Technology entrepreneur and investor Strive Masiyiwa, a pioneer of the mobile telecommunications sector in Africa, received an honorary doctorate in Engineering from Stellenbosch University (SU) on 10 December 2024. The visionary leader has over the past four decades helped to cement Africa’s telecoms industry and business sector, while his philanthropy has improved socioeconomic development to the benefit of the continent’s people.
“The Faculty is humbled that Mr Masiyiwa accepted this honorary doctorate in Engineering from Stellenbosch University. He is an exemplary example of an African who did well and is now doing good by improving the lives of many Africans. The Faculty looks forward to partnering with him in our endeavour to make an impact to improve the quality of life of people in Africa,” says Prof Wikus van Niekerk, Dean of the SU Faculty of Engineering.
Masiyiwa, whose career is rooted in engineering, was born in Zimbabwe in 1961 and now lives in the UK. He obtained a bachelor’s degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the University of Cardiff in Wales in 1983, after which he returned to Zimbabwe to briefly work as a telecoms engineer before setting up his first business in 1986.
The business network of this founder and executive chair of Cassava Technologies spans Africa, Europe, India, Latin America, the Middle East, and the USA. A pan-African and global technology group, Cassava Technology businesses include African Data Centres, cloud and cyber security services (Liquid C2), fibre infrastructure (Liquid Intelligent Technologies), renewable energy, and most recently, a new business unit, Cassava AI. As part of Masiyiwa’s mission to ensure that no African is left behind in the digital technology revolution, his companies have ensured that more than 110 000 kilometres of fibre provide connectivity across the continent, spanning East to West Africa, and Cape Town to Cairo.
Among his other prominent start-up companies and investments over the years are Mascom Wireless Botswana, Econet Wireless Zimbabwe, Liquid Telecom, Airtel Nigeria, 2Degrees Mobile, and Trilogy Capital Partners Canada.
Masiyiwa has served as a special envoy to the African Union in terms of its response to Covid-19 and an Ebola outbreak in the mid-2015s and served on various commissions of the United Nations.
His commitment to promoting education and healthcare in Africa is evident in the endeavours of his family foundations, Higherlife Foundation and Delta Philanthropies, which are led by his wife Tsitsi and eldest daughter Elizabeth Tanya. Signatories of the Giving Pledge, these foundations have supported more than 300 000 scholarships to children in Africa to date, as well as various catalytic social impact investments and initiatives in the fields of public health, the empowerment of women and girls, youth mentorship, rural transformation, sustainable livelihoods, disaster relief and preparedness. He has also been involved in pan-African initiatives that target AIDS, cholera, cervical cancer, Ebola, and most recently, Covid-19.
He was listed in 2020 as one of Bloomberg’s 50 most influential people in the world, and one of the ten most powerful men in Africa by Forbes magazine in 2015. In 2014, 2017 and 2021, he was included in Fortune magazine’s list of the world’s 50 greatest leaders. In 2019, he received the World Food Prize Borlaug Medallion for his role as Chair of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, which focused on strengthening food systems and supporting Africa’s smallholder farmers. He was selected in 2023 as an international honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and in October 2024 was awarded the W.E.B. Du Bois Medal by the Hutchins Centre of African and African American Research at Harvard University. Most recently, in November 2024, his revolutionising of telecommunications and mobile money services in Zimbabwe was recognised by the country’s ICT Excellence Award.
Masiyiwa has previously received honorary doctorates from Yale University, Morehouse College in the UK, South Africa’s Nelson Mandela University, and his alma mater, Cardiff University. He currently serves on the boards of Netflix Inc., Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and National Geographic Society, as well as on global advisory councils including that of Bank of America, Stanford University and Bloomberg New Economy Forum. Previously, he held board positions at Unilever Plc, The Rockefeller Foundation and Morehouse College, among others.
Photo: Strive Masiyiwa at the graduation ceremony.
(Photographer: Stefan Els)
