Miko is dead

BRUSSELS - Rwandan businessman Miko Rwayitare, 66, is dead. The tycoon died Monday in a private clinic in the Belgian capital Brussels. According to reports, the telecommunication guru is said to have died of non-stop internal bleeding. “I got a call from a relative in Brussels confirming that he is dead but I don’t have details now and family members cannot be reached at the moment,” Servillien Sebasoni, a family friend, said.

Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Miko delivering a speech at a function in which he officially took over Hotel des Mille Collines last November. (File photo)

BRUSSELS - Rwandan businessman Miko Rwayitare, 66, is dead. The tycoon died Monday in a private clinic in the Belgian capital Brussels. According to reports, the telecommunication guru is said to have died of non-stop internal bleeding. "I got a call from a relative in Brussels confirming that he is dead but I don’t have details now and family members cannot be reached at the moment,” Servillien Sebasoni, a family friend, said.

Sebasoni is the director of communication at the Secretariat of the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) party.
He said that the body was still in Belgium.

"I do not know about the burial arrangements yet,” he said.

Miko recently bought Hotel des Mille Collines through MIKHOR chain of hotels.

He has close relatives in Rwanda his wife lives in South Africa, where the fallen investor had huge businesses.

Miko has been president and CEO of Telecel Telecommunication Company which holds 16 licenses and covering an approximate 40 per cent of sub Saharan cellular market excluding South Africa.

He held several portfolios in many South African investment consortiums, and is also credited for having been the first person to make a cellular call on the African continent in December 1986, according to UCT School of Business.

He also sat on the prestigious UN Development Programme Commission in 2004 studying private sector and development. The commission was tasked with finding alternatives of how business entrepreneurs could help reduce poverty in the world.

He also owns Mont Rochelle Winery which made him the first black person to wholly own a wine farm in South Africa. Miko’s death comes a few months after the demise of another prominent Kigali City investor Vedaste Rubangura.

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