Strive Masiyiwa (left) with African students at Yale University, 2016. The telecoms tycoon promotes entrepreneurship among African youth/ Photo: Strive Masiyiwa/Facebook

Zimbabwean named UK’s first Black billionaire

THE London-based Zimbabwe-born businessman Strive Masiyiwa has been named the United Kingdom’s first Black billionaire. He has been reported to be worth £1.087 billion.

Masiyiwa is the first billionaire of African origin to be included on the Sunday Times Rich List – a ranking of the wealthiest people or families resident in the United Kingdom. The list is updated annuallyand published as a magazine supplement by British national newspaper The Sunday Times since 1989.

Masiyiwa is the Executive Chairman & Founder of the Econet Group, a diversified telecommunications conglomerate with operations and investments in Africa, Europe, South America and the East Asia Pacific Rim, offering products and services in the core areas of mobile and fixed telephony services, broadband, satellite, optical fiber networks and mobile payment.

The group’s subsidiaries include Econet Mobile Networks Group, Liquid Telecom, Cassava SmarTech, Distributed Power Africa, Vaya Africa and Technites Africa.

Masiyiwa, who is 60, sits on several international boards, including those of Unilever, Netflix, the National Geographic Society, Asia Society and the global advisory boards of Bank of America, the Council on Foreign Relations (in the United States), Stanford University and the Prince of Wales Trust for Africa.

A philanthropist, Masiyiwa is currently African Union’s special envoy for Covid-19 containment.

Read the Daily Mail‘s special report on the Black billionaire HERE

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