memorial

Tuesday 17^th September 2024 dealt us at theSOFTtribe, organizations and persons across Ghana, Western Africa and several other parts of the world a heavy blow. We woke to the news that the Co-Founder and Chairman of theSOFTtribe, Herman Chinery-Hesse had passed. Mr. Chinery Hesse was considered a global “tech giant”, strategic thinker with a vibrant and larger-than-life personality. He was a firm believer and advocate for Ghana and Africa realizing its full potential by pursuing development that is bolstered by technology.

Remembering Herman Kojo Chinery-Hesse and his Impact

A strong believer in the potential of his home country Ghana, and Africa as a continent.
He believed that technology was the path that Africa should pursue to advance its competitiveness and generate wealth. He is in fact quoted as saying. “If Africa misses the current global IT boat, there may never again be an opportunity for rapid wealth creation on the continent”.
Under his chairmanship, theSOFTtribe has won several awards including the Millennium Excellence Awards for IT in 2005; the Ghana Club 100 Award for the Most Innovative Company; the "SMS" App of the Year Award; the Mobile World Lifetime Achievement Award and the Best Entrepreneur in Information and Communication Technology.
He was named one of "20 Notable Black Innovators in Technology", one of Africa's "Top 20 Tech Influencers", among the 2Top 100 Most Influential Africans of our Time", and one of the "Top 100 Global Thinkers" by Foreign Policy Magazine.
Over the years, he was a featured speaker at several prestigious universities including the University of Oxford, Harvard Business School, Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Chatham House and Tech4Africa.
He has also served as a technology and innovation advisor to many Ghanaian presidents.
He was fondly described as the “Bill Gates of Africa”.
He was a TED Fellow and frequently featured in international media – including CNN, BBC and Al Jazeera, and in publications such as the Ghana Business & Finance Times, The Guardian, Forbes Africa, New African, IEEE Magazine, The Financial Times, among many others on technology matters in Africa.
He received the Distinguished Alumnus Award from Texas State University (his alma mater), the first and currently only African recipient of the award.
At the time of his death, he was working on a project "African Echoes", which is aimed at creating African audio books for global consumption, ensuring that for the first time ever Africans can tell their own stories to a worldwide audience.