Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani teenage education activist who survived a near-fatal attack by the Taliban, and her family have become millionaires in under four years due to sales of a book about her life and appearances on the global speaker circuit.
Yousafzai, 18, the youngest person to win the Nobel peace prize, shot to international fame after emerging defiant from the assassination attempt on a school bus in Pakistan’s Swat valley in October 2012 to continue her fight for girls’ rights.
Yousafzai, who received medical treatment in Britain where she now lives, is in constant demand globally, charging 152,000 dollars per speech compared with Desmond Tutu’s reported 85,000 dollars, according to U.S.-based Institute for Policy Studies.
“I Am Malala”, published in 2013, has sold 287,170 copies in Britain with a total value of about 2.2 million pounds (3 million dollars) and over 1.8 million copies worldwide, according to a spokesman from Nielsen Book Research.
Earlier this year, Malala urged world leaders at a conference in London to commit 1.4 billion dollars to give Syrian refugee children access to education.
Malala told a crowd in London’s Trafalgar Square last week at a memorial for murdered British lawmaker Jo Cox that the opposition Labour MP “showed us all that you can be small and still be a giant”. (Reuters/NAN)