The Bill Gates of Africa: Herman Chinery-Hesse and his Ghanian Tech Revolution

To most people, the tech giants of the world are corporations like Microsoft, Apple, and IBM. Make room for one more that will soon be able to rival these Silicon Valley staples: theSOFTribe, founded by 43 year old Ghanian Herman Chinery-Hesse.

Born in Dublin to Ghanian diplomats, Chinery Hesse lived a privilaged life that allowed him to have numerous childhood homes such as Geneva, Zambia and Uganda.

Despite moving around the world, his family maintained a deep aligence to their true home in Ghana.

Growing up, Chinery-Hesse had a mild interest in school. He was good at it and had a special talent for math and science, but was not enthralled by it.

Like many young Ghanians from wealthy families, he was sent abroad for his high school and college education.

For the next few years, Texas became his new home.This time in his life proved to be pivotal for his future.

While in the United States, he considered himself somewhat of an outsider. He was frequently teased with racist remarks, such as the n-word, from both whites and blacks, "America is the most racist place I've ever been."

His experience was not entirely bad, however. Being in a rural part of such a developed country opened his eyes to the possibilities of entrepenurialism.

He saw underdeveloped regions transform within years, which gave him hope for the future of Ghana, "I saw open spaces where there was nothing but cows, and then four years later, it's a whole community." Thus, his time in Texas ignited a spark within him, "It was my entrepreneurial conversion...I realized that the opportunities were everywhere."

After completing his degree in engineering, he came back to his native Ghana. At a graduation party, he announced to family and friends that he was home for good and they all thought he was crazy. People who had the opportunity to study abroad were usually trying to find a way out of Ghana, not a way to come back.

Looking around him, he realized thart his country was devoid of the  technological infrastructure it needed to develop independently, "Technology is the only way for Africa to get rich. We don't have the proper infrastructure and we can't compete in manufacturing."

To help remedy this problem, Chinery-Hesse turned to the world of software.

He started small but yet ambitious. He began his work not in any sort of office, but in his bedroom of his parents house on his PC.

 His first job was to write code for a program for a travel agency in Accra.

After having this accomplishment under his belt, he dreamed bigger and asked to take this to the next level. Thus, Chinery-Hesse and his high school friend Joe Jackson developed this original software into a more sophisticated sales tracking program.

Together, they started making a small name for themselves and they moved on to bigger and bigger projects.

Next, they were writing programs to computerize large chicken farms. This evolved into an inventory management system which they were late able to sell to grocery stores across Ghana.

He and his partners knew that they had something very special coming together.

Thus, in 1991, they officially founded their first software company called theSOFTribe. They became pioneers: their company was the very first software company in Ghana.

Specializing in highly efficient yet simple products, theSOFTribe became the largest software company in Ghana and certainly one of the biggest in West Africa. It employs around 100 people and has an ever expanding list of clients such as major global corporations like Ford Foundation and Nestle.

Establishing such a succesful software company is an accomplishment in any country due to the presence of giants like Microsoft and Apple that seem to dominate the industry.

Doing it in a country like Ghana is even more impressive, given the country's troubled economic past.

Due to repressive government economic policies, between the years 1970 and 1990, Ghana's GDP fell 2.1% oer year.

Despite this, he was still able to establish a name for himself as one of West Africa's economic giants.

The company continues to grow, with many new products soon to be released such as "Black Star Line" (BSL for short) which is a website designed to be similar to amazon.com and paypal.com. It is essentially an online marketplace for African entrepreneurs to sell their products and crafts. The site will also allow them to receive payments from the online payment method from computers or mobile phones (which is very conducive for African markets being that most people have cell phones over PCs).  The aim of the site is to raise the quality of life for African craftsmen and women by allowing them greater access to global markets, "This system is going to allow someone living in a village who makes 20 sweaters a week to export them at $10 a sweater...that's $200 a week."

Herman Chinery-Hesse's vision is ever-expanding. He hopes to utilize the power of  IT to transform development in Africa,"If Africa mises the current global IT boat, there may never again be an opportunity for rapid wealth creation on the continent."

The sky's the limit for him, and he is just getting started.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/26/tech/herman-chinery-hesse-technology/index.html?hpt=wo_bn7

http://www.inc.com/magazine/20081001/meet-the-bill-gates-of-ghana.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/specials/1631_judges/page5.shtml