This is part 9 of an 11-part series.
Cassava Technologies was created to house the new ambitions of Strive Masiyiwa, the Zimbabwean founder of Econet Wireless and elder statesman of African tech. Masiyiwa now wants to “create a digitally connected future that leaves no African behind”, Pemhiwa says. Cassava separates Econet Wireless from the digital infrastructure and digital services business – essentially the fibre network, cloud services and data centres.
The Econet Wireless ecosystem, comprising the mobile-money business in Zimbabwe and mobile-phone networks in Zimbabwe, Burundi, Lesotho and Botswana, produces around $250m of annual earnings before deductions, says Pemhiwa. “And that is really because of exchange rates –otherwise, that is easily half a billion dollars in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation,” he adds.
He estimates Cassava Technologies to be
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