23/02/2026
From Mr Strive Masiyiwa
How to build a global business
__How far can YOU go?
"Your story has gone around the world and we want you to help us set up a business in New Zealand." The man talking to me was Bill Osborne, a Māori from New Zealand. Bill was a legendary member of the revered All Blacks rugby team of the 1970s.
"Do you have a cell phone license?" I asked.
"No, not yet, but we believe it might be possible to do what you did in Zimbabwe."
"Oh, I don't want to fight another protracted legal battle," I said.
"We don't think it is necessary to go to court. We think we have a rock-solid case to ask for a license under the provisions of an old treaty called the Treaty of Waitangi of 1840."
"Give me a few days, Bill, I just need to consult our Father."
"Oh, I did not know your father was involved in your business?"
"I suppose you could say that." (How else was I to tell a total stranger that I wanted to spend some time praying about it?)
After a few weeks of prayer and fasting, I bought a ticket, and headed down to New Zealand, a 24+ hour trip from South Africa via Australia.
There I was met by a “Kiwi” investment banker who has become a lifelong friend and dear brother, Simon “Tex” Edwards. (New Zealanders are affectionately known as “Kiwis”).
Tex had made a lot of money investing for himself and his firm at the Econet Zimbabwe IPO and was amongst the people encouraging me to look beyond Africa for opportunities. His phone call (in the year 2000) is how it had all started.
“Strive, our country is issuing new mobile licenses in a public auction,” he’d said. “I have met a group of indigenous Māori people who believe they should be allowed to bid for such a license, but they have no idea how to do it. Since they don’t yet know anything about mobile phones, I suggested they work with you.”
“New Zealand?! That is too far, mate!” I retorted. “And besides, I don’t have the money.”
“Strive, you should at least hear them out. They have money, and they just need a technical partner to operate the network. You will get some carried interest with your equity.”
Tex was very persuasive and besides, I had never been to New Zealand. He explained that getting the license would require a special application on the grounds that the indigenous Māori people had a right to share in natural resources.
As in Botswana a few years before, we had to go head-to-head in an international public tendering process with some of the giants of the industry, such as Vodafone, Orange, and Telstra. It seemed a long shot… but we miraculously prevailed and thus was born Econet Wireless New Zealand!
With a small team of my engineers from our South Africa office, we set up our office in Auckland, New Zealand. Over the next few months, we recruited staff and built a network, just like we had done in Africa!
For the next decade, we built it into New Zealand’s third national operator. Raising capital for it was always tough and I had to bring in US investors who had operations in South America. They invited me to swap our shares into their business, and I became a minority partner in a bigger business.
I eventually sold my shares in that business and directed the capital into new ventures in Africa. We did “handsomely from that investment!” as some like to put it.
The company in New Zealand changed its name after we became a minority shareholder. It continues to operate to this day as “2Degrees”. Here’s the website: https://www.2degrees.nz/about-us
Yes, it was founded by some intrepid Africans!
“Ask of me, and I will give the nations for an inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for a possession.” [Psalm 2:8]
New Zealand was actually our second global business outside Africa. The first one was Econet Satellite Services UK, which I set up after I left Zimbabwe in March 2000. Today that company is Liquid Intelligent Technologies, part of our growing Cassava Technologies family of companies.
With just four employees in that early start-up, we obtained a license from the UK regulator which allowed us to operate an international earth station and to sell services in the UK. By the time I moved to the UK in 2010, those four founding staff members had grown to seventy people, and they were at the heart of a global business.
Today we have businesses across Africa, as well as Europe, India, the Middle East, South America, the UK, and the US. And I’m definitely not done... there's still China and Japan, as well as much more of Asia!
Why not, ?!
How far can YOU go?
Image: Photo by Ron Giling of Māori man with mobile phone in 2018, during Waitangi Day, the national day of New Zealand, commemorating the signing in 1840 of the Treaty of Waitangi.
