The company Mr Chinery-Hesse co-founded two decades ago, SOFTtribe Limited, may not have the global reach of Microsoft but it has become one of the best-known software houses in West Africa.
“I always wanted to be an entrepreneur. I thought that was a way to develop Africa and to get wealthy,” he told the BBC. Mr Chinery-Hesse gave up the opportunity to make a life for himself in the United States, where he studied, or in the United Kingdom, where he worked for a couple of years, choosing instead to start a business in Ghana.
He started writing software in a bedroom in his parents’ home, at a time when not many people were aware of the potential impact of the computer revolution in Africa. “It was very difficult. I didn’t want to go back abroad because second-class citizenship did not quite appeal to me,” he said…