Opinion
Exemplars of Greatness: The Heroic Stride of Strive Masiyiwa of Africa!
By Tolulope Adegoke
“The hero is one who kindles a great light in the world, who sets up blazing torches in the dark streets of life for men to see by” – Felix Adler
I have no doubt that the wonderful model of destiny, The Nikola Tesla Story that we studied last week have been of tremendous blessing to you. As the Scripture says, “He who walks with the wise will be wise…” (Proverbs 1:20). It is for this reason that we must, once again, accompany some of the heroes of our contemporary time through the story of their life’s journeys, so that we can receive the necessary impartation of wisdom, guidance and inspiration for our own uplifting. So, here is another exemplar that you just cannot do without knowing about!
Strive Masiyiwa was born in 1961. By his 40th birthday, he had outwitted the dictator Robert Mugabe. By the age of 50, he was a multimillionaire mogul. Now, Masiyiwa – telecoms entrepreneur, philanthropist and proud Pentecostal – is among a cadre of African moguls aiming to turn the continent into a power house of productivity and entrepreneurship.
Masiyiwa’s story is full of trials and tribulations, including a battle against the government of Zimbabwe that earned him death threats and probably made him flee the country in the year 2000. But it is also replete with triumphs.
According to James Mwangi of Global Development Advisors, “Strive is one of a small but growing group of Senior African business leaders and entrepreneurs deliberately engaging in dialogue beyond business. Instead, those leaders are looking into Africa’s future overall, and in their broad-mindedness and sense of obligation, they are the latter-day Mellons and Carnegie.”
Like Cornelius Vanderbilt, who saw early on that railroad infrastructure would revolutionise the American economy, Masiyiwa is using his mobile phone network as a platform for economic development across Africa, from education to healthcare. This has made him a man in much demand. In addition to overseeing the multi-country operation of his $750 million firm, Econet Wireless, and his Kwese Satellite television, he sits on prominent boards like that of Rockerfeller Foundation. He appears on philantro-capitalist panels, is tapped by Richard Brandson for support, and dines with religious leaders at the White House’s annual Prayer Breakfast.
In 2016, Masiyiwa took up the board chairmanship of Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, a post previously held by his friend, Kofi Annan. It gives him an even broader Pan-African reach than he already had.
For all this, Masiyiwa presents as disarming and humble. He is a small man with a globe-like head, spherical and smooth. He favours gold-framed spectacles and light coloured ties, often in pastels that contrast nicely with the sharp black of his suits. He speaks softly and kindly, and punctuates his talk with jokes and exclamations. Masiyiwa would likely credit the Lord for his success. He turned seriously into faith during the darkest of his tribulations, in the mid-1990s, and has never let go.
“Do you read the Bible for an hour every day?” a CNN interviewer asked him in 2011. “Is that correct? I have read that.” “Oooh!” said Masiyiwa. “That’s when I am busy. I can read it for five hours in a weekend.”
Religion motivates his philanthropy, which involves orphans and schooling, and is very personal: According to June Wales, President and CEO of the Global Philanthropy Forum and World Affairs Council, “I spend most of my waking hours interacting with philanthropists but Masiyiwa really stands out. A lot of folks talk about engaged. Philanthropy – this is the real deal.”
Masiyiwa was born in what was then Rhodesia (Now Zimbabwe) and was barely four years old when severe conflicts broke out in the country. The first major reason for the conflicts was getting independence from Britain and then rejecting white-minority rule. In 1968, Masiyiwa fled to Zambia, across the border. Their neighbours were Scottish, who had a son. That was more or less how young Masiyiwa landed in an Edinburg boarding school.
Masiyiwa returned to Africa in 1978, keen to join the guerrilla fight for independence. But a cousin in the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army, later to morph into Mugabe’s Zanu-PF, advised that independence was nearly won. The new country would need people to run. And so, Masiyiwa scored a scholarship to University in Wales. In 1984, he returned with an engineering degree to Zimbabwe, which was then four years into its nationhood. He worked briefly for the government’s telecoms company, but state enterprise frustrated him, he says.
After borrowing the equivalent of $75, Masiyiwa started a construction business. Not only that, he spent two years studying banking in order to procure a small business loan – this before the advent of Internet – and changed his social networks to better understand the business community. He learnt the language of the golf course and of balance sheet. According to him, “In money game, there is a way of talking that will have bankers and investors interested in what you do, and there is a way to talk which makes them shun and run from you, and it has nothing to do with where you come from.”
Many of the pieces he posts online evoke his stubbornness, tenacity and ability to educate himself into being better; his utter prescience, too. In the mid-1990s, only a few would have guessed that cell phones would become a major growth section in African countries. The government of Zimbabwe certainly did not. Masiyiwa did. He offered to develop a cell phone network in tandem with the State telecoms company, but the Mugabe-controlled government rejected his offer – a refusal that Masiyiwa wrote, “must surely rank amongst follies in the world of business: They could have owned the Econet Wireless Group, but instead they declared war on me!”
The State telecom refused to grant Masiyiwa a license to cell-frequencies, claiming it had a monopoly. That was when Masiyiwa sued in 1994. The case went on for five years, and at one point early on, Zimbabwe’s Supreme Court ruled against Econet, leaving, apparently, no chance to appeal.
As Masiyiwa recounted, “When we lost the Supreme Court case in June 1994, I was totally devastated. Two years of work appeared to have gone down the drain. My dream was shattered. The lawyers made it clear that there was no appeal possible, and we packed away all the files.
“Although four years earlier, I had survived abduction by what I believed, at the time, to be divine intervention; I never pursued this further from a spiritual perspective. Church for me remained a place of funerals and wedding ceremonies.
“When we got married, my wife tried very hard to get me to go to church, but whilst always respectful of her values, I never went. On Sundays, I would drop her and our then young daughter, at her church and go for my weekly squash game with “the boys” and dutifully pick her up, after the service. She was then pregnant with our second daughter.
“On the Sunday after our Supreme Court defeat, I was still too gutted to go and play with the boys, but I took my wife to her church, as usual. She begged me to come in with her, but again I refused. I drove round the block and decided to return…I sat in the back, by myself.
“My wife did not know I had returned. It was the first time in my life I had listened to a church service, without the compulsion of duty for an event held there. It seemed as though everyone in the room, except me, was so happy! The young American pastor was preaching about Jesus Christ, whom I thought I had known all my life. And yet now I realised that I did not know Him; I only knew of Him. Disturbed, I left hurriedly and went and sat in the car.
“Throughout that week, I continued in my miserable daze, but I was also disturbed by what I had heard in that service. I went back the following week. At the end of the service, there was a call for those who wanted to “accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour”. I stood up, and went to the front. This is, and shall ever remain, the most important decision of my life. ‘Now that you are ‘born-again’, you must read your bible everyday’, the Pastor said, to the small group of us standing in front of him, after he had led us in prayer.
“Arriving home that day, I realised that the misery of my court defeat had completely lifted. It just seemed so unimportant. Sitting down that afternoon, with a borrowed copy of the New International Version Bible, I sat down to read the Bible for the very first time, in my life.
“Since the Pastor had said, “read the Bible”, I presumed that you must read the whole thing (cover to cover); and my wife did nothing to disabuse me of that: I just read, and read, and read…Often, I would read the whole day, and the whole night. Finally, I finished it after about three weeks.
“What I did not tell anyone at the time (including my wife) was that almost every night I laid my head down to sleep, I would begin to have quite extraordinary dreams. One evening, I attended a special church event, held at a local hotel. The Pastor preaching had never met me. As he preached, he suddenly stopped:
‘There is a man in this room; you have been having these dreams. In these dreams, you are building towers, rather like broadcasting towers, everywhere, all over the world. God is asking me to tell you that He is the one giving you those dreams, and He is going to make it happen. He has also given you a new heart; you are going to have such compassion. Please come forward, if you are that man.’
“There could have been 500 people in that room, that Sunday evening. I got up, and made my way to the front of the room. A few days later, a miracle would occur, which would take us back to court, in a very dramatic way…”
To put in a nutshell, some years later, Masiyiwa won the case. Econet now has a majority share of users in Zimbabwe and operations in more than 15 countries. It started offering mobile banking through its phones a few years ago, and within 18 months, some 20 per cent of Zimbabwe’s GDP was passing through its networks.
This reveals one of the keys to his success: foresight. At the time he was fighting the Mugabe government over his licence, hardly could anyone have imagined that mobile phone networks could become platforms for banking, or that they would so dramatically affect economic and healthcare infrastructures.
Masiyiwa has come to relish obstacles and challenges. When asked, “What are you doing with the challenges around you?” He replies that they are opportunities in disguise. And like other prominent African businessmen, he believes that “Ultimately, Africa’s development challenges are also its business opportunities.” Gaps in infrastructure, healthcare delivery and the like are “huge opportunities to unlock value,” not barriers to entry. Once those barriers are addressed people get more disposal income, and market opportunities grow – creating a phenomenal virtuous cycle.
And that, perhaps, was what Masiyiwa meant in the year 2016 when he sat on a panel with Bill Gates, Tony Blair, Paul Kagame and others, and told the audience to stop considering Africa “exotic”. Instead, he said, it is a business climate like any other – defined by challenges and opportunities – and one that rewards innovation, determination and homework.
Masiyiwa is, indeed, a living proof of the power of TENACITY. Added to that is the ability to FOCUS on the crown and not the crisis. And most importantly, his story reveals the strength of divine grace that comes through salvation! He went through the painful processes to get ultimately paid. He carried his cross to get his crown. He empowered himself with relevant skills and knowledge and applied them all through divine wisdom to solve challenges in a changing world. Being a lover of God, he became empowered and conquered his zero, then, emerged a HERO!
The key question is, what have you learnt from all these inspirational narrations and experiences so far? And what will you do about it?
Exemplars of Greatness Series continues next week…
By Henry Ukazu
Greetings Destiny Friends,
We are all familiar with the Law of karma, which implies that every action has consequences, or that whatever a person does comes back to them. It’s also known as the law of cause and effect, which means for any action, there’s usually a corresponding consequence.
This has a close resemblance to a foremost scientist, Isaac Newton’s theory, the Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation, which states that “whatever goes up must come down”.
The principle and ideology behind these laws and principles are centered on the principle of life that stays, the way you lay your bed that’s the way you will lay on it. The question we need to ask ourselves is what seeds are we sowing? It’s instructive to note that nobody plants an orange seed and reaps a mango fruit, nor can a watermelon seed produce a pineapple fruit.
The principle of sowing and reaping is sacrosanct. It is whatever one sows that they will reap. This principle is universal. When you sow a seed, you might not get the result immediately, but you will get it in due time by and by.
As a man, when you treat your spouse with love and affection, you will surely get a reciprocal from her, and as a woman there’s the tendency to reciprocate a support from a partner, especially when he is down. These are laws that work with conscience and heart of gratitude of the recipient. No doubt, common sense entails one does the needful.
As a business owner, when you invest in your company and staff, you are bound to reap the fruits in due time. As a parent, when you invest in your children’s good home training and quality education, you’ll be glad for the foundation you laid at your old age.
As a progressive mind, when you invest in reading books, building sustainable relationships, networking, learning skills and adding value to your life, updating and upgrading your life via personal development, you are bound to reap the fruits of your labour.
The challenge most people have is that they haven’t taken time to learn, nor have they taken time to sow the seeds that will create opportunity for them. Some people are just comfortable with begging or looking for parasitic opportunities where they haven’t invested time and resources. Some people are even entitled to someone’s work just because they are friends, family or have a form of relationship. This shouldn’t be the case. As human beings, it’s important for one to be intentional and strategic. Nobody likes to be “used”, rather people like to give value to their time and money.
It is important to note that any seed one sows today, will produce the fruit they will either eat or need tomorrow. In my personal development journey, I was a little bit confused on how I wanted to execute my vision. Because I lacked the right mentors to strategically guide and inspire me, I began to live my life based on experience with no set plan.
In some cases I failed, and in some cases I was able to make an impact. However, one thing is certain, I was moving in the direction I needed by being at the right events and meeting the right people. In the course of time, I began to see myself gaining clarity about my interest. Overtime, I had mentors who were instrumental in guiding and strategically positioning me in the right direction.
When I look back in retrospect, I can only give God the glory because the little works and skills I invested in my life have gradually begun to pay back. The moral here is that I sowed the seeds I am reaping today. It took a while, but it finally came through. This experience has shown me one can get to any height in life, in addition to getting recognition when one is consistent, intentional and passionate about a cause.
Whether you are a boxer, teacher, singer, athlete, journalist, lawyer, coach, writer or minister of the gospel, please do it diligently, and if what you are doing is your purpose in life, the universe has a way of conspiring with you to get to the top.
When people say someone is lucky, blessed, privileged, smart, highly connected to a mentor, or resource person, they are just crafting words of art to describe or qualify their point just to convey a message. This is because though all these words might play a role, if one has not taken a time to do the work, the required opportunity will not pop out and even if they pop out, and one is not destined for the opportunity, the corresponding blessings will not come.
The question we need to ask ourselves is what are we doing with our lives? What seeds are we sowing for the blessings and opportunities we are hoping to get. In my native belief in law, there’s a latin maxim that says “Nemo dat quod non habet” which translates to ‘you can’t give what you don’t have’. This is the reality of many people. They want money, but don’t want to work. They want opportunities but don’t want to intern or serve in probono capacity. They want favours just because they are related or have a kind of relationship with someone, and therefore, automatically believe it will rub off on them without them giving substantiated reasons why they need support. These sets of people believe wealth is sexually transmitted.
I can go on and on, but as a sage will say, a word is enough for the wise.
In conclusion, as you journey through life, always remember that whatever you sow has a way of coming back to you, if not today, in your old age, or transmuted to your children. Just like when you assist your boss in saving money, tomorrow when you have a company, your employees will pay you back without you knowing it’s the deed you invested many years ago. As a single man or lady, when you derive joy in sleeping with married women or men, just know that you will get a corresponding visit in due time.
Henry Ukazu writes from New York. He works with the New York City Department of Correction as the Legal Coordinator. He’s the founder of Gloemi. He’s a Transformative Human Capacity and Mindset coach. He is also a public speaker, youth advocate, creative writer and author of Design Your Destiny Design Your and Unleash Your Destiny . He can be reached via info@gloemi.com
By Henry Ukazu
Dear Destiny Friends,
As human beings, our desires and needs can be insatiable. This is because when one task is accomplished, there’s always the tendency to set our minds for another immediate goal. Even when we get our basic needs, we usually have the urge to get another need. There’s nothing wrong with that however, because it’s only unambitious and docile minds, that would like to dwell in their comfort zones.
In the journey of life, everyone desires prosperity, though not knowing that prosperity is actually a human heritage because everyone is born to win. Prosperity however, doesn’t only mean financial breakthrough, but can also refer to health, academia, family, business, and personal improvement. To prosper in any of these areas, one must understand the basics and the necessary appurtenances that come with similar positions.
Let’s take a minute to explain how these factors play a role in creating prosperity. For instance, to have great health, one doesn’t need to spend more; simple personal hygiene like exercise, good rest, good food, good fruits and more, play a great role. When one engages in all these, they will discover their mental and physical well-being will be in good shape. The same principle is applicable to a student who has done the needful in studying the foundational elements of his major; he stands a better chance of getting a good grade.
If the same principle is applied in personal businesses through creation of excellent product or service, one will never lack clients again. In business, customers love good delivery. When your work is good, people will naturally flow towards you.
The family is not an exception. To build a family, the foundation is very important. The same principle is applicable in our personal and professional lives. When one is intentional in building good values and character, it has a way of robbing off the person in their personal and professional lives.
The symbolic nature of this analysis is that for any great establishment, one must be consistent in building it. It takes a process for someone to be successful. So, whether you are building a brand in business, academic, health, or personal development, every single step one takes is very important in the development or success of that project. When you accumulate all the steps, it has a holistic prospect of making one’s brand unique.
Just to share a practical example of how excellence works – Imagine having an opportunity to meet a legend, who can be a president of a country, Chief Executive Officer of a reputable organization, a Governor of a state, a celebrity of high esteem or even a resource person of interest and you begin to request for money instead of asking questions in order to learn more from them, you might lose them. An intentional being can take time to study the person by building a strong relationship via communication, volunteering for the person, reading the work of the person or even by giving them gifts; all these are proactive actionable steps of creating prosperity, which speak volumes about the person.
Most times, when we want money, wealth, opportunities and prosperity, and we think they are far from us, but the simple truth is that they are within us if only we are able to look deep inside ourselves critically. For instance, if you have a business you are engaged in, no matter how little it is, and is diligent in serving your clients with excellent customer service relationships, it has a potential of scaling up, especially when you deliver excellent service.
Did you know one can build excellence by building the relationship in terms of value with the resource persons? It is the positive work one does that will attract global favours and opportunities. The favour and opportunity will not come one day, but I strongly believe it will come, especially when one is working on purpose.
The mistake most people make in life is that they give up too easily either because the desired returns they are expecting are yet to arrive, or they are not passionate, or vision oriented enough about the cause.
Let me share a practical experience. During my formative years in the USA, then I was still working as a security officer, one of my mentors asked me, ‘Henry, what would you want to do with your life in the near future?’ He advised me to take my time to think about the question before answering it. While I was reflecting on the question, he said, what is one thing you know you can do in life, and you know you won’t fail? I said, I want to be a youth advocate.
He said, you have said this quite a few times, but you need to be engaged in meaningful work before your advocacy work will be appreciated. He further asked me, what’s your passion? I said inspiring youths. He looked at me and said, I know you love youth work, but how do you intend to do this? What will you be teaching them? I said, I will be inspiring them. He looked at me and smiled. It was at this moment; I realized I had much work to do. He finally said to me, before you can inspire anyone, you must have inspired yourself by distinguishing yourself in a particular work which will be compelling to the youths because your work will come with commensurate experience and stories.
Looking back in retrospect, I can definitely relate to what my mentor was saying. Why am I sharing this? Excellence does not come in one day. It takes a process. Over a period of about 15 years, I have directly or indirectly been involved in youth advocacy, and this work has really distinguished and announced me in many quarters. My most recent award was from the White House with President Biden’s signature on it.
Now, you see that one’s work, backed by excellence can create prosperity.
According to Dr. Yomi Garnett, prosperity does not create excellence. Rather, the reverse is what holds true. Excellence creates prosperity. Therefore, from today, start the process of discovering your own personal excellence; your own best path to fulfillment. Then, every day, walk that path.”
The moral of this quote above is that money will not make you prosperous. It is your work that will attract money and prosperity for you, when they are good. Isn’t it true that nobody patronizes a bad product? No customer or client gives tips on a bad service. No good teacher rewards a lazy student, and no great company promotes a lackadaisical staff to an enviable height. Again, have you seen that it is one’s work which is backed by excellence that creates prosperity.
In conclusion, if you desire prosperity or want would like to receive awards and recognition, discover what makes you unique, create your own path and serve humanity by solving problems in an excellent way. Trust me, if you diligently do this, you will understand the meaning of the best form of doing business is personal referral.
Henry Ukazu writes from New York. He works with the New York City Department of Correction as the Legal Coordinator. He’s the founder of Gloemi. He’s a Transformative Human Capacity and Mindset coach. He is also a public speaker, youth advocate, creative writer and author of Design Your Destiny Design Your and Unleash Your Destiny . He can be reached via info@gloemi.com
By Henry Ukazu
Dear Destiny Friends,
Happy New Year and compliments of the season!
It’s always a thing of joy to see a new day, new week, new month, new year, new decade, and a new century. The occasion really calls for celebration. At the beginning of each year, we all desire to have new blessings, new opportunities, new successes, new health and more. The big question we need to ask ourselves is how one can we attract these opportunities, and blessings attached.
I will try to be practical in my thoughts and opinions. To attract blessings into one’s life is not difficult, in fact, it is one of the easiest things to do. This is because it costs less to be healthy, and it costs more to be unhealthy. It sounds confusing right? Okay, let me explain a little, to stay healthy, one can take fruits, exercise, do a yearly checkup, sleep, meditate, think positive amidst other activities. Literally looking at it, it might appear expensive and hard to accomplish but imagine the cost it will take to visit the hospital to undergo a medical procedure just because you neglected your health.
It’s instructive to note that the human body system doesn’t ordinarily break down, it takes a little bit of process which accumulates. Imagine if one has taken time to do exercise, eat healthy, and rest, most of the illnesses we suffer will drastically reduce.
So, as already stated, to attract opportunities and blessings into one’s life is not difficult; it’s just a matter of attitude. Like I always say, you’ll get what you want faster when you help other people to achieve what they want. To attract these opportunities is not rocket science, all we need to do is to apply the right attitude.
We are just three days into the year 2025, many of us have made resolutions of what we will do and what we will stop to be productive. Do you know the fastest way to attract blessings into your life is to have a good attitude? Attitude is a currency. Net worth is a currency. Relationship is a currency. Impact is a currency. For one to tap into these currencies one needs to have a good attitude. It’s your attitude that will make people to either like or despise you.
If you don’t have a good attitude, you won’t attract the opportunity that will bless you. Let me share a little secret that has worked for me over the years. I am a very intentional person. Most times, I pay it forward without knowing. I have since discovered that when one pays it forward by helping someone in need, the blessings are usually humongous. For instance, sometimes, just because I want someone to utter a form of prayer or goodwill like it will be well with you; God bless you, you will not lack; may God provide for you and your family, I will intentionally give them money or a kind of support.
Sometimes, I may make a purchase and decide to tell the seller to keep the change if I see the seller is struggling or it will put smiles on the face of the person. This is a skill I have mastered over time. It’s not really easy I must say, but it has over time, worked for me.
So, to attract the blessings of 2025 and beyond, consider offering yourself as a life of service to people in need. Don’t do it with a vested interest. There are many people in need in our society. Find time to see how you can support people financially, academically, spiritually, emotionally and otherwise. Trust me, if you can carry out this assignment diligently, the opportunities and blessings that will come upon you will have a ripple effect.
Again, to attract opportunities and blessings into your life, consider having a mentor with a positive influence, connect with successful people, attend workshops, read voraciously, especially on areas of interest so you can gain expertise, and acquire general knowledge; practice gratitude by showing appreciation and kindness, and most importantly, pray and acknowledge the role of God as a higher power, depending on the faith and belief you practice.
In conclusion, life is generally about you, but not necessarily about you, it’s also about others. When you focus on yourself, your rewards might be less compared to when you focus on others. So, consider having a disposition of love, genuine affection, kindness, support and appreciation mixed with gratitude, and see how life will smile at you. Trust me, the universe will conspire to support you.
Henry Ukazu writes from New York. He works with the New York City Department of Correction as the Legal Coordinator. He’s the founder of Gloemi. He’s a Transformative Human Capacity and Mindset coach. He is also a public speaker, youth advocate, creative writer and author of Design Your Destiny Design Your and Unleash Your Destiny . He can be reached via info@gloemi.com
