Malala Yousafzai Becomes Millionaire With Memoir Sales, Global Appearances

Pakistani education activist Malala Yousafzai, 18, is now a millionaire thanks to strong sales of her memoir and her appearances on the global speaker circuit. In 2012, Yousafzai was shot thrice in the head by a Taliban gunman on a schoolbus in Pakistan’s Swat valley after being singled out for demanding education for girls in the terror stronghold.

She now lives in Britain, where she received medical treatment, and published her memoir, “I Am Malala,” in 2013. The book sold 287,170 copies in Britain with a total value of about 2.2 million pounds ($3 million) and over 1.8 million copies worldwide, Thompson Reuters Foundation quoted a spokesman from Nielsen Book Research as saying.

The teenager is the youngest person to win the Nobel Peace Prize and is in constant demand globally, charging $152,000 per speech, compared with South African social rights activist and former Anglican bishop Desmond Tutu’s reported $85,000, according to U.S.-based Institute for Policy Studies, Reuters reported.

“Since the publication of Malala’s book, Malala and her family have donated more than $1 million to charities, mostly for education-focused projects across the world, including Pakistan,” Yousafzai’s family said in a statement emailed to the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Yousafzai has set up the Malala Fund to support girls’ education projects in developing countries. Along with that, her family—father Ziauddin Yousafzai and mother Toor Pekai — also established Salarzai Ltd. in 2013 to protect the rights to her life story.

Last year the company turned over 1.1million pounds, and the teenager will have to pay a tax bill of 200,000 pounds, the Sun reported.

Malala, who follows Islam, also hit out at Donald Trump’s plan to ban Muslims from entering America, calling the comments “tragic” and “full of hatred.”

Earlier this year, Malala urged world leaders at a conference in London to commit $1.4 billion to educating Syrian refugee children.