Higherlife Foundation

Higherlife Foundation
	the logo
Founder(s)	Tsitsi and Strive Masiyiwa
Type	Local NGO
Founded	1996
Headquarters	Harare
Key people	Tsitsi Masiyiwa
Area served	Zimbabwe
Mission	Invest in Africa’s future by empowering vulnerable children through education and creating opportunities for highly talented young people.
Employees	200 (2018)
Owner	Tsitsi and Strive Masiyiwa
Motto	Raising Africa's Future Leaders Through Education
Website	higherlifefoundation.com
	References: Contacts: 077 222 2922, info@higherlifefoundation.com

Higherlife Foundation is a local Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) in Zimbabwe focused mostly on the education scholarships and healthcare, specifically diseases outbreak. It was founded by Tsitsi and Strive Masiyiwa. It is mostly funded by the Econet Wireless Group which was also founded by Strive Masiyiwa. Higherlife Foundation is one of the largest local NGOs in the country. By 2018 the Higher Life Foundation had provided scholarships for 200,000 children in Zimbabwe. ^[1] Higherlife Foundation also has operations in Lesotho and Burundi.

Background

Higherlife Foundation was founded in 1996 when Tsitsi and Strive Masiyiwa decided to help orphans who had lost their parents to the HIV and AIDS pandemic in the 90s. In 1998, Higherlife Foundation entered the health and crisis relief area through launching the National Health Care Trust following growing concerns about the state of Zimbabwe’s healthcare delivery system and the emergence of a health crisis worsened by an unprecedented cholera epidemic. The foundation also awarded 200 scholarships to the junior doctors' medical school to help beef up manpower which was desperately needed to improve Zimbabwe’s health situation.

In 2005 the foundation introduced the Joshua Nkomo Scholarship fund for talented and gifted Zimbabwean students.

In 2006 Higherlife introduced the Christian Community Partnership Trust, which was launched to help transform lives in local communities through the gospel of Jesus Christ.

In 2008 the Waterford Kamhlaba scholarship launched in a bid to offer first class education to beneficiaries on the Joshua Nkoma scholarship.

In 2013, the foundation facilitated the introduction of mobile clinics that provided free access to health care for 8564 men, women and children.

In 2014, Muzinda Hub was launched as a tech hub in Harare. The Hub was eventually taken over by Econet Wireless Zimbabwe as a commercial business unit.

In 2016, the foundation introduced the Ruzivo learning platform, which is an online learning platform, seeking to improve access to quality education through online technologies. The venture was also taken over by Econet Wireless as commercial business unit.

Operations & Leadership

In Decembeer 2018, Strive Masiyiwa commented on how Higherlife foundation operates:

Now here is something I want to put on record:
1. Higher Life Foundation and the Joshua Nkomo Scholarship program, is entirely the brain child of my wife Tsitsi Masiyiwa.

She is the one who set them up and EVERY OTHER PROGRAM and manages them on a full time basis.
She just comes to me for the money. She is also the one who finds all the donor partners who we work with throughout Africa.
I have never seen the foundation, and I have never participated in any of its activities, beyond providing the money. I’m not even a board member.
I have not been to Zimbabwe for 18 and half years, but in all those years my wife insisted she would continue to go there, and was once detained and questioned by Mugabe’s police for an entire day.
She travels the length and breadth of Zimbabwe every year supporting orphaned and vulnerable children, ^[1]