Zimbabwean telecoms entrepreneur and Econet founder Strive Masiyiwa has shared a deeply personal account of humiliation and perseverance during the early years of his struggle to establish a mobile telecommunications business in Zimbabwe, while cautioning young entrepreneurs against being discouraged by displays of wealth and success on social media.
In a reflective statement shared while visiting the United States, where he recently received an honorary doctorate from Princeton University, Masiyiwa recounted how he was once publicly mocked at a bank during the difficult years in which he was battling authorities for a mobile telecommunications licence in Zimbabwe.
According to Masiyiwa, he had spent hours waiting unsuccessfully for an appointment with a bank manager when a former acquaintance arrived with an entourage and was immediately granted access. “He spotted me in the queue and called out loudly: ‘Strive! How are you?! I hear you have fallen on hard times, my friend!’ then laughed loudly,” Masiyiwa said.
The billionaire businessman said the individual mocked his ambitions and dismissed his entrepreneurial vision, telling him that educated “dreamers” were destined to work for “real business people.”
Masiyiwa said the encounter came during one of the most difficult periods of his life, when he was attempting to secure support for a mobile telecommunications venture that many believed had no future. “After I failed to get that bank appointment, I went home and slumped to my knees and prayed for strength,” he said.
Using biblical imagery, Masiyiwa reflected on how some individuals appear to gain wealth and influence rapidly, only to disappear from prominence just as quickly. “I have seen such people who seem to flourish out of nowhere, and appear to have it all, spreading themselves like bay leaves on the surface of the water,” he wrote. “But then I looked and they had vanished just as suddenly.”
Masiyiwa urged aspiring entrepreneurs not to be distracted or demoralised by social media portrayals of success, saying many online platforms amplify unrealistic lifestyles and unhealthy comparisons. “DON’T LET IT GET TO YOU!” he said. “There is nowhere it is written that you have to stay on those platforms, or even follow them so that they enter your feeds.”
The remarks come months after Masiyiwa publicly revisited the long legal and political struggle that led to the birth of Econet Wireless Zimbabwe. Speaking at an extraordinary general meeting earlier this year, where shareholders voted overwhelmingly in favour of delisting Econet Wireless Zimbabwe from the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange, Masiyiwa recounted how the then state-owned Posts and Telecommunications Corporation rejected his 1993 proposal to introduce mobile telecommunications technology. At the time, Zimbabwe had only about 14,000 fixed telephone lines nationwide, leaving the vast majority of citizens without access to communication services.
Masiyiwa proposed a joint venture in which the state would retain majority control while he managed operations, but the proposal was dismissed on the grounds that there was “no future in mobile telecommunications.”
The rejection triggered a prolonged legal battle that lasted nearly five years and culminated in a landmark Supreme Court ruling that forced the government to issue a mobile telecommunications licence in 1997. Econet Wireless Zimbabwe officially launched in 1998, ending the country’s telecommunications monopoly and helping drive rapid expansion in mobile phone access across Zimbabwe and the wider region.
Today, Econet forms part of the broader Econet Group, which operates across multiple African markets and sectors.
