Herman Chinery-Hesse

Herman Eamon Owula Kojo Chinery-Hesse (18 November 1963 – 17 September 2024) was a Ghanaian technology businessman and the founder of theSOFTtribe, the oldest and largest software company in Ghana. He was popularly known as "the Bill Gates of Africa". Chinery-Hesse also made the list of 15 Black STEM Innovators. In March 2019, he was introduced as the Commonwealth Chair for Business and Technology Initiatives for Africa.

Biography

Chinery-Hesse was born in Dublin, Ireland on 18 November 1963 to Lebrecht James Nii Tettey Chinery-Hesse and Mary Chinery-Hesse, née Blay. His maternal grandfather was Robert Samuel Blay, a judge of the Supreme Court of Ghana in the First Republic.

He was educated at the Ridge Church School

In 1991 Chinery-Hesse co-founded theSOFTtribe, an African software house.

Chinery-Hesse was married to lawyer, Sadia Chinery-Hesse (née Clarke) and they had two children.

Death He died on 17 September 2024, at the age of 60, after reportedly suffering a cardiac arrest.

Recognition Chinery-Hesse and his company have won the Ghana Millennium Excellence Award for IT, He also won the Distinguished Alumnus Award from Texas State University, the first African recipient of the award.

Chinery-Hesse was a TED speaker