Strive Masiyiwa is a Zimbabwean businessman, entrepreneur, and philanthropist. He overcame protracted government opposition to launch the mobile phone network Econet Wireless and Econet Media (Kwesé) in Zimbabwe.
Masiyiwa serves on a number of international boards, including Unilever, Rockefeller Foundation, the Council on Foreign Relations’ Global Advisory Board, the Africa Progress Panel, the UN Secretary General’s Advisory Board for Sustainable Energy, Morehouse College among others
Trevor Noah Born in Johannesburg, Noah began his career as a comedian, presenter, and actor in South Africa in 2002. He had a bit role on an episode of the South African soap opera Isidingo. This inspired him to start hosting his own radio show Noah’s Ark on Gauteng’s leading youth radio station, YFM.
Noah dropped his radio show and acting to focus on comedy. His stand-up comedy career attained international success, leading to appearances on American late-night talk shows and British panel shows.
In 2015 he succeeded long-time host Jon Stewart of The Daily Show and is set to remain in this position up until 2022. He is also credited as the griot in the Black Panther movie.
Dambisa Moyo is a Zambian-born Global Economist, Author. She studied chemistry at the University of Zambia, but got scholarship to American University in Washington, D.C. to finished her degree. Moyo received a BS in Chemistry from American University in 1991, and an MBA in Finance from the university in 1993.
Following her MBA from American University, Moyo worked at the World Bank from May 1993 to September 1995. After pursuing PhD degrees at Oxford, Moyo joined Goldman Sachs as a research economist and strategist in 2001 to 2008.
She currently serves on the boards of Barclays Bank, the financial services group, Seagate Technology, Chevron Corporation, the global miner Barrick Gold, and 3M Company.
Adebayo Ogunlesi is a Nigerian billionaire and investment banker who attended King’s College, Lagos, for his secondary education, then travelled to England to earn an honours degree from Oxford University in Philosophy, Politics and Economics.
He entered a joint law-business degree program at Harvard University in the late 1970s. Ogunlesi entered private practice for sometime with Cravath, Swaine and Moore in New York City after completing his law degree.
Prior to founding his company Global Infrastructure Partners, Ogunlesi spent 23 years at Credit Suisse where he held senior positions, including Executive Vice Chairman, and has worked on transactions in North and South America, the Caribbean, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia. He serves as a member of the board of directors of Goldman Sachs, Kosmos Energy, and Callaway Golf Company.
He was hired by President Donald Trump to join his cabinet as part of a policy and strategy forum to help in job creation.
Patrick Awuah is a Ghanaian engineer, educator, and entrepreneur. In 1997, Patrick Awuah left Microsoft after working there for almost a decade with the goal of returning to Ghana to educate the next generation of African leaders.
He enrolled at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, focusing his work on preparing a business plan for Ashesi. Awuah, Nina Marini, and other graduate students from Berkeley went to Ghana to do a feasibility study for opening a private university there. Awuah graduated with his MBA in 1999. That same year, he moved back to Ghana with his family to found Ashes University a liberal arts college that aims to educate Africa’s next generation of leader.
Patrick has won many awards as an individual and as the founder of Ashes University John. P. McNulty Prize (2009), Ghana’s 8th Most Respected CEO (2010), 50 Greatest Leaders in 2015 (Fortune Magazine 2015), MacArthur Fellowship (2015), Wise Prize for Education (2017).
Terari Trent is a scholar, humanitarian, motivational speaker, educator, author, and founder of Tererai Trent International.
As a young girl in rural Zimbabwe, Tererai Trent lived without running water and electricity and had no hope for her future. She was not allowed to go to school as a child due to poverty as well as being female. However, desperate to learn, she secretly did her brother’s homework from where she learnt how to read and write.
Soon, Tererai’s secret was exposed, and the teacher begged her father to let her learn. Tererai attended only two terms before she was forced to marry at age 11. By age 18, she was the mother of three.
Her dream to have a BS degree, master’s, a PhD was achieved amidst daunting oppositions and she’s is now a symbol of hope in her village.
Mo Ibrahim is a Sudanese-British billionaire businessman. He worked for several telecommunications companies, before founding Celtel, which when sold had over 24 million mobile phone subscribers in 14 African countries.
In 2007 he initiated the Mo Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership, which awards a $5 million initial payment, and a $200,000 annual payment for life to African heads of state who deliver security, health, education and economic development to their constituents and democratically transfer power to their successors. Ibrahim has pledged to give at least half of his wealth to charity by joining The Giving Pledge.
Tony Elumelu is a Nigerian economist, entrepreneur, and philanthropist. He is the Chairman of Heirs Holdings, the United Bank for Africa, Transcorp and founder of The Tony Elumelu Foundation.
He obtained a bachelor’s degree from Ambrose Alli University and a master of science degree from the University of Lagos all in the field of economics.
Elumelu is the originator of the term Africapitalism. According to him, Africapitalism is an economic philosophy that embodies the private sector’s commitment to the economic transformation of Africa through long-term investments that create both economic prosperity and social wealth.
Elumelu sees Africans taking charge of the value-adding sectors and ensuring that those value-added processes happen in Africa, not through nationalisation or government policies, but because there is a generation of private sector entrepreneurs who have the vision, the tools and the opportunity to shape the destiny of the continent.
Adichie Chiamanda Ngozi is a Nigerian novelist, writer of short stories, and nonfiction. She has written the novels Purple Hibiscus (2003), Half of a Yellow Sun (2006), and Americanah (2013), the short story collection The Thing Around Your Neck (2009), and the book-length essay We Should All Be Feminists (2014).
Adichie studied medicine and pharmacy at the University of Nigeria for a year and a half. During this period, she edited The Compass, a magazine run by the university’s Catholic medical students. At the age of 19, Adichie left Nigeria for the United States to study communications and political science at Drexel University in Philadelphia.
Ms. Adichie has been invited to speak around the world. Her 2009 TED Talk, The Danger of A Single Story, is now one of the most-viewed TED Talks of all time. Her 2012 talk We Should All Be Feminists has a started a worldwide conversation about feminism, and was published as a book in 2014.
Anas Aremeyaw Anas is an undercover journalist, attorney
and private detective working in Ghana and across the African continent.
In disguise, he finds his way into asylums, brothels, prisons, orphanages and villages, where he methodically gathers evidence for ard-hitting stories — then presents the evidence to authorities to see criminals prosecuted.
In President Barack Obama’s 2009 policy address in Ghana, he singled out Anas and commended him as “a courageous journalist who risked his life to report the truth.” Prior to that, his work on human trafficking won him the US State Department Hero Award in 2008.
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