They Stripped Him Naked in a Jail Cell. Now He Owns Africa’s 'Invisible Pipes.'

The year was 1993, and Strive Masiyiwa was sitting in a Zimbabwean jail cell, stripped of his clothes and his dignity. He had been interrogated for hours, left in the dark to wonder if he would ever see his family again. His crime was simple but, to the authorities, unforgivable: he wanted to start a mobile phone company. At the time, the Zimbabwean government held an ironclad monopoly on telecommunications through the Posts and Telecommunications Corporation (PTC), and they weren't about to let a 32-year-old engineer with "reckless" ideas challenge their power. That night, thinking he was a "dead man," Masiyiwa prayed in the car as he was driven to an unknown location, only to be released back into a world that would soon see him as a hero.  

Masiyiwa’s journey didn't start in a prison cell; it started with a profound sense of impatience. After returning to Zimbabwe in 1984 with an engineering degree from the University of Wales, he joined the state-owned PTC as a senior engineer. He quickly realised that the system was designed for the privileged few, not the masses. He grew frustrated by a bureaucracy where a village of 200 people had an exchange serving only three subscribers, a police station and a crocodile farm. Feeling he was "too impatient for the pace," he resigned in 1988. He started his own electrical contracting firm, Retrofit Engineering, with just $75. Within five years, it was one of the country's leading industrial firms, but Masiyiwa saw a bigger wave coming: the mobile revolution.  

When he approached the government to launch a mobile network, they didn't just say no; they threatened him with prosecution. But Masiyiwa, urged on by a "reckless" young lawyer, decided to do something unheard of: he sued the state. The legal battle lasted five gruelling years. To fund the case, Masiyiwa had to sell off the assets of his successful engineering firm, and thereby almost went bankrupt. During this "strife," he and his wife Tsitsi turned to their faith, borrowing a second-hand Bible and reading it cover-to-cover in two weeks. They made a pact: if God granted them the license, they would dedicate their lives to supporting the poor.  

In 1997, the Supreme Court of Zimbabwe delivered a landmark ruling. They agreed with Masiyiwa that a state monopoly on phones was a violation of the constitutional right to "freedom of expression". This single court case didn't just launch Econet Wireless in 1998; it acted as a hammer that shattered telecom monopolies across the entire African continent, inviting private investment and transforming the lives of millions who had never heard a telephone ring.  

But Masiyiwa was just getting started. He moved his family to South Africa in 2000 and looked at the map of the continent. He realised that while mobile phones were becoming common, the internet remained a "luxury" because data had to travel to Europe and back via expensive satellite links, a phenomenon he called the "Satellite Tax". To solve this, he founded Liquid Intelligent Technologies and began a decades-long project to dig 110,000 kilometres of trenches across Africa.  

While other tech giants were focused on apps, Masiyiwa was focused on "invisible pipes". His teams undertook some of the most technically daunting feats in history, including a 2,600-kilometre crossing of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). This wasn't just about laying cable; it was about navigating the second-largest rainforest on Earth and some of the world's most difficult terrain. Masiyiwa’s team employed over 5,000 local people to hack through the jungle and lay the fibre that now connects the Atlantic Ocean to the Indian Ocean. This infrastructure has fundamentally re-engineered how data flows in Africa, reducing latency from 600ms to under 50ms, making real-time banking and video conferencing a reality.  

Nowhere was this technical infrastructure more vital than in his home country. In 2011, Zimbabwe was reeling from hyperinflation so severe that one-hundred-trillion-dollar notes were injected into circulation and became worthless by sunset. When the country eventually dollarized, it faced a new crisis: a total lack of physical change. Masiyiwa launched EcoCash, a digital currency that saved the economy from total collapse. People who had spent days in bank queues suddenly realised they could pay for groceries with a simple text message. By 2017, EcoCash was handling over 80% of all financial transactions in Zimbabwe, transforming a nation starved of cash into a pioneer of the "cashless society".  

Today, at 63, Masiyiwa’s vision has turned toward the most critical frontier of the 21st century: Artificial Intelligence and Data Sovereignty. He is currently leading a $720 million initiative to build "AI Factories" in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt, and Morocco. These are not just data centres; they are high-performance computing hubs powered by 3,000 NVIDIA GPUs. Masiyiwa’s logic is simple: "We cannot afford to be spectators in the AI revolution". Through Africa Data Centres, he is ensuring that African health records, financial data, and agricultural patterns stay on African soil.  

Beyond the wires and the wealth, Masiyiwa’s heart beats for the next generation. Through the Higherlife Foundation, which he and his wife Tsitsi co-founded, they have provided scholarships to over 350,000 orphaned and vulnerable children. These children are not called "beneficiaries"; they are called "History Makers". Masiyiwa also uses his massive social media following, over 5.7 million people on Facebook, to mentor young entrepreneurs, sharing lessons on "Enterprise Building" rather than just profit.  

Whether he is fighting Ebola in West Africa, coordinating the continent’s COVID-19 response as an AU Special Envoy, or serving on the boards of Netflix and Unilever, Strive Masiyiwa remains a man driven by a singular mission: to provide every African with the tools to connect to the global economy. As he recently reflected on seeing GPUs being installed by engineers, he noted it felt just as exhilarating as when his first mobile system arrived in 1996. It is a journey that has come full circle, from a man who was stripped naked in a cell for wanting a telephone network, to the man who built the digital backbone of a continent.  

Lessons for Budding Makers

Strive Masiyiwa's journey offers valuable insights for aspiring creators and entrepreneurs:

1. The Problem is the Opportunity: Masiyiwa teaches that instead of looking for a "business idea," one should look for a systemic problem; for example, he built Liquid Telecom not to sell fibre, but to solve the "satellite tax" that was making African internet too expensive for the masses.  
2. Integrity as Capital: Masiyiwa’s five-year refusal to pay bribes or back down from a legal battle demonstrates that character is an enduring form of capital that attracts world-class partners and long-term success, far outlasting quick wins made through corruption.