, both aged are oldest billionaires.
The youngest billionaires are Mohammed Dewji of Tanzania and Igho Sanomi, a Nigerian oil trader. They are both 38 years old.
Strive Masiyiwa (52) is reported to have an estimated net worth of over $1.4 billion.
According to the most comprehensive survey of wealth in the continent, Africa is home to far more billionaires than previously thought, as a decade-long period of intense economic growth fills the pockets of local businessman, Nigeria, South Africa and Egypt lead the pack with the highest number of billionaires at 20, nine and eight respectively.
Algeria, Angola, Zimbabwe and Swaziland only have one billionaire each. In all, there are 10 African countries represented on the list.
Three African women made it into the rankings.
Folorunsho Alakija, a Nigerian fashion designer and oil tycoon worth some $7.3 billion by is the richest of them. Isabel Dos Santos, an Angolan investor and the daughter of Angolan President, Eduardo Dos Santos, together with Mama Ngina Kenyatta, the widow of Kenya’s first President, also made it.
Africa’s richest people derived their fortunes pursuing a variety of business endeavours including financial services, mining, construction, energy and retail.
According to Ventures magazine African billionaire roll, published on Monday, lists 55 people with fortunes of more than $1bn, up from previous estimates of 16-25 billionaires. Most of the super-rich live in Nigeria and South Africa.
The richest person in Africa is Aliko Dangote, a Nigerian businessman involved in cement, food, oil and other sectors with an estimated personal fortune of more than $20bn.
Allan Gray, the publicity-shy South African financier, is the second richest, with assets worth at least $8.5bn. Mike Adenuga, a Nigerian involved in the oil and telecoms industries, has an estimated fortune of $8bn, according to Ventures.
Strive founded cellphone company Econet in 1993, but it wasn’t until 1998 that the cellular provider went online and quickly became Zimbabwe’s cellular service of choice.
It took him five years of fighting in court to get rid of the monopoly-controlled telecommunications industry in Zimbabwe.
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Within a few years, Econet had bought Mascom, a cellular giant in Botswana that enjoys nearly 80 percent of the market share, had service centres in Kenya and Burundi, and was operating in the United Kingdom as Econet Satellite Services.
Econet wasn’t Mr Masiyiwa’s only business concern, though. Until 2003, Strive was the publisher of The Daily News, the only independent newspaper left in Zimbabwe.
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He's business portfolio includes financial services, renewable energy supply, beverage bottling, hospitality and insurance, not to mention Econet Wireless, which provides telecommunication services in 15 countries around the world, including the United States, Europe and Asia.
Strive Masiyiwa is the founder and chairman, of global telecommunications group, Econet Wireless.
He currently serves on a number of international boards including the Rockefeller Foundation, the Advisory Board of the Counsel on Foreign Relations, the Africa Progress Panel, AGRA, the UN Sec General’s Advisory Boards for Sustainable Energy, and for Education. He is a juror of the Hilton Foundation’s Humanitarian Prize.
He is also one of the founders, with Sir Richard Branson of the global think tank, known as the Carbon War Room.
In 2012, when President Obama, hosted the G-8 Summit at Camp David, he invited him, to address the G-8 leaders on how to increase food production, and end hunger in parts of Africa.
Strive Masiyiwa was born in 1961 in Zimbabwe, which was then called Rhodesia.
When he was 7, 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 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.
He graduated in 1978. In Britain, he earned 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.
While the business magnate has a net worth of some $1.4 billion, he hasn’t forgotten about the small people that matter.
He sits on the co-ordinating committee of the Social Dimensions Fund, an organisation that is concerned with reducing poverty in Zimbabwe and giving its people a chance for a better future.
He is also a trustee of the Capernaum Trust, which provides funding and welfare for over 26 000 children.
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