Strive Masiyiwa

Telecoms and fibre. Masiyiwa fought a five-year court battle against Zimbabwe's state monopoly to launch Econet in 1998, then took the business into other countries, including Botswana, Lesotho, Burundi and an early stake in Nigeria. His later company Liquid built fibre-optic cable networks across borders, connecting landlocked countries to undersea cables. He leads Econet and Cassava Technologies as executive chairman.