What do electrical engineering, telecommunications and agriculture have in common? They arouse the passion of Strive Masiyiwa: Thirty years ago, he started an electrical installation company with $75, later riding the telecommunications wave as a pioneer. Today he is committed to transforming African agriculture.
Jan Rübel is author at Zeitenspiegel Reportagen, a columnist at Yahoo and writes for national newspapers and magazines. He studied History and Middle Eastern Studies.
Dozens of mobile phones light up softly like fireflies when a small man in a black shirt and dark corduroy trousers enters the room. As he walks to the front row and sits down, the small devices send messages. #StriveInBerlin is the hashtag on Twitter, where they are all united again.
Then a show begins. The man walks up to a desk on the stage and exclaims: ‘Africa is on the move; the signs are everywhere. The future can only be bright!’ Sitting in the Senate Hall of the Berlin Humboldt University, where the paintings of Nobel laureates hang and scientists like Albert Einstein once lectured, the mobile phones and their owners seem to absorb every word.
Today, a cardboard at the entrance proclaims: ‘Youth Town Hall with Strive Masiyiwa’. The man is here to answer questions. Many arms are raised, but he says to a student who asks him for advice: ‘Don’t sit down. How come you ask so many questions? You are the best we have. Instead of asking questions, you should answer them yourself!’
Agrobusiness is the next big thing.
Strive Masiyiwa, 57, is not a preacher or a guru. He is an entrepreneur. And yet he captivates his audience as if he wanted to provide every single person with everything it needs to revolutionise African agriculture: ‘I don’t want you all to become farmers, but we'll see each other back in Africa.’ The audience: Mostly doctoral candidates from Africa doing research at German universities. And Masiyiwa: Billionaire, philanthropist and chairman of AGRA, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa. Masiyiwa made his money in telecommunications. But this evening he is talking about agriculture.
‘As an entrepreneur, I want to know the customer’, he says. ‘This time it's the smallholder.’ Agriculture in Africa is strongly influenced by them. ‘Agrobusiness is the next big thing’, he exclaims. AGRA is an organisation that wants to advance the transformation of African agriculture. Founded in 2006, it advocates for greater productivity and entrepreneurship in the agricultural sector, with the goal of: The continent needs to be able to feed itself, reduce expensive food imports and create jobs; the latter is urgently needed for a rapidly growing population. No wonder AGRA and Masiyiwa fit so well together – they both think big. ‘When farmers work the soil with a hoe, that's not romantic – it's tragic’, he says angrily. ‘Hoes belong in the museum!’
The audience is typing along. Masiyiwa is not a random rich man who now wants to give something back to the world. According to Facebook, he is the business leader with the most followers worldwide. How does he do that? ‘When I step on the platform, I don’t talk about my business in a top-down fashion – I just tell stories.’
With a start-up capital of just 75 Dollar the story begins
His own story sounds like that of an impatient and visionary boy. Born in Zimbabwe, he got a job at the state-owned telephone company in his mid-twenties, but left soon thereafter. ‘I never got answers to the simplest questions’, he will say later during a coffee break between two appointments, ‘the bureaucracy was inflexible’. Masiyiwa was young, single and free. He borrowed money from his family and friends, and with a start-up capital of just $75, the graduate electrical engineer opened his own company. ‘I already knew how to think like an entrepreneur; my mother ran a furniture shop.’ This was at a time when a construction boom began in Zimbabwe, and Masiyiwa's company with its electrical installation work grew with it. He says: He never intended to grow a big business but simply pursued the two questions: ‘What is possible? And what do the people need?’
He quickly realised: In the nineties of the last century, just one per cent of Africans had a telephone. In Zimbabwe, back then people had to wait 20 years for a connection. Masiyiwa applied for licenses, filed complaints for years against monopolies and recognised the potential of mobile technology for the rural African countries early on. The rest is history. Today, he runs companies that invest in telecommunications, but also in financial services, renewable energies, television and other media in 20 countries.
40,000 children receive educational scholarships from his foundation, and in 1998 the World Junior Chamber of Commerce named him one of ‘10 most outstanding young leaders of the world’. In 2014, Fortune Magazine named him one of the 50 most influential business leaders in the world. And now AGRA. Its co-founder, the former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, convinced him to join; he often talks about him here in Berlin.
Strive Masiyiwa during a press conference in Berlin
It's late in the evening; the speech and the question and Q&A session are over. But young people still surround Masiyiwa; students stand in front of him and ask questions, while other students stand behind him in awe, and nobody wants to step aside. They wait for an opportunity to snap a selfie. But the next appointment is due. He says once again: ‘I'll see you at home!’
The next day, a press conference is on the agenda at noon. He will be joined by the Parliamentary Secretary of State Maria Flachsbarth from the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). Everyone is waiting for – Masiyiwa. He rushes in, but with a face that does not show any signs of stress. ‘There are many fertile soils in Africa’, Flachsbarth begins, ‘and Africa exports jobs.’ She enjoys working with AGRA, she adds. Then Masiyiwa opens up with one of his anecdotes involving Kofi Annan.
‘In 2007, I was travelling with him in Mali. The local farmers showed us their harvest, which was actually good, but they also said: ‘The weather is changing.’ They did not know the word climate change, but they were aware of its consequences. Furthermore, we saw only the women working in the fields while the young men were hanging around the village. Then Kofi said to me: ‘If we don’t do something for the young men, there will be problems.’ Six months later, serious riots broke out in Mali.’
AGRA is an accelerator, not a displacer.
Therefore, AGRA supports a transformation of the agricultural sector. ‘The study of old crops like cassava, sorghum and millet, which are more resilient in the wake of climate change’, he says. Flachsbarth reminisces about how crop yields in Germany looked 100 years ago, ‘20 tonnes of wheat per hectare; today it's only 80 tonnes’. Masiyiwa picks up the ball, and for the first time his otherwise quiet, calm and confident voice gets a bit louder here in Berlin. ‘There are a few myths about AGRA’, he grumbles. ‘However, in reality we don’t work with any big companies in the seed sector, but only with small producers. AGRA is an accelerator, not a displacer.’
Flachsbarth and Masiyiwa run each other for a second time in the evening. The BMZ presents a discussion forum, and the Secretary of State speaks in front of about 200 guests in the hall about the common goals and about the need for innovations in agriculture: ‘Africa shares two per cent of the global trade’. When Masiyiwa starts his lecture, he captures the attention of everyone in the hall with the first sentence. ‘Did you take my speech?’, he asks Flachsbarth. And again he tells the anecdote with Annan in Mali; it captives him. ‘If water ceases because of the weather, and the men stop working – that’s when the extremists show up’, the businessman says to summarise the political situations.
Masiyiwa makes a move and is already on this way to the airport. He has fallen out with the rulers of Zimbabwe and now lives in London. Or rather everywhere. And strangely he remains relaxed. For him, his efforts over the last few years is more than just payback.
For years, he has been a sort of cult figure for many young Africans. He reaches them through digital media with his calls to action and to self-empowerment. His charisma, his wealth, his political influence – all of it arouses desires and attempts to draw his attention to various projects. But he prefers working with AGRA due to the relevance to the continent, necessity and opportunities. It’s as if it drags him, the communications service provider, into the fields instead: All that’s happening with agriculture in Africa, he says, ‘reminds me of the beginning of the mobile boom.’
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Every child in Germany knows Ritter Sport – but most of the children harvesting cocoa on western African plantations have never even eaten chocolate. Can a chocolate manufacturer change the world? Conversation with Alfred Ritter about the power and powerlessness of a businessman.
Oxfam’s supermarket scorecard, which is in its third year, shows one thing in particular - it works! Supermarkets can change their business policies and focus more on the rights of those people around the world who plant and harvest food. However, this does not happen without pressure.
The Federal Government is fine-tuning a law that would require companies to ensure human rights – a supply chain law. What are the consequences for the agricultural sector? Dr Bettina Rudloff from the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) discusses linking policy fields with added value.
Why aren’t bars of chocolate made where cocoa is grown? Author Frank Brunner analyses the industry’s fragile value chain from the plantation to the supermarket
‘Fair’ and ‘sustainable’ are key words in Germany’s EU Council Presidency. At the same time, Germany pursues ‘modernization’ of the WTO and ‘rapid progress’ on free trade agreements. Are these goals really compatible? Can we be concerned about fairness and sustainability while continuing with ‘business as usual’?
In most African countries, the infection COVID-19 is likely to trigger a combined health and food crisis. This means: In order to cope with this unprecedented crisis, consistently aligning our policies to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is more important than ever, our author maintains.
COVID-19 has unprecedented effects on the world. As always, the most vulnerable are the hardest hit, both at home and - especially - abroad. A joint appeal by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Development and Cooperation (BMZ) and the Department for International Development (DFID).
Enabling smallholders to trade across regions and borders promotes food security and economic growth. Although everyone is calling for exactly that, implementation is still difficult
As President of the IABM cooperative in Muhanga, Alphonsine Mukankusi is not simply focused on the figures. She has learned how to deal with people and how to take on responsibility. At the same time, her work helps her to come to terms with the past
A report by Bettina Rudloff and Annette Weber (SWP)
The Corona-Virus exacerbates existing crises through conflict, climate, hunger and locusts in East Africa and the Horn of Africa. What needs to be done in these regions? To face these challenges for many countries, all of these crises need to be captured in their regional context.
At the 8th German-African Agribusiness Forum (GAAF) representatives from business and politics discussed successful investment models to improve living conditions in Africa.
An Artikel by the Initiative for Sustainable Agricultural Supply Chains (INA)
A study published by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) examines the differences between globally traded agricultural commodities and domestic niche products in terms of economic, environmental and social impact on the region of origin. The results provide new evidence to make supply chains more sustainable.
Taking a look at the data (as of February 11th 2022) what the current price hike means for world hunger and what can be done to prevent from another food crisis.
Until Easter 2022, GIZ publishes a new episode every fortnight introducing people who are committed to fair and sustainable cocoa in Côte d'Ivoire and Germany.
A Contribution of the 'Initiative for Sustainable Agricultural Supply Chains' (INA)
Fair Trade organisations and the Initiative for Sustainable Agricultural Supply Chains (INA) have launched the #ichwillfair campaign during COP26 to highlight the link between global supply chains and climate change.
The oceans are important for our food supply, but they are overfished. To halt this trend the global community is now taking action against illegal fishing. Journalist Jan Rübel spoke with Francesco Marí, a specialist for world food, agricultural trade and maritime policy at "Brot für die Welt," and others.
A Contribution by Dr. Fatima Olanike Kareem and Dr. Olayinka Idowu Kareem
High agricultural prices affect developed and developing countries alike, but the problem is aggravated for the latter through the lack of or inadequate resilience measures. Dr. Fatima Olanike Kareem, AKADEMIYA2063, and Dr. Olayinka Idowu Kareem, University of Hohenheim, explain what can be done to mitigate the negative effects on food security.
With the annual topic "Earth’s well, all’s well!", Fairtrade Germany is focusing on the concept of agroecology at all levels - and is thus taking the next step towards achieving greater global sustainability. At the Green Week trade fair, Fairtrade Germany will show how this can be achieved taking the cocoa supply chain as an example.
Many of ALDI SOUTH Group supply chains begin in the Global South. How does the food retailer assume its responsibility? Questions for Sally Roach, Senior Manager - International Sustainability Department at the ALDI SOUTH Group.
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