Net worth: £2bn ▲ £913m on 2021
Source of wealth: Telecoms
Rank on the Rich List: 89= ▲ 70 on 2021
Strive Masiyiwa was born in the townships near what was then Salisbury, Rhodesia — now Harare, Zimbabwe. The family house did not have a phone. Few Zimbabweans did back in the Sixties — most had never even heard one ring. Fast forward only a couple of generations and today almost all Africans have mobile phones, many with a web connection. The reason? “We’ve spent $3.5 billion plumbing the continent with fibre-optic cable from the Cape to Cairo, using picks and shovels,” Masiyiwa says.
