Strive Masiyiwa: Connecting a continent

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0:30Don't say. SAP Concur helps your business move forward faster. Learn more at concur.com. I'm Scott Hansen, host of NFL Red Zone. Lowe's knows Sundays are for football. That's why we're here to help you get your next DIY project done even when the clock isn't on your side. Whether that's a new Filtrete filter or Bosch and Cobalt power tools, Lowe's has everything you need to feel like the MVP of DIY. So get it done and earn your Sunday. Shop now in store and online. Lowe's, official partner of the NFL. We're in the Zimbabwean capital, Harare. The year is 1990. A man is on his knees and he's doing something he hasn't done since he was a boy.

1:16He's praying. He's a successful businessman and he's rich by the standards of his country and the time. he's very rich and that wealth has made him a target. Just hours earlier he was visiting an embassy in the city centre talking up the international prospects of his company. Now he has no idea where he is. He had decided to return to his office on foot rather than be driven as usual and as he'd walked down the wide streets a vehicle had followed slowly behind him. He'd paid no attention. He was immersed in his next big idea. Only when two men rushed out, pointed guns at him and dragged him into the van did he realise he was being kidnapped.

1:56Now he's desperate, tears filling his eyes. He's doing the only thing he can think of, praying to God to be set free.

2:09Welcome to Good Bad Billionaire from the BBC World Service. Each episode we pick a billionaire and we find out how they made their money. Then we judge them. Are they good, bad or just another billionaire. My name is Zing Singh and I'm a journalist, author and podcaster. And my name is Simon Jack and I'm the BBC's business editor. And on this episode, we have a kidnap victim billionaire. His name is Strive Masiwa. Zimbabwe's first billionaire made a fortune providing cell phone, internet services to countries across Africa and beyond. And his companies have laid over 100 ,000 kilometres of cables.

2:44He provides internet for over 10 ,000 businesses and over$38 billion worth of transactions have been made with his mobile money wallets. He's been called a rebel, a maverick, and amusingly, so cantankerous that if he were trapped in a bottle, he would pick a fight with himself before working out how to escape the bottle. He had some major battles in his career, not least with former Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, as we'll find out. And I love these episodes where the context is all important. Their story mirrors, reflects, informs the period of the time. You know, we've seen some of those.

3:21There's a sweep of history is behind it. And a lot of people may not know his name, but they'll remember this period in history. They certainly will. Let's go back to the very start and we'll take Strive Masiwa from zero to his first million.

3:39Strive was born in 1961 on the outskirts of Harare, the capital of modern day Zimbabwe. But back then, it was called Salisbury and Zimbabwe was called Southern Rhodesia. And to understand Strive's story, we need to understand a little bit about this incredible period of chaos and turmoil that gripped his homeland as he was growing up. Yes, this was the period of decolonisation across the African continent. The European powers who had carved Africa into colonies, the famous scramble for Africa back in the 19th century, they stole resources, ruled from afar. They were finally withdrawing, all being kicked out.

4:14Each African nation had its own particular path to statehood in Zimbabwe, so it was one of the most complicated. When Strive was born, he was born into what was called a self-governing British colony. So basically, it had a whites-only minority government with British backing. But when the British began instigating majority rule in their colonies and granting them independence, that white minority refused and clung on to power. And in 1965, they unilaterally declared independence as Rhodesia, severing ties with the UK as civil war broke out across the whole country. This is an incredibly tumultuous time.

4:50Opposition leaders were being imprisoned. Militants were setting up bases in neighbouring countries. launching attacks back into Zimbabwe. And Strive's parents had close ties to that revolutionary movement. So when he was just three years old, they fled north to Zambia. Initially, Strive didn't go with them. He instead remained to be looked after by his grandmother. Four years later, though, he did join his parents in Zambia. But the increasingly brutal civil war at home would continue for the rest of his childhood. And actually, Zimbabwe only really became an internationally recognised state in 1980, the same year that Robert Mugabe, one of the revolution's leaders, was elected as prime minister.

5:28Now, Mugabe would go on to become president and would rule right up until 2017. So he is a huge figure, a towering figure in Zimbabwean history. And he also plays a pretty big part in Strive Masiwa's story too, as we'll see. But during his childhood, Strive Masiwa was learning to work, cutting his teeth on business. He says his mother, Edith, who was an entrepreneur herself, named him Strive because she wanted him to try hard at everything. And she set him up in what he calls his first business when he was just a little kid. When he asked her for pocket money, she gave him some chewing gum to sell instead, saying, you sell that, bring me the money and I'll give you another one to sell or have yourself.

6:09I mean, it's very reminiscent of some of our other billionaires. Didn't Warren Buffett also flog stuff when he was a kid? Exactly. So meanwhile, while Strive was busy selling chewing gum, his dad worked in the Zambian mining industry and the family actually became rich enough to pack him off to boarding school in Scotland when he was 12. Now, this might sound a bit random, but it makes sense. Masiwa's Scottish neighbours in Zambia had actually recommended the school as it was where they'd sent their own son. And it also had lots of children with parents working for the UK Foreign Office abroad or in the army, as well as many children from Hong Kong and Africa.

6:42but you can kind of imagine this would have come as a culture shock for Strive. Yeah, and sure enough, Masiwa hated it. It was bitterly cold. He was made to wear a kilt on Sundays and he recalls looking at the other boys' bare legs and thinking, this is it, I'm dead. Maybe not the first and only time someone's thought that while wearing a kilt in cold Scottish weather. Yes. So when Strive finished his O-level exams, which would have been about when he was 16, he eagerly returned to Zambia hoping to fight in the war for Zimbabwe's independence. But by then the war was nearly over and a cousin of his who ran training camps for soldiers told him that what his country really needed was young people to study abroad to learn the skills needed to rebuild their country.

7:25So he headed back to the UK and gained a degree in electoral engineering in Cardiff in Wales. He then worked briefly in computing in Cambridge but returned to the now independent Zimbabwe to work for the state-run phone company ZPTC and that was in 1984. Masiwa's job there involved designing telecoms networks, which was important nation building work. You can't really build a nation unless you can get them to speak to each other. And he earned a decent wage for that living. He even bought a brand new car, a Volkswagen Golf, which he delighted in driving around Harare. But Strive found himself stifled by the growing bureaucracy in Zimbabwe.

8:03So after just two years at ZPTC, he decided to follow his mother's example and set out as an entrepreneur. That's right. In 1986, he founded his very first company, Retrofit, which did electrical contracting for the construction industry. And he scraped together a meagre$75 in capital and went off to get a bank loan. Now, the bank agreed only on the condition that he swapped his flashy new Volkswagen Golf for a much more modest pickup truck. And that was probably quite a big deal for him because that meant quite a lot to him, that status symbol driving around. So he was clearly very determined if he was prepared to sort of take those terms.

8:40Maybe it was a test that the bank was putting him through. And this was an interesting time to start a business in Zimbabwe. Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF party exerted a stranglehold on the country and its economy. They actively discouraged foreign investment. And there was a corrupt underbelly to a newly bloated bureaucracy that Strive had encountered at the National Telecoms company he'd worked for. Meanwhile, many educated white Zimbabweans had fled. They took their skills out of the country. So the economy was in this odd position, you know, newly independent, but pretty economically stagnant. But the flip side of this was through the 1980s, the government spending in Zimbabwe tripled.

9:20And, you know, they did make progress in areas like health and literacy, even if, you know, the economic results of all of this were relatively limited. And this is when we begin to see, if you like, the beginning of Strive's entrepreneurial instincts. You've got this stifling bureaucracy. He sees this big increase in government spending and he figures out the way forward is to work not against or around, but with the government. So with all this spending on infrastructure, on construction, Masayiwa knows there is going to be a need for electoral contractors. That's the reason he founded Retrofit.

9:53His instincts were right. Retrofit quickly secured these big government construction contracts. And he also learned the art of raising money from banks. He even secured investment from an arm of the World Bank. Yeah. So all of this meant that by 1990, Strive was running a burgeoning multi-million dollar business with almost 500 employees. And in just four years, when he was 29 years old, he was named Zimbabwe's businessman of the year. Not bad for a 29-year-old. So we can't be too precise about his actual wealth at this point. But as the owner of a multi-million dollar business, I think we can safely say that by the early 90s, Strive Masa 'iwa was a millionaire.

10:33And this is important to note, so far he has stayed on the right side of Robert Mugabe, but this will not last long as he goes from a million to a billion.

10:53So he's a millionaire in 1990, but that's also the point when he becomes the target of the kidnappers we've talked about. They pick him up after he leaves the Mozambique embassy and take him to a secret detention centre where he, as we've discussed, resorts to prayer. And in one sense, his prayers are answered. So it turns out that his kidnappers are a renegade group from Zimbabwe's own intelligence agency. And remember, we talked about that cousin of his, the one who trained rebel soldiers, but told him that he needed to go overseas, train himself up and come back to build the country. That cousin is actually a hero of the liberation war.

11:28and he now works for the president. So he has contacts. And so after a quick intervention from him, Strive Masiwa is free. But for Strive, prayer also played its part. The whole experience starts his journey to becoming a devoted Christian. And to this day, he often posts online about his beliefs. He credits religion as a moral guide in his future business career. We'll see that it drives some of his philanthropic exercises. You know what? If prayer helped me escape a bunch of rebels from an intelligence agency, I too would convert. It's like that kind of thing when someone is in a shipwreck and they say, dear God, if you get me out of this, I'll promise to go to church every day of my life.

12:07You get about one mile closer to shore, maybe I'll go three days a week. And then as you lap up on the shore and crawl out of the sea, say, I did it all on my own anyway. Well, I mean, Strive Masiwa clearly didn't think so if he's still posting about God to this day online. But by 1993, Strive Masiwa is ready to make the next big move in his career. He's going to get into telecoms and he plans to launch a company that he'll call Econet. Yeah, he, along with others, has spotted the rise of mobile phones across the whole planet. Remember back then, cell phones, these big, bulky, luxury products, only the very rich own.

12:45But he's been following the growth of the mobile technology industry really closely. And he predicts correctly that mobile communications is about to go through a massive revolution. Masiwa also watched as entrepreneurs in the US brought up cellular licenses and then partnered with these big telecoms companies like AT &T to roll out the infrastructure needed to support them. And he wants to do the exact same thing in Zimbabwe. Yeah, but Africa at this point is not in the same position as the US. 70 % of people at this time, and this is an astonishing stat, had never even heard any kind of phone ring.

13:24Masiwa knows this is largely due to the problems of laying telephone lines across the continent. He believes cell phones will enable Africa to jump a step and roll out telecoms across the whole continent. And remember, this is his specialist subject. He knows what he's talking about. He's designed telecoms networks. That was literally what he used to do at the national phone company, ZPTC. So this is 1993. Right. I remember in 1992 in the UK being at university and there was a girl there whose father was very rich. And she had the first mobile phone that most of us, well, not that most of us have ever seen.

14:03We'd seen the yuppies on the phone with their big bricks, their big Motorola phones. But she had one in her college room and we used to go around and stare at it. Wow. It's giving kind of 2001 a space odyssey. I know. And this is not that long ago. It's a real testament to how quickly these industries have developed and how they've changed the world and the vast amount of wealth that's been created on the back of them. I remember being a kid. This would have been also, I think, probably in the 90s and seeing for the first time someone on a mobile phone. And it was about the size of a shoe that he was pressing to his head.

14:37And I remember thinking, that's weird. Why does he have a black shoe on the side of his head? It was a phone. It was a mobile phone. I'll never forget it. So he predicts this, you know, correctly predicts this is going to be big news. And so he gets in touch with his old employer. Yeah, he proposes a joint venture into cell phone networks, and he's sure that they will recognise the value of this plan to Zimbabwe. Unfortunately, however, his old bosses tell him to get lost. They had the monopoly over telecoms and they did not want a partner. And this will probably come back to haunt them. They thought that mobile phones were a fad that would never take off.

15:10Pretty frustrating. Masi Iwa says apparently at the time, how can anyone have a monopoly over something they don't want to do? So he makes a big decision. He does something that he will do time and time again. He decides to take the government to court. Of course, this also means going up against Robert Mugabe. And to many people, Mugabe was still a hero. And to some extent, you know, he was still turning the country's fortunes around in the 1990s. But Mugabe was also increasingly eroding some Zimbabweans' rights. He had his own cabal of favourite plutocrats, rich folks around him. And Masayiwa was not one of those.

15:47So from the very moment that lawsuit kicked off, Mugabe went on television to accuse Masayiwa of being a CIA agent trying to overthrow the government. Masayiwa says he became public enemy number one. And the cost of pursuing this legal battle, I mean, basically against the state, was more than his legal fees alone. First of all, he started losing his government construction contracts, which he had for retrofit. Then he returned to his home to find it surrounded by police cars. They got intelligence agents. They're searching his house for stuff. The agents said they would be there for a while. And Masiwa said they ended up being there for three years.

16:26Yes, so really a campaign of what you could call intimidation. Yeah, I mean, you know, many people at that point would say, I'll opt for a quiet life. I'm out. I'm out. It's not worth it. Masiwa persisted regardless. So he hired a team of lawyers in New York who convinced the courts in Zimbabwe that the state's phone monopoly actually violated Zimbabweans' constitutional rights to free speech. Interesting argument. The courts eventually ruled 11 times in his favour, but Mugabe still found ways to stop him from launching that telecoms company. After one legal victory in 1995, Econet partnered with the Swedish telecoms giant Ericsson and started setting up base stations for their cell phone network.

17:07But Mugabe soon stamped that out. He forbade private cell phone operations completely with a two-year jail term for offenders. So Econet had to cease operations. Masiwa has claimed that he was put under pressure to enlist partners from the ruling elite of Zimbabwe. And when he refused, middlemen representing officials said he could have his telecoms license if he paid a bribe, apparently, for 400 ,000 US dollars. But Masiwa consistently refused to pay any bribes. He said, we will never stop corruption in Africa until people stand up and say no. I've read so many stories about people who have to combat corruption in their countries.

17:46and I always think it must be one of the most morale-sapping things to realise what you're up against and one of the bravest things you can possibly do to actually persist in the face of that because it must feel like you can't win. So, you know, it's tough in some jurisdictions. It really is and I think it takes a lot of guts to stand up and say, no, actually, I'm not going to pay that, especially if you already, as Strive Masiwa did, have actually the money to pay it. Yeah. Now, those specific corruption allegations about the bribe, he did not want to pay are hard to verify. But corruption of this kind was common in Mugabe, Zimbabwe.

18:21The government was certainly not backing down. So the legal costs, the loss of government contracts were bringing Masi Iwa close to bankruptcy. And by now, he's also married with young children. He's struggling to pay his employees. His wife, Sitsi, said, we were so broke, we couldn't even afford to give our visitors tea. And in fact, that's the point at which he sells off his first company retrofit. And he's also unsure as to whether to even continue with this expensive legal case. After losing one legal judgment, he even has this, I guess you could call it a kind of sliding doors moment because a friend in America offers him this opportunity to head up the McDonald's franchise in any African country of his choice.

18:59So he could have picked between telecoms and burgers. And you know, McDonald's was already a really famous, profitable brand. So he could have made a lot of money from that. He could. But he is still motivated to keep fighting. So he wants to improve telecoms in his country. And he also wants to fight corruption. So he pushes on and he cites his faith, which is, of course, born from that kidnapping and fostered by his deeply religious wife as the thing that kept him all going through this. His wife, Sitsi, prayed to God at this time, saying if Strive was granted the license for his telecoms company, they would help as many poor people as possible for the rest of their lives.

19:35And in 1996, six at their lowest financial ebb, the couple actually start what becomes the Higher Life Foundation. So that now provides scholarships to thousands of orphans and needy children, as well as healthcare initiatives across Africa. So they kind of made good on that promise. And God seemed to hold up his end of the bargain as well, because Masiwa won his final legal appeal and the Supreme Court ordered Mugabe's government to put a cellular license out to tender, which means everyone else can bid on it. Right. So it's no longer in the hands of a monopoly, essentially. Still, Masiwa hadn't really escaped the country's corruption.

20:09Econet didn't actually win the bidding process. So instead, the licence went to a consortium called Telecel, which was backed by Robert Mugabe's nephew Leo. So Masiwa heads back to court, suing for the right to see Telecel's bid. Incredible sort of stamina to keep going through the legal... The court clerks must have been like, this guy again. Not you again, what now? But he wins that. And when he wins, he discovers that Telecel didn't even meet all the technical requirements, but Econet did. Telecel's license is first cancelled, but then reinstalled by the telecom's minister. So it's all a massive mess.

20:43And by December 1997, even Mugabe's own vice president, Joshua Nkomo, condemns cabinet colleagues and threatens to resign. Eventually, there is a cabinet reshuffle and Masiwa's company Econet is granted a license for a mobile network. So he essentially wins. And Masi Yuan launches that mobile network in Zimbabwe in July 1998. And within a week, the company had 10 ,000 customers. So really, he's triumphed in the courts. Yeah, and he's doing well, because you remember ZPTC, his old employers didn't think there was any future. They clearly woke up and smelled the coffee. And during this extended five-year legal fight that Masi Yuan has been in, they've launched their own cell phone network.

21:24But yet in two months, Econet, Strives Company, they gain a 45 % market share. And sure enough, soon he decides to do what successful companies do. He decides to float the company on the stock market. So he floats it on the Harare Stock Exchange, and he sells 40 % of the company to raise about$17 million. So his chunk is worth about$20 million. Not bad. And Econet had become the largest public company in Zimbabwe. That means companies that the public can buy shares in, which is maybe not surprising when you consider how hard it was to set up a public company in Zimbabwe in the first place. But despite that success, Masiwa soon decides to leave Zimbabwe for good.

22:07So in March 2000, he moves to South Africa. He has said he was keen to foster a multinational African business, but he had also been tipped off that his life was under threat from Mugabe's government. Users of Econet services had circulated slogans supporting the opposition during a referendum in 1999. Masiwa had also lent money to Zimbabwe's three independent newspapers, including the notoriously anti-government Daily News, which was, by the way, later shut down by Mugabe's regime. All this had angered the authorities. Please. Sympathetic security police told Masiwa his life could be in danger.

22:44So look out. Now, it's worth reflecting at this point that Robert Mugabe ran Zimbabwe for 37 years. And as time went on, he became less popular. He became more dictatorial and more willing to use his powers to repress his enemies. You could say he really went from being the liberator of Zimbabwe to its tyrant. Elections in Zimbabwe became increasingly less free. They became less fair. and by the year 2000 for someone like Strive Masiwa, whose companies were being linked to anti-government newspapers, to anti-government users, it probably made sense for him to leave the country. So three sort of things are going on here.

23:23He's getting richer, his company's getting more influential and more useful in terms of, you know, communicating potentially anti-government messages. Mugabe is becoming more dictatorial. So all those things kind of clash in a way that is going to jeopardise his business and his life. And I'm sure that kidnapping figured quite large in his mind as well. So he goes to neighbouring South Africa, which offered him some major new business opportunities as well. And he immediately started a new iteration, if you like, of his company, calling it Econet Wireless International. And in just two years, Econet Wireless was generating revenues of$300 million a year.