Zimbabwean Businessman Promises $6.4 million for African Students to Attend Morehouse College
Strive Masiyiwa , Zimbabwean-born businessman and philanthropist, is making dreams into a reality for 10 students who will be attending Morehouse on a full, four year scholarship in the fall.
The young men, 2 from Burundi and 8 from Zimbabwe, are the first class of the new Ambassador Andrew Young International Scholars program. Masiyiwa, founder and chairman of Econet Wireless, wants African students to earn a world-class education that they can take home with them after graduation.
Masiyiwa believes Morehouse and Atlanta, the center of the civil rights movement with leaders such as Ambassador Andrew Young, will be the perfect place for the students to develop. “What I want to see coming from the student who comes out of the Morehouse system is a much more confident, self-assured, more complete young man who is not struggling to find out who he is in the world,” he said.
Forty African students in all, representing an investment of $6.4 million, will go through the program.
The students arrive in Atlanta on Aug. 5, four days before New Student Orientation so they can adjust to their new surroundings. All will have American roommates in the College’s Dubois International House residence hall.
