Strive Masiyiwa is a Zimbabwean businessman, founder, Chairman and CEO of Econet Wireless - a diversified international telecommunications group based in South Africa with operations on three continents.

A devout Christian noted for his determination and social conscience, Masiyiwa was called a hero for helping millions of Africans gain access to the modern world through affordable cellular telephones.

Once picked by Time magazine as one of its 15 “global influentials” - he consorts with the likes of Nelson Mandela, Kofi Annan and Bill Gates through his philanthropic work.

Mr. Masiyiwa has lived in South Africa for the last 10 years with his wife and six children, where he commands his multinational business empire spanning seven countries, boasting more than 25 million customers and generating an estimated US $3 billion in annual revenue.

Strive Masiyiwa was born in 1961 in Zimbabwe(Southern Rhodesia at the time).   His parents were able to afford sending him to a High school in Scotland after which he studied Electrical Engineering at the University of Wales and graduated Cum Laude.

In 1994, after graduating from college he returned to a newly independent Zimbabwe, where he took a job with the state-owned telephone company (ZPTC).  He held a position as a senior engineer, then principal engineer before leaving in 1998 to start an electrical contracting firm named Retrofit Engineering.

Masiyiwa recognized the great potential for wireless telephones in sub-Saharan Africa because the region had only two fixed-line telephones for every hundred people in the 1990s.  He saw that wireless networks would be quicker and less expensive to build than land-based networks that required stringing miles of telephone lines across rough terrain.

Wireless telephone service would also be less vulnerable than traditional landlines to the theft of copper wire for resale.  Masiyiwa first approached ZPTC about forming a mobile telephone network in Zimbabwe.  The company wasn’t interested, however, saying that cell phones had no future in the country.

Masiyiwa then decided to create a cell phone network on his own. He sold Retrofit Engineering in 1994 and started to finance Econet Wireless through his family company, TS Masiyiwa Holdings (TSMH).

He met with fierce opposition, first from ZPTC, which told him it held a monopoly in telecommunications, and second from the Zimbabwean government, which swamped him with red tape and demands for bribes.   Masiyiwa was opposed to paying bribes and kickbacks to government officials.

He decided to pursue his case through the courts.  After a landmark four-year legal battle that went all the way to the nation’s Supreme Court, Econet finally won a license to provide cell phone service in Zimbabwe.

The court declared that the government monopoly on telecommunications had violated the constitution’s guarantee of free speech.  Econet’s first cell phone subscriber was connected to the new network in 1998.

While Masiyiwa waited to gain the government’s approval for operations in Zimbabwe, he was able to start a cell phone network in neighboring Botswana.  Econet Wireless Holdings then established a presence in over 15 countries, including other African nations, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. The company also diversified into satellite communications, fixed-line telephone services, and Internet service.

Masiyiwa further antagonized the Zimbabwe government when his holding company, TSMH bailed out the financially strapped opposition newspaper, the Daily News.  Masiyiwa eventually became a major shareholder in the newspaper’s parent company, Associated Newspapers of Zimbabwe, as well as the company’s Chairman.

The government responded by shutting down the newspaper in the fall of 2003.  The paper continued to publish sporadically, though, through early 2004, and maintained an online version from South Africa.

Masiyiwa sued for permission to restart the presses in Zimbabwe. The Zimbabwean government countered by starting criminal proceedings against four Daily News directors in June 2004 on charges of illegally publishing the paper without a license.  Government officials also threatened to revoke Econet’s license to operate in Zimbabwe at that time.

“Strive is driven by focus, determination and passion,” Norman Nyazema told the Financial Mail . “Failure is not an option, no matter how many obstacles are thrown in his way” (December 5, 2003). Nyazema, who was a professor of pharmacology at South Africa’s University of the North and chairman of Econet Wireless Zimbabwe (EWZ), had gone to school with Masiyiwa.

In the early months of 2004 Econet signed a 50/50 joint-venture agreement with Allied Technology (Altech), a South African information technology company. With Altech’s capital and Econet’s experience in telecommunications, the new company-dubbed Newco-announced its intention to pursue an aggressive expansion strategy in the developing countries of Africa and Asia.

Masiyiwa became a role model for other young African entrepreneurs through his vision and persistence. He’s won numerous national and international honors, including the youngest Businessman of the Year in 1990; Manager and Entrepreneur of the Year in 1998; One of the ten Most Outstanding Young Persons of the World from the Junior Chamber International (JCI), 1999 and as mentioned earlier Global Influentials, Time , 2002.

Masiyiwa continues to command a deep respect from Africans of all quarters.  Most recently, Cathy Buckle wrote on Money Web, “Strive Masiyiwa’s company , represented by Douglas Mboweni, is in my view the one thing that has most changed the lives of ordinary Zimbabweans in the last year. Everyone now has the ability to communicate, to expose the perpetrators of crimes that are still destroying our country and to take away their lies and leave them with no more hiding places.”

First off, after hugely successful trials and implementations of m-banking in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Ghana and South Africa in 2009, this year is set to witness m-banking implementations in almost every African country. As m-banking grows, we should expect to see m-commerce in general take off quite rapidly with buying and selling of goods and services on mobile platforms becoming quite wide spread. I suspect that this will impact the business and economic landscape quite dramatically in many countries creating new jobs, innovations and investments.

M-commerce will grow along with e-commerce fuelled in part by substantial deployments of 3G broadband services by mobile telephone operators. These 3G deployments coupled with significant terrestrial and submarine fibre deployments underway and/or planned for commissioning in 2010 all over the continent will see the number of broadband connections more than triple this year.  African governments will meanwhile reap billions of dollars as they sell 3G licenses to existing and new entrants into the telecommunications sector. It’s also likely that we shall see some major mergers and acquisitions in the mobile and fixed telecoms industry as major global players in this field angle to take a slice of the growing African telecommunications market.  The increased number of broadband connections and lower prices will also lead to increased sales of smart phones and computers. I suspect that the major computer manufacturers will release low priced computers targeted at the African market.  These are likely to be a cross between netbook type PCs and smart phones.

As access to the internet improves and costs drop dramatically due to increased competition, the nascent Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) sector in countries like Kenya and Senegal is likely to take off.  Governments are also trying to stimulate this sector with various policy and regulatory sweeteners and stimuli thus making it a sector to watch carefully in 2010.

As intra-country connectivity improves, there is going to be a greater demand for local content in local languages and locally designed applications that fit the context of the different countries. Expect to see a dramatic growth of the software industry in the big markets targeting mobile phone applications. Those who have lamented the lack of African content might be in for a pleasant surprise starting this year.

Competition among the mobile service providers in many countries is set to heat up considerably, driven by two major factors: an increase in the number of providers in many countries as governments move to issue more licenses and the adoption of number portability. A few studies conducted in countries like Uganda fairly recently suggest that users are locked into particular providers, despite poor service, because they would not like to change their phone number which is currently the case if they moved to another service provider. With number portability, these users will be able to migrate to rival or alternate service providers with their existing telephone numbers. The introduction of number portability is therefore likely to threaten the bigger players while benefiting smaller players and new entrants.  But analysts who follow these things agree that the bigger players will take steps to retain their customers. Either way, consumers will be the winners as quality of service is likely to improve and costs will continue to fall.

This year is likely to see some governments move to gain tighter control  of and regulate ICT services especially as it becomes clearer that ICTs empower citizens to access information almost instantly, increase demand for accountability, make it harder to hide or gloss over human rights abuses, promote freedom of speech and strengthen political organization. Most countries taking these steps to muzzle or regulate ICT services will do so in the name of national security or fighting terrorism.  This desire to control ICT services will see a big push for Simcard registration (at the moment, one doesn’t need to identify themselves to purchase mobile phone Simcards in most African countries) which on its own has merits, enactment of “wire-tapping” and other laws restricting broadcast media and in some cases increased censorship of internet, mobile and traditional broadcast content. This is likely to be a year where democracy and human rights activities will join hands with ICT companies to push back against what they will see as government interference in the market.  However, governments will be caught between a rock and a hard place: on the one hand, they would like to exercise control and on the other hand, the ICT sector is becoming a key sector of the economy accounting for a growing and significant portion of GDP and tax revenues as a result of deregulation, liberalization and reduced government control. This is therefore a year where governments will play a high-wire act to ensure that they don’t kill the goose that lays the golden egg while angling to gain more control.

Countries to watch

Kenya is my number one country to watch this year because of four important factors: its early and leading adoption of m-commerce, large investments in terrestrial and submarine fibre, the government’s strategy to grow the BPO sector and lastly the position of Nairobi as the “unofficial” business capital of the East African Community’s common market.  These four factors are likely to lead to increased ICT investment flows into Kenya, decent growth in the ICT sector and a shakeup in the economy as m-commerce and e-commerce take root.

Rwanda is probably the only developing country that has staked its future on ICTs with an ICT-led economic development strategy.  Rwanda remains among my top countries to watch on the ICT scene in Africa. The government has done a few things right such as promoting an investor-attractive environment, emphasizing and supporting ICT, Science and Technology education and investing in broadband infrastructure. Rwanda also has one of the most impressive ICT public awareness campaigns, and investment promotion regimes in place. While in the past, there was a difference between government rhetoric and reality on the ground mainly due to limited human capacity and cautious moves from investors still associating the country with the Genocide, expect that gap to narrow as all of the government policies and interventions in infrastructure, science and technology education, investment policy and regulatory reforms in the last 5-10 years begin to bear fruit. It is not far stretched to expect to see local, regional and international ICT companies set up shop in Rwanda as a base to exploit the East African Common Market and Kigali take on the Silicon Valley status of Africa.

Still in East Africa, Ethiopia is another country worth watching. Ethiopia still retains state control on the telecommunications sector with a monopoly state-owned telecommunications company. The government has always argued that it preferred to follow a slow and carefully thought out deregulation path instead of rushing to implement a free and open market. This may be the year when we see concrete moves to open up this space. If this happened, Ethiopia with its 80 million plus population would herald a gold rush for ICT and especially telecommunication companies into the country.

Nigeria, often touted to as the “power house” of Africa, has in the last few years shocked the continent with an aggressive drive by its movie, banking and insurance industry to expand to the rest of the continent. Already, Nigerian movies are by many accounts more popular than anything Hollywood could throw up in Africa and this is a trend that will continue to grow. Expect Nigerian ICT companies to begin to play a more prominent role in Africa with some of their top ICT companies already spreading their tentacles into the bigger markets in Africa. It is not too far stretched to imagine that 2010 may herald the emergence of an African ICT giant from Nigeria. On the national scene, there are at least two submarine cables expected to land off the coast of Nigeria this year and massive fibre deployments underway in the country by the major telecommunication companies. The increased connectivity and lower prices are likely to give a tremendous boost to the nascent but impressive e-commerce sector in Nigeria.

South Africa has made massive investments in ICT infrastructure in preparation for the World Cup which it hosts in June of this year. This investment will leave the country with one of the most developed ICT infrastructures among emerging economies in the world. This investment is likely to give the ICT sector a good boost. Recent news coming of South Africa where foreign investments in the telecommunications sector have been blocked because of a government  policy on foreign ownership restrictions in the telecommunications sector is likely to pit South Africa against other countries like Nigeria whose companies are seeking to expand into the rest of the continent. This government policy is also likely to place South African telecommunication companies that command a significant share of the sector in many other countries in Africa in an awkward place especially if the other countries enact retaliatory policies.

Lastly, Senegal is a country that has made tremendous gains in the ICT industry in the last few years. Sonatel, the former state owned telecommunications companies now majority owned by France Telecom represents a rare breed of a former state-owned telecom company that has managed to transform itself into a viable and aggressive market player. Senegal has also positioned itself as the ICT Hub for West Africa with Sonatel building infrastructure into all its neighbours. This year, expect to see Senegal secure its position as the ICT Hub of French-speaking West Africa and a growth of the nascent BPO sector.

In a statement released jointly with world football’s governing body, FIFA, the company said it was the first Chinese company to seal a global sponsorship deal with FIFA.

The announcement was made today at the Yingli 2010 FIFA World Cup sponsorship-signing ceremony hosted in Beijing, with video messages from FIFA headquarters in Zurich.

FIFA President Joseph Blatter said FIFA had selected Yingli Green Energy to become one of its international sponsors because of Yingli’s track record of success in the field of renewable energy and the company’s clear commitment to the environment.

“The announcement of Yingli Green Energy as the first Chinese company to be a global sponsor of the FIFA World Cup marks a historical moment.

“Furthermore, I am extremely pleased that Yingli has chosen to support 20 Centres for 2010, the Official Campaign of the 2010 FIFA World Cup, by providing solar panels and committing to our efforts to create a better environment, as embodied by our ‘Green Goal’ concept,” he said.

Secretary General of FIFA, Jerome Valcke said he was very excited to welcome such a world-leading renewable energy company and the first Chinese company to the FIFA family. “We are looking forward to sharing ideas on how to go about making the world greener and cleaner through the love of football.”

Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Yingli Green Energy, Liansheng Miao said as one of the world’s leading solar companies, they were excited to be joining other world-class brands as an international sponsor of the FIFA World Cup.

“This sponsorship links Yingli Green Energy to the world’s most popular and passionately followed sport. We feel privileged to have this opportunity, and look forward to offering our expertise to help FIFA leverage this much-loved sport to promote a better, greener environment.

Yingli Green Energy’s sponsorship agreement for the 2010 FIFA World Cup gives the company global marketing rights, including certain ticket, perimeter-board advertising and media rights as well as the right to showcase its solar products at the fan zones in the FIFA World Cup stadiums.

Additionally, the agreement gives Yingli the right to place its company logo next to the FIFA World Cup Official Emblem and advertise or promote its products and services at each step of the distribution process.

Yingli will have access to extensive on-site opportunities at FIFA World Cup stadiums for marketing and promotion purposes

Following the success of the AgriBusiness Forum 2009, which saw over 400 delegates gathering for the four day forum held for the first time on African shores in Cape Town, South Africa, EMRC announced that the next edition of the AgriBusiness Forum will take place in East Africa.

“We have chosen Uganda as the host country as not only does it present excellent business incentives to attract foreign direct investment, it also provides a great example of an agriculture-based economy with substantial natural resources and an impressive economic growth rate. We look forward to inviting our members, partners and the international community, to gather in the bustling city of Kampala in October.” Idit Miller, EMRC Managing Director.

The EMRC Agribusiness Forum 2010 will focus on the theme of “Food Security: a Business Opportunity” with the overall aim of boosting the African agro-food sector through the design, planning and implementation of diverse agricultural projects.

Discussions and presentations will explore best practices and expertise and successful case studies relating to the theme will be presented. The tailor-made EMRC Business-to-Business sessions, which enable delegates to network one-on-one will facilitate cross-continental and inter-continental business introductions and partnerships that will propel the implementation of the collaborative ideas planted at the forum.

In preparation for this prestigious event, the EMRC team is organising its second trip to Uganda for the first Steering Committee meeting, where they will discuss the programme of the Forum with the partners that have so far been assembled to support the Forum.

The Minister of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries, Honorable Hope Mwesigye confirmed her delight at hosting the AgriBusiness Forum 2010: “We feel strongly that Uganda will be the ideal host for an international event of this level, as we recognize the value, potential and importance this forum presents for the promotion of numerous business and project opportunities in the AgriBusiness sector within Africa.”

Over 400 delegates from Africa, Europe, America and Asia are expected, representing the private and public sector, international organisations, micro-financers, investors, bankers, agriculturalists, NGOs, project developers and owners and more.

The decision was taken at an executive meeting of the FIFA ticketing committee in Zurich this week.

BuaNews, the official South African press service, reported a week ago that the LOC was considering requesting FIFA to simplify the process of acquiring tickets for the tournament. At the time, LOC Chief Executive Officer Danny Jordaan said he was confident that FIFA would agree to the request.

At the moment, tickets can be bought by filling in application forms at First National Bank (FNB) branches or fans can apply for tickets online.

The process has elicited an outcry from football fans who complained that it was too complicated to secure tickets for Africa’s first world cup tournament.

“We are happy now to say that ordinary South African will be able to get the tickets,” Jordaan said during a media briefing.

Jordaan said indications in the last two weeks have been that there is a positive feedback from South Africans to buy the tickets.

“We are particularly happy with the support behind Bafana Bafana and the pick up in ticket sales over the past two weeks,” he said.

FIFA has also decided to increase the number of category four tickets available for South Africans. Close to two million tickets have been sold so far with six matches oversubscribed.

US and UK are still toping the sales followed Australia, Mexico, Germany and Brazil respectively. - BuaNews

The Cape Town-based company presented a check to Imtiaz Sooliman from the South African humanitarian aid organization Gift of the Givers, which sent two search and rescue missions to the stricken Caribbean country.

“Our only hope is that these funds find their way to the most vulnerable members of the community and somehow help them in their quest to rebuild their shattered lives,” Nazeem Ebrahim, Oasis Group Holdings marketing director told the media in Cape Town.

A quake measuring 7.0 on the Richter scale hit Haiti on 12 January, killing an estimated 200 000 people.

Sooliman said the check was the biggest single donation the 18-year-old organisation had received. It would be spent on medical supplies and equipment such as an X-ray machine.

Gift of the Givers currently has a medical team of 53 people in Haiti.

In light of this increasing interest in business and investment in Africa, the theme of the conference is Emerging Africa – Value Creation in the Next Frontier. The conference will bring together the new wave of value creators driving the transformation taking place on the continent.

2500 leaders from business, government and civil society, representing more than 90 countries are active participants. Over 1,400 top-level executives from the world’s leading companies are participating this year. Nearly half of the participants have come from outside business sectors, including 30 heads of state (among them, Jacob Zuma of South Africa, Jakaya Kikwete of Tanzania and Morgan Tsvangarai of Zimbabwe), 60 government ministers, over 100 heads or top officials form international organizations and NGOs, over 200 leading academics, and more than 200 media leaders.

The Annual Meeting 2009 theme was “Shaping the Post-Crisis World”. The intent was to absorb the early lessons from the financial crisis and to understand how risks interconnect, to encourage longer term thinking and to consider unintended consequences of various calls for action. The learning and transformation will continue into next year along with increasing expectations for positive change. In response to new priorities, the organizing theme for the 40th World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in 2010 is a call to action, “Improve the State of the World: Rethink, Redesign and Rebuild”.

The pressure to rethink, redesign and rebuild is increasing along with concern over the current state of the world. The fiscal and monetary prescriptions to ease the pain of global economic shocks are now fuelling anxieties about the creation of new economic bubbles. Moreover, the demographic, behavioral and technological changes linked to the collapse in global demand are challenging basic assumptions about the nascent recovery. Major industries are still contending with cyclical and structural threats to their business models. In addition, weaknesses of governance systems, exposed by the financial crisis, are mostly unchanged with respect to looming global risks such as climate change, nuclear proliferation and pandemic.

The Annual Meeting 2010 program will focus on six areas:

• How to Create a Values Framework
• How to Strengthen Economic and Social Welfare
• How to Mitigate Global Risks and Address Systemic Failures
• How to Ensure Sustainability
• How to Enhance Security
• How to Build Effective Institutions

“Global multistakeholder cooperation lies at the heart of the Forum’s mission to improve the state of the world,” said Professor Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum. Speaking at a press conference at the World Economic Forum’s headquarters in Geneva, Professor Schwab said: “We have to rethink our values

- we are living together in a global society with many different cultures. We have to redesign our processes - how do we deal with the issues and challenges on the global agenda. And finally, we have to rebuild our institutions.”

“We have to look at the Meeting in the context of what’s happening in the world … and we see that, clearly, the present system of global cooperation is not working sufficiently. So we want to look at all issues on the global agenda in a systemic, integrated and strategic way, and we want to address in particular the issue of global cooperation. This is the reason why our Annual Meeting this year is tailored around the need to rethink, redesign and rebuild.”

All of these discussions and work will continue beyond the Annual Meeting. WELCOM, a collaborative platform that integrates Web 2.0 technology, will enable leaders to build knowledge, share insights and reach out to key stakeholders as an online community throughout the year.

The conference takes place from the 27th through the 31st of January in Davos, Switzerland and can be followed online through web casts here.

SA Express, a state-owned South African domestic and regional airline, has announced that it will begin operations in the Democratic Republic of Congo as soon as February 1st.  The new airline will operate domestic flights in the Democratic Republic of Congo to meet increased demand.

SA Express owns 49 percent of the airline venture, called Congo Express with BizAfrika Congo, a local investment company, the Johannesburg-based carrier said in an e- mailed statement today.

Congo Express will fly seven days a week between Lubumbashi and Kinshasa, the capital, and four times a week between Kinshasa and the diamond-producing center of Mbuji Mayi, it said.

“Next, we plan on growing the domestic routes to serve other airports within the Congo, followed by an extension of services beyond the borders of the Congo,” Didier Kindambu, managing director of Congo Express, said in the statement.

SA Express, which operates flights six days a week between Johannesburg and Lubumbashi, will be responsible for technical maintenance, the company said. It will continue operating flights along its routes in the country.

United Bank for Africa Plc (UBA),one of several pan African banking groups, announced the opening of its Zambian operations  today - this is the groups first entry into the Southern Africa region.  The company is following a trend in Africa of expanding retail banking operations to new markets.  The company currently has a presence in 15 African countries.

UBA has over the past year rapidly expanded its network, positioning itself as a major bank of choice for wholesale and retail clients in Africa and Africa related businesses, demonstrating in action its positioning as “Africa’s Global Bank”.  This physical expansion has been matched by the launch of a series of products designed specifically to address the key needs of African clients, whether individuals, companies or governments, in facilitating money transfer and cash management, trade finance and access to credit.

UBA Zambia started operations on Monday, 11 January, 2010 following approval by the Central Bank of Zambia and other relevant regulatory authorities.

According to the CEO, UBA Africa, Mr Rasheed Olaoluwa, the Group’s Zambian operations have been strategically positioned to provide comprehensive financial services to support corporate and retail customers in Zambia and allow them to access UBA’s African and global network and product range.

“Thanks to our recent rapid expansion across the region and our growing strategic capabilities, we are now well positioned to provide unique products and services leveraging our cross border network - we want to provide services that are truly relevant to all Zambians and Zambia businesses” he said.

“We are excited about the prospect of serving our growing number of corporate clients who we believe will benefit from our extensive local and global knowledge” said Abba Bello, MD/CEO UBA Zambia.

United Bank for Africa Plc offers universal banking to more than 7 million customer accounts.  The opening of UBA Zambia brings to 15 the number of countries where UBA Group has a presence.  These countries include Nigeria, Ghana, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Chad, Benin and Gabon together with a presence in non African markets like New York, London and Paris.