Strive Masiyiwa
Founder and Executive Chairman, Econet Global and Cassava Technologies
It's not enough to lock yourself in your office in your business and to say, “I'm going to do well,” and that's it. You've got to be part of finding solutions around you.
Summary
On this week’s episode of “Leadership Matters,” Alan is joined by Strive Masiyiwa, an entrepreneur, philanthropist, and global business leader who has expanded access to telecommunications services throughout the world.
Strive Masiyiwa is the founder and executive chairman of Econet Group, an international telecoms giant, and Cassava Technologies, a pan-African technology leader. Over the last three decades, Strive’s companies have provided digital services and technological infrastructure ranging from mobile networks and payment systems to fiber broadband and cloud services to the entire African continent and beyond.
During this fascinating episode, Strive dives into his early life in Zimbabwe and Zambia, education in the United Kingdom and the beginnings of his career in engineering. He takes Alan on a journey through the founding of the Econet Group and its monumental fight with the Zimbabwean government to expand mobile phone access to the country in the 1990s. In their insightful hour together, Strive tells Alan about the principles on leadership and humanitarian work he’s learned over the years, including how he differentiates charity and philanthropy and the importance of mentorship.
Mentions & Resources in this Episode
Guest Bio
One of the pioneers of the mobile telecoms industry in Africa, Strive Masiyiwa is the Founder and Executive Chairman of the Econet Group which comprises Cassava Technologies and Econet Wireless. The Group has operations and investments primarily in Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and Latin America.
In 1993 Masiyiwa founded Econet Wireless, the mobile telephone networks and mobile money business of Econet Group, headquartered in Johannesburg, South Africa. Masiyiwa later founded and serves as Executive Chairman of Cassava Technologies, Africa’s leading technology company of continental scale.
Born in Zimbabwe and now based in London, Masiyiwa had the vision 20+ years ago to create an entire ecosystem of innovative digital solutions to connect people and businesses across the African continent. Cassava Technologies now encompasses Africa’s largest open access cross-border fibre broadband network spanning 60,000+ miles, Africa’s largest network of interconnected carrier neutral data centres, solar renewable energy, cloud and cybersecurity, fintech, and on-demand digital platforms.
Masiyiwa currently serves on several international boards including Unilever PLC, Netflix Inc, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, National Geographic Society, and Global Advisory boards including Bank of America, the US Council on Foreign Relations, and Bloomberg New Economy Forum. Masiyiwa is the only African member of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Committee on Conscience. For almost two years until early 2022, he served as an African Union Special Envoy for COVID response.
He previously served for 15 years on the board of the Rockefeller Foundation, and for over three decades has played leading roles in several other prominent international boards and initiatives focused on digital transformation, youth entrepreneurship, public health crises, education, agricultural development, and environmental protection.
In 1996, Masiyiwa and his wife Tsitsi co-founded Higherlife Foundation and later, Delta Philanthropies whose primary focus is social impact investment in human capital development to build thriving individuals and communities in Africa. They are signatories of the Giving Pledge.
Episode Transcription
Alan Fleischmann
You’re listening to “Leadership Matters” on SiriusXM, and at leadershipmattersshow.com. I’m your host, Alan Fleischmann.
I’m here with an old and dear friend, Strive Masiyiwa. He’s a global business leader, global philanthropist, and one of the great thought leaders and conveners from the continent of Africa. I’m just so thrilled, Strive, that you’re joining us today.
Strive Masiyiwa
Thank you so much, Alan. Wonderful to meet with you and speak to your listeners. I hope we have a good chat.
Alan Fleischmann
We’ll have a wonderful chat.
So Strive, you are an amazing and inspiring entrepreneur, philanthropist, and global business leader. You’ve expanded telecom across the continent, you’ve given access throughout the world through your endeavors. I’d like my audience to understand that Strive is the founder and executive chairman of Econet, an international telecom giant, and Cassava Technologies, which is a pan-African technology leader. From mobile networks and payment systems to fiber, broadband, and cloud services, Strive’s companies are providing digital services and technology infrastructure to the entire African continent and beyond.
Beyond his success in business, Strive has emerged as a preeminent philanthropist and humanitarian thought leader. With his wife, Tsitsi, Strive co-founded the Higher Life Foundation in 1996. Since then, the organization has supported the education of more than 250,000 children across the continent of Africa, in addition to health, disaster relief, preparedness, and rural transformation programs. Whether in philanthropy or business, Strive has pioneered a model of leadership we can all learn from. It is an honor to watch what he does, to learn from what he does, and for us to have him here with us today. He will talk about his life, his career, and we’ll learn the lessons that he’s learned along the way.
So Strive: Again, welcome to “Leadership Matters.” I thought it would be great to start with a little bit about how you would describe the young Strive. Family background, things like that. Where would you like to begin? Because obviously, you have a global footprint. You’re on boards around the world. You’re seen as the face for the continent on so many things. I imagine family had an impact on who you are, and I’d love for you to share whatever you can.
Strive Masiyiwa
Thank you so much, Alan, for your kind remarks.
Well, the young Strive was not really that remarkable in any way. I’m an African. I was born in the African country of Zimbabwe, which is in southern Africa. It was a time of extraordinary political turmoil, as you know. I was born in 1961, and the whole region was in turmoil. African nations were going through the independence process, whereas my own country was very reluctant and went into civil war. So my family moved to the neighboring country of Zambia, which had become independent. We settled there. My parents were professionals and entrepreneurs. So I had a pretty unremarkable life after that.
Alan Fleischmann
You did eventually go to boarding school, if I’m not mistaken. So you were a young boy in Zambia coming from Zimbabwe, and at 12 years old, you went to private school in Scotland?
Strive Masiyiwa
I ended up in Scotland, of all places. I went to boarding school there and learned to play rugby, cricket, and all the stuff that British kids do. Then I ended up going to college and studying engineering.
Alan Fleischmann
How was the private school experience in Scotland for you?
Strive Masiyiwa
Well, you know, this is in the ’70s, Alan. They still had the school cane, so you had to behave yourself. What we would call child abuse today. But otherwise, it was very good. It was a small school, so we got very good attention and good preparation, particularly for life.
Alan Fleischmann
Were there things that you’re now looking back on, that experience as a 12 year old on to pre-university, that sparked something in you? That became a lifelong part of who you are as a leader?
Strive Masiyiwa
Well, I played sports. I was very competitive, I played every sport you can imagine. But I was also blessed to be, academically, very strong. So, I sort of glided through.
Alan Fleischmann
And from there, you went to Wales? Is that where you went?
Strive Masiyiwa
Yes. I went to what was then known as the University of Wales, but today is known as the University of Cardiff. I went to the engineering school, so I studied electrical and electronic engineering. I came out at a time the computer industry was blooming, Bill Gates and all those guys were blazing a new industry. So it was a very exciting time.
Alan Fleischmann
Did you go home in the meantime, or go directly from Scotland to Wales?
Strive Masiyiwa
No, I had family in England. So I was being looked after in England. So I would go back to Zambia now and again. People find this strange, but I sometimes didn’t go home for a year, because it was really expensive. But I had family.
So when I finished, fortunately, my country had by then settled its wars. I hadn’t been there since I was about six or seven. I packed up and returned to the new Zimbabwe to start a job as an engineer.
Alan Fleischmann
This is after you graduated from Wales?
Strive Masiyiwa
That’s right, yeah.
Alan Fleischmann
Any highlights from your time in Wales? When I think of you, I think of you as somebody who likes to fix things. So I find it fascinating that you chose to be an engineer, because when I think of engineers, I think of engineers as people who like to fix things. So I think there’s a correlation there, at least.
Strive Masiyiwa
Sure. Of course, I love to fix things. All my pocket money, Alan, ended up buying electronic magazines, electronic gadgets, and making ham radios. All the stuff that kids who go into engineering generally do. Computers weren’t that complicated, so we could make early versions of them in our offices, in our little dorms. But otherwise, again, pretty straightforward.
Alan Fleischmann
And when you went home to Zimbabwe, was that a difficult decision to go home? Was it an exciting moment to go home?
Strive Masiyiwa
No, it was very exciting. Because you know, the country had come to peace. There was a new government, there was a lot of hope and expectation. So I was very excited to get back. I hadn’t been there since I was a child and I was now in my early 20s.
So I went back and, with my qualifications, I worked briefly in the electronics industry. And all my studies were around electronics, so I joined the only employer who could employ me with those skills, which was the telephone company, which was state owned.
Alan Fleischmann
And by the way, did your family move from Zambia to Zimbabwe around the same time?
Strive Masiyiwa
Yeah. They moved earlier, because by the time I got back, the country had been independent for about four years. So my family had kind of drifted back. We all wanted to have a great start.
Alan Fleischmann
So you came as an engineer. You joined the Zimbabwe state-owned telephone company. What first drew you to that? Was it the engineering side of you?
Strive Masiyiwa
It was straight engineering. I wanted to fix telephones, I wanted to build telecommunications networks.
I went straight into it and did very well, but it was state-owned. So things were incredibly slow, incredibly bureaucratic. I flipped between being totally bored and totally frustrated. The decision-making processes weren’t fun.
So I kind of decided, “Well, what do I do now?” Because I either went back to England or had a shot at something else. But I come from a very entrepreneurial family, my family have always been in business. It wasn’t difficult for me to decide, “You know what? I’m going to start my own business.” But I couldn’t start my own business in telecommunications, because this was all owned by the state, there was nothing for me to do there.
So I went and started a small engineering company, doing construction work and just fixing things for people. I started with very, very little money, probably the equivalent of about $75 today. But I had my hands, I had my skill, I could fix stuff for people. If you had a broken gate, I would go and fix it for you. As long as I could keep my little team going, I built up from there.
Alan Fleischmann
And at first, it was really about an electrical engineering business, or just engineering business. And then, eventually, it became the telecom business?
Strive Masiyiwa
Yeah. So what happened, Alan, is roundabout ’93, I had been in business about five years or so. Because I’m an engineer, I knew what was going on in telecoms. I’m a very avid reader, even to this day. So I knew that mobile communications was about to go through a massive revolution. Most people didn’t know, but I kind of knew that what was happening. We were following it avidly.
I noticed that mobile was not going to be in the hands of governments. And one of the things that I did notice was the AT&T battle with entrepreneurs who wanted to go into it. So I was inspired, actually, by what happened in America, I was following that very closely. I decided, “Well actually, this is the opening. I can start my own mobile communications company.”
Alan Fleischmann
I guess you kind of made the decision that, rather than focusing on the hard line, which is where everywhere in the world was focusing, you jumped right into the mobile world and realized opportunity to kind of skip over that.
Strive Masiyiwa
And there were no mobile companies in Africa. There was a guy trying something in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo.
I bought myself a ticket and went to see him, to look at what he was doing. I said, “Listen, give me a job. I’ll come here work for you, I can make this work better.” A decade later, he told me it was the dumbest decision he ever made, not hiring me. I took him out of business years later.
But there were no mobile communications companies. Not even in South Africa, which was generally considered a very advanced economy. There were none. So I was evangelizing this new technology and creating tremendous suspicion among securocrats in my own country, who thought I was some kind of foreign agent. “How can this kid want to run a telephone company?” It was just inconceivable to them.
But I knew it was possible. I was watching people like Craig McCaw and others beginning to do it in the US. I was showing them, but nobody paid any attention.
Alan Fleischmann
And probably, they didn’t even have the continent of Africa on their radar.
Strive Masiyiwa
No, no. But you know, I was talking to people like Motorola and Siemens, manufacturers. I knew what kind of equipment I needed, I had my business plans, and kind of tried to raise the money for it. But after the government of Zimbabwe said, “No, you cannot do this,” I took them to court. We ended up in a really huge legal battle that took five years. It became quite nasty, certainly towards me from the other side.
Alan Fleischmann
This was about them giving you a license to operate? They were not giving you one.
Strive Masiyiwa
Yes. Because in order for you to run a mobile communications company, you need access to spectrum frequencies, the right to use certain frequencies. It’s like transmitting over radio, it’s a radio network. So, they wouldn’t let me transmit. Maybe it’s because I was just so young.
I did the only thing I could do, I went to court. They just couldn’t believe it. Mugabe went absolutely berserk. The cops came, picked me up, and questioned me. I went through a rough time, but we don’t want to go over that, it’s been litigated so many times.
But the bottom line is: My lawyers, some of whom were American lawyers — I was helped by a very feisty American lawyer based in New York, who was advising me on telecoms law — found a mechanism. We had a very good judicial system. And it was over freedom of expression. We actually said, a telecoms monopoly is a violation of freedom of expression, because people express themselves electronically. We had a chief justice, a white Zimbabwean guy called Anthony Gubbay, who was a real intellectual. It just got to him. He called a constitutional case out of our case, and it became a famous court case. All nine justices ruled that a telecoms monopoly is an offence to freedom of expression. And it came out of Zimbabwe, of all places.
So that meant that the monopoly had to be pulled down and licenses issued to independent players. Because most African countries structure their laws from places like Britain — Zimbabwe, South Africa, all these countries used much the same core legal framework — it went right through the Commonwealth. This decision was being reported in international media. It just opened up telecoms across Africa. In some places I went, they literally chased me away. They said, “What have you done?”
Alan Fleischmann
You won something in Zimbabwe, I guess, that was understood and known all over the continent.
Strive Masiyiwa
That’s right, yeah. In fact, throughout the Commonwealth. I had people call me in New Zealand, because they were using the same legal framework, and saying, “This decision, what does it mean?” Entrepreneurs were calling me from around the world.
But to their credit, the Zimbabwean government respected the decision and issued me a license. So I built a network there. But I also realized that I had to move on now, to try and open up in other countries. So I left some Zimbabwe 23 years ago and moved to South Africa. From there, I really began to build, to really take my ideas and set up networks in other places, like Nigeria. I set up Nigeria’s first network, and that was a huge market as you can imagine. I went to New Zealand, I set up a network there. People just called me up and said, “Would you like to participate in a consortium or in a joint venture?” I ended up in places in Latin America. That was a lot of fun.
Alan Fleischmann
Two things that strike me from this are the fact that, after you won your legal battle, one easily could have thought that you would have just focused on Zimbabwe. But you instinctively knew that there was an opportunity to go global. Not just go pan-African, but to go global. There was a moment to seize that you understood. That’s one thing I’d love you to talk about.
The other thing is, I know you as a very humble person, but I’d like the lesson here for our listeners to be your perseverance. I imagine, when you were told “there’s no license for you,” that the average bear would have said, “All right, we will we move on to something else.” But instead, you fought for it, and you fought for it over several years. That perseverance side of you, that stubbornness side of you, that entrepreneurial side of you is very telling as well.
So there are two things. One is that you had a big vision, and the other thing is you didn’t give up.
Strive Masiyiwa
As entrepreneurs, it’s not so much about how smart you are, but quite often, it boils down to your ability to pick yourself up when you’ve been knocked over. Whether you’re being knocked over by a government, as I was. There are many other battles that will come.
Whether you’re trying to raise money… You could go to 40 investors, and you’ve still gotta wake up every morning and believe that 41 is the one that was really the guy you were after getting money from.
Alan Fleischmann
That all of the noes that you got before that were just preparation for that one.
Strive Masiyiwa
Yes. Kind of footsteps to climb your mountain.
Alan Fleischmann
You’re so right about an entrepreneur can’t hear no. They just don’t hear no. If you’re so committed, you’re so committed. You’re an extraordinary example of that.
I imagine you became a great mentor during that first experience. Because you hadn’t, until that moment, really spent a lot of time outside of Zambia and Zimbabwe. You were mostly in Europe, in the UK. So this first experience — in addition to going to New Zealand and Latin America — of going through the continent, of going to Nigeria must have been very telling,
Strive Masiyiwa
You know Alan, you said something which is very, very insightful. Africa is a huge continent. You could put America and the subcontinent of India and still have space for China. It’s a big place.
Quite a lot of our people, because of the way historically the continent has developed, don’t travel much across Africa. If you’re from Zimbabwe or from South Africa, you head to London. If you’re from Cote d’Ivoire, you head to Paris. If you’re DRC, your links are to Belgium.
But during this period, I really became an African traveler. I am one of the few people that can say I’ve been to most African countries. Sometimes, out of just pure curiosity. I’d arrive and they’d say, “Why are you here?” And I said, “Well, I want to look around.” And they’d say, “No, no, what have you done? What are you running away from?” “I want to see this country!”
So I always say to young people, get to know your country. Whether you’re American or whether you’re African, the key thing for young people today is that the world is not the internet. You’ve got to physically get out there. Eat food from different places. Get a perspective of the world. Understand that people are different. None is superior, it’s just a question of difference. This was something I learned in those early years.
Alan Fleischmann
And to appreciate and respect the enormous cultural diversity in such a huge continent like Africa as well. That the traditions, the cultures, the backgrounds are as diverse in Africa as anyone could imagine, but most people around the world wouldn’t necessarily understand or know that. And maybe, people on the continent don’t fully appreciate it.
But you are a pioneer in that regard. Because you’re right. The idea of traveling across the continent is so hard, because it’s just as easy to fly from any one country, as you said, to Europe or London as it is sometimes to travel from Ghana to Nigeria, or somewhere close by. They make it hard. It’s easier today, but it wasn’t easy then.
Strive Masiyiwa
That’s just right. I remember when I was building the business in Nigeria out of South Africa. Believe me, I would fly to Frankfurt in the evening and catch a flight from Frankfurt the following day. It goes six hours back into Africa to get to Nigeria.
Of course, the change has been dramatic in the last 25 years. Africa really has changed in that time. But it used to be pretty tough.
Alan Fleischmann
One of the things I think about when I think about you, Strive, and I’ve had conversations with you about this… It’s not something that’s come to you as of late, it’s been with you along your whole journey. It’s the role of mentorship. You saw yourself early on as a mentor, as well as a leader and business leader, when you started Econet. Then you were out there doing what you needed to do to when you built your company, the Econet Group.
Tell us a little bit about that. How much of a role of being a mentor did you personally take on as well?
Strive Masiyiwa
Well, there’s kind of different phases in my life. When you’re an entrepreneur in Africa — and maybe it’s a principle that’s more global, not specific to Africa — it’s a continent that’s changing. It’s a continent of extremes. You have a lot of opportunity, a lot of people doing really well. But you also have the extremes of poverty and strife in parts of the continent which will erupt.
I’ve always felt that you’ve got to be part of providing solutions. It’s not enough to lock yourself in your office in your business and to say, “I’m going to do well,” and that’s it. You’ve got to be part of finding solutions around you.
So early on when I started my business, roundabout 1991, we had the HIV pandemic. And look, Alan, you can’t imagine what it was like. You could get a report… By then I probably had about 500-600 people working for me. Young men were dying every week. It was sometimes like every one of my people would die. So I decided with my wife — my young wife at the time, we just got married. We decided we were going to set up a fund to support the children of any one of our employees that dies. And usually because of HIV, it took the husband and the wife. So these kids became orphans, then we ran a program to send them to school.
Before long, we had a hundred kids. Then we had two hundred kids. And then, people started bringing kids that weren’t children of our employees. But thank God, we were also doing pretty well, so we started taking in any kids that came along and keeping them in school, because the key was just to keep them in school. Do whatever. Find them a relative who can give them a shelter. But if you keep them in school, you keep the hope alive.
We just built that program over the years, and one year a couple of years ago, my wife said, “We’re gonna celebrate 25 years of our work. You know how many kids we did?” I said no. She said 250,000 got support along the way from the program, as we developed and became more successful with our businesses.
Alan Fleischmann
When did you know that you were succeeding on the business side?
Strive Masiyiwa
It was actually quite funny. I recall at work — it was probably around 2000, I can’t remember what year — I went to see a bank to ask for some money. This was actually in London. And the guy looked at me and he said, “Strive, has anybody told you how much you’re worth?” I said, “No, but does that mean you’re gonna give me more money? Because I need money for my business.” They said,” Actually, we were doing some numbers. We think you’re worth $100 million.” I said, “Okay. Now will you give me the money?”
So when I got back, I realized that I was being treated a lot better by banks than I had been treated before. So I guess that was kind of a funny moment.
Alan Fleischmann
I hadn’t thought about… That must’ve been a funny moment when you realize that they were treating you as one of the most successful. Your phone calls were being heard or answered, I guess.
When you were talking a minute ago about you and your wife, how you set things up, how you took on what you did around HIV — we’ll get to in a second, but I can’t help but think that there were things in there that spoke to you when you took on what you did with COVID as well. Because for all of us who know who was the most prominent face and leadership throughout the pandemic, besides the actual individual country leaders, one would argue it was you. I have to think that part of your philanthropy, yours and your wife’s, goes back to stepping up when there’s a void. It goes back to the engineer in you that fixes things. You don’t seem to be the silent bystander who looks and says, “I’m waiting to be asked.” you get up and say, “I’m ready to help.”
Strive Masiyiwa
Well the thing was, as people wrote about what we did on HIV, we got known for it. One of the early opportunities I had was to join the board of the Rockefeller Foundation in 2003. When I was invited to do that, I realized there was a difference between charity and philanthropy.
My training really began with people like Dr. Judith Rodin and so forth. They started to say, “Strive, this is how you really do philanthropy.” I was on that board for 15 years, as you know. I then got to meet people like Raj Shah, and the Gates, Bill and Melinda, and so forth. And we started doing stuff together.
Alan Fleischmann
How do you define the difference between charity and philanthropy?
Strive Masiyiwa
Well, charity is just giving money away. In philanthropy, you’re really thinking about having impact, how to do it in a sustainable way.
Alan Fleischmann
The transformation versus the transaction.
Strive Masiyiwa
Correct, yeah.
So it was a great opportunity for me. But then came the Ebola pandemic when President Obama was in office. I was asked by the African Union… It was the first time they had ever approached a business leader. They always asked former presidents and others, but this time somebody said, “Get this young guy to run around and raise some money.” They didn’t know how far I would go.
Alan Fleischmann
You seem to have a good track record, they must’ve thought.
Strive Masiyiwa
I went straight to see President Obama. I spoke to people like Gail Smith and others, and they got me in front of the President. I gave him my thoughts about what we could do about Ebola and he says, “I like what you’re doing, let’s work on it together.” To be honest, the US was amazing. It’s one of the most unsaid things, how effective the US was in helping us stamp out Ebola from spreading.
Then of course, one good turn deserves another, I suppose. Then came COVID, and this time the president of South Africa, who was the chair of the African Union, called me and said, “Strive, it’s grim. It looks like we could lose 20 million people.” Remember, back in January 2020, thereabouts, we had no idea where it was going to go. So he said, “I want you to be the COVID czar for the whole continent. You coordinate the policy response.” We had no vaccines, of course. We were just chasing after masks and hospital equipment. We didn’t have the hospitals.
For us in Africa, in the end it was really God’s grace, to be honest. Because we had nothing. We thought we were really gonna be hit hard. The tools we had were things like lock downs and what have you. But when we look back on it now, we had the lowest per-capita death rate at the end of the pandemic.
Alan Fleischmann
Why is that?
Strive Masiyiwa
A couple of things. Obviously, we were taking steps. To shut down cities like Lagos, with 15 million people… To get people who live on $2 a day to stay home was extraordinary. But it happened, in Lagos, Cairo, Kinshasa.
And the leaders were meeting. Although I was the car, I was reporting to heads of state who met every two weeks. They were, and the people were, disciplined. They wore their masks. They made masks. We couldn’t buy masks, so we showed people how to make masks. Cover their face. Keep the distance.
The other thing for us is that the mean age in Africa is 19.7.
Alan Fleischmann
It’s amazing how young the population is.
Strive Masiyiwa
So much of the population is under the age of 20. It turned out that this this disease targeted the elderly. We were concerned then that, well, we live in multigenerational households. Our concern was that, yes, the young would stay alive, but they would take the pandemic home.
So we would run radio programs. We got companies to pay for radio. So everybody pitched in, across the continent, to try and stop the spread until we could get the vaccines.
Alan Fleischmann
And then once the vaccines happened — first of all, getting the vaccines was never easy, anywhere in the world. But then you managed to get vaccines, which I’m sure was a huge part of your leadership, to get vaccines made available. How did you get them distributed?
Strive Masiyiwa
Yeah. We had a problem because the countries that actually produced vaccines, that had production facilities, imposed export bans right across the world. So I found myself not just being a technocrat, trying to coordinate and working with Africa Center for Disease Control and so forth, but also advocating and fighting for the fact that we needed fair access to the vaccines. Then we had to raise a lot of money to buy vaccines. Whilst, at the same time, mobilizing our global donor support.
And again, not that I’m on American radio, but the biggest source for us, the breakthrough for me, was just after President Biden took office and I got a call from my American counterpart, a guy called Jeff Zients.
Alan Fleischmann
Now the White House Chief of Staff.
Strive Masiyiwa
Yeah. That was a breakthrough. Colleagues and friends of ours, like Gail Smith, the real friends of Africa, were banging doors. Jeff called me and said, “Okay Strive. We want to know what you guys need.” We said, “Look, we can finance 50% of our needs. Can you do the other 50%, or at least mobilize the Western donor community to meet us halfway, to try and vaccinate 70% of our population? And also, can you please bring out your big stick and take it to the Pfizers and the other guys to open it up for us? And, by the way, lift the export ban?” Within a couple of weeks, it was all done.
That’s not to say the other donors didn’t come to the table. They did. France, President Macron in particular, was joining our African leadership meetings. But having the US there was a tremendous help. And we worked very well through the latter phases of the battle.
Alan Fleischmann
It’s amazing to hear that. Also interesting that Jeff had a private sector background as well. So the fact that he was brought in… He had obviously experiences in the Obama administration, but he was originally brought into the Obama administration, in many ways, like you were the first brought in with your business background as well. Applying that acumen, that kind of urgent prioritizing that one can do if they’ve been an entrepreneur, you can look at things through those lenses. I’m sure it helped as you needed to bust through bureaucracy and create a sense of urgency that was unprecedented.
Strive Masiyiwa
Yeah, he was great. I think for all of you as Americans, you should be proud of yourselves. Whichever side of your political divide, your country showed incredible heart and generosity.
I’ve said it at many platforms. I spoke at the US-Africa Leadership Summit and I thanked the American people. I said “thank you so much” in front of our own leaders, because that was a real time of our need.
Alan Fleischmann
I remember being with you that week during UNGA, the UN General Assembly week, where you assembled quite a few African leaders as well this last September. It wasn’t a victory lap that you created, but it was a platform that you were still building on. Lessons learned, experiences of having brought leaders together in an unprecedented way and communicating, collaborating in ways that they hadn’t before. I saw in you, also, the great desire to not drop the ball here. There’s still more work to be done. I’d love for you to tell us a little bit about that.
Strive Masiyiwa
Well, when it comes to leadership, it’s our watch. It’s your watch, Alan. It’s my watch.
My daughter walked up to me one day and says, “It’s you guys, you’re the ones running the world.” I said, “No, no, no, not me.” She said, “Well, please just solve our problems.” I said, “Well, what do you want us to solve?” She said, “Well, climate. But before that, get some food out from Ukraine.”
So right now, I am playing a similar role, this time on food security. So you just have to make time. I still run my business every day. I just came out of a management meeting. As President Obama put it, you’ve got to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. That’s life.
Alan Fleischmann
You’re the founder, obviously, and executive chairman of Econet Group. You also have Econet Wireless and Cassava Technologies as part of the group, right?
Strive Masiyiwa
Yep.
Alan Fleischmann
Tell us a little bit about the businesses as well. I’m pinching myself realizing this, but between the HIV crisis that you’ve been involved in and the more recent crises that were pan-African, the very fact that you communicate the way you did, across the world on behalf of the continent, had so much to do with the wireless world that you helped create, the mobile world that you were leading in. I hope you took a moment there to realize how that effectiveness, that efficiency that was curated and created during a time of crisis was built on a bedrock that you helped lead.
Strive Masiyiwa
I tell the story that, in our court papers, my lawyers said to me, “To convince the judges, we have to really tell the story.” So I said, “Yeah, sure.” 75% of the people of Africa had never heard a telephone ringing in 1995. Today, 75% of the African people own a telephone, they carry a mobile. That was a revolution, and I was a part of it. I wasn’t the only one; many companies, some even bigger than my own, came out of that crisis. It’s, it’s great to see that happen when you’re at the forefront of a new industry.
By the time we got to 2000, my whole attention had begun to shift from mobile. Because I said, “Look, now we got to move. The internet has arrived and we’ve got to prepare Africa for that.” So I began to build a separate set of businesses building digital infrastructure. We built 100,000 miles of fiber, right across the continent. Three weeks ago, we completed a fiber build through the Congo rainforest, which is the second largest rainforest after the Amazon. It took us three years to dig trenches through there and connect communities of more than 30 million people, working in partnership with Google and Facebook as our partners. We’re connecting these new LEO satellites from people like Tesla, we’re building the ground stations for them across Africa. We’re the biggest builder of data centers, which is the next big thing. Someone told me the other day that Microsoft’s our biggest single customer now, building data centers and selling cloud computing products. So the game has changed, and we’ve got to go out and build new businesses.
Along the way, you know, Africa always throws you curveballs. And the curveballs are, we build telecommunications networks without power. There’s no power in a lot of countries, so you’re also the power company. We started building diesel plants across the continent. Roundabout 2006 I said, “Whoa, whoa, whoa. We can’t run these things of diesel.” People said, “So what do we do?” I said, “Haven’t you heard about climate change?” We built a new business on renewable energy, so now we build solar solutions across Africa and we do it for others as well now.
So with each challenge, you have to bear in mind that you’ve got to do it in a sustainable way as well. This is how we kind of have fun, in the end.
Alan Fleischmann
The challenges don’t slow down, but the innovation exceeds those challenges.
You’re listening to “Leadership Matters” on SiriusXM and at leadershipmattersshow.com. I’m your host, Alan Fleischmann. I’m here with an extraordinary leader, Strive Masiyiwa, someone I’ve known as a global business leader, a leader across the African continent, and one of the most thoughtful and impactful philanthropists I’ve ever known.
You’re on the board now of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. As you’ve said, you’re among the longest serving, if not the longest serving, board member of the Rockefeller Foundation. You’ve been involved in places globally that bring uncommon bedfellows together, I would say, and you have been both a leader that moves them forward, but knowing you as I do, you’ve been a great listener and taken back insights and things that work to other areas of your of your leadership across Africa and beyond.
I’m curious about that mixture. You use a word earlier, Strive, describing entrepreneurs but also describing the way you approach life: curiosity. You are insatiably interested in people, you are always eager to get to know people. I’ve seen that over and over again. There is a curiosity in you to see what is being tested. Then when it looks promising, how do you actually adapt it elsewhere? That’s a big part of you, as a business leader and a big part of you as a philanthropist, I would argue.
Strive Masiyiwa
Thank you for those kind remarks. You obviously go out to find people who also think the same way. You try and work with them, try and build collaboratives. I think philanthropists, these days, are becoming much more collaborative than they used to be. People used to kind of pursue their own thing. And here I think we have to really thank Bill, Warren, and Melinda for when they created the Giving Pledge, because it’s actually created a greater sense of people recognizing what they could do together.
When I was on the Rockefeller Foundation, we reached out to the Gates folks when Raj Shah was there, and we said, “Africa never had a Green Revolution. Every region of the world, including America, began its industrial journey after sorting out its agriculture, and Africa can’t. Why don’t we collaborate?” So we created a massive collaboration to start looking at Africa and how it produces food. That was that was new territory then. But today, that very collaborative, which we call AGRA — the Alliance for Green Revolution in Africa, originally chaired by Kofi Annan — was the first to really begin to sound the alarm that climate change was going to be a massive disaster in places like Africa.
We weren’t just advocating. We started to finance new seed varieties, to get scientists to look at how we create drought-resistant crops. How do we bring in different types of seeds, orphan seeds, and so forth?
It’s been absolutely transformative. We probably feed 20 to 30 million families now through that program, and we’re beginning to lay the foundation for what people need to do to tackle some of the consequences of climate change.
Alan Fleischmann
It’s an amazing initiative that’s enduring with enormous impact. We mentioned Raj a few times, he’s been on this show as well before. He is someone I consider to be a great, great innovator. He considers you to be a great partner and mentor, going back to the earliest days when you worked together. What he’s doing at the Rockefeller Foundation, what he did at USAID, and then previously, at the Gates Foundation. You’ve interacted with him in partnership throughout all those areas of his journey. There are many other folks like Raj in parts of the world who see you as that partner.
I’m curious about two things as we’re getting into the end of our hour. What would you want people to know about you that they don’t know, Strive, that would be important? And what do you want to ask people who are listening to this show? Your own version of a call to arms. Whether it’s on the private sector side, what you’re asking your people to consider, or on the philanthropic side. I’d love people to hear that from you as well.
Strive Masiyiwa
Sure. You asked earlier on about mentorship, and let me just come back to that. A couple of years ago, one of my daughters came to me. She was doing something in entrepreneurship at university, and she started sending me notes. She asked me to send her notes on stuff. So I started sending her notes, and then one day, she came and she said, “You know, I’ve been sharing your notes with my whole class.” I said, “Really?” She said, “Yeah, and they think you should be on Facebook. Maybe you should.”
So she set it up. I didn’t have Facebook page — sounds weird for the technology guy, right? So anyway, we set it up, then I posted the stuff that I had. Before long, millions and millions of kids, young entrepreneurs, just jumped onto the platform from all over the world. So I started to mentor them, I’ve got about 6 million of them.
So the future is young people. It kind of sounds like an oxymoron, but some of us older guys tend to forget that. It’s their world, we’re just stewards. And then if we do it right, they will be stewards of the next generation. Mentoring young people is easier now than it’s ever been. Every adult should be thinking, “I can do more than just my own children.” So, that’s my first lesson.
My second thing, my final point would be… Going back to Africa. Africa is a $3 trillion economy. Just slightly smaller than India, which is about three and a half. Our population is about the same. We have grown 7x — we were 350 billion only 25 years ago, when China also started to take off.
So just think about that. Despite many challenges, the African region is one of the fastest-growing regions in the world. Africa is a good investment. It’s good to think of Africa. We tend to think of the challenges, but every region of the world has challenges. You want wars? There’s a war in the middle of Europe right now. There are wars everywhere. And we have our fair share, but Africa is not at war. There are parts of a very big continent that have challenges, but there are opportunities there.
So I really say to people, it’s time to rethink Africa. In the next 25 years, it’ll be a $10 trillion economy. In the next five years, there’ll be no major European nation whose economy is bigger than that of Africa. So just think about that. Young people are in Africa. The resources are in Africa. And as long people are willing to collaborate and work with us, we are very, very welcoming to people coming to invest, to keep people coming to work with us. We think we can teach you a few things too. But we are ready to learn even more from you.
Alan Fleischmann
That’s beautiful, and so important.
You’ve been listening to “Leadership Matters” on SiriusXM and at leadershipmattersshow.com. I’m your host, Alan Fleischmann. We’ve spent an extraordinary hour with Strive Masiyiwa, who is a global philanthropist, business leader, entrepreneur, and thought leader who serves for the betterment of the continent of Africa and for the betterment of our globe.
You are a great friend, you’re truly an inspiration. I would only ask one thing — that you promise to come back, because we only had one hour but we needed to.
Strive Masiyiwa
Thank you so much, Alan. God bless you my friend.