Herman Chinery-Hesse: Ghana’s Bill Gates Reported Dead At Age 61

• Ghanaian businessman and founder of SOFTtribe Herman Kojo Chinery-Hesse has passed away
• The tech giant reportedly passed away after suffering a cardiac arrest on September 17
• Chinery-Hesse attended Mfantsipim School in Cape Coast and the Texas State University

Ghanaian businessman and founder of SOFTtribe Herman Kojo Chinery-Hesse has been reported dead at age 61.

The tech mogul was often described as the Bill Gates of Ghana.

Citi News reported that he suffered a cardiac arrest on September 16, leading to his passing at the age of 61.

He had long advocated for Africa's development and told the BBC in 2011 that his company's success was partly due to a desire to meet Africa's unique needs.

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"I think that there is so much opportunity in Africa, there is so much underdevelopment, there is so much that hasn't been done, that it's not rocket science."

Yaw Antwi, a producer on the Building Bytes podcast, told YEN.com.gh that he would be remembered for his role in promoting digitalisation.

"I think the majority of his work was with Softribe and promoting a digitalisation agenda using private and public sector partnerships."

Chinery-Hesse was born in Ireland and grew up in Tanzania, Uganda, Sierra Leone, and Switzerland.

He attended Mfantsipim School in Cape Coast and later got his first degree in Industrial Technology from Texas State University.

From the US, he moved to the UK, where he worked as a manufacturing engineer. He returned to Ghana in 1990 and founded his software company, SOFTtribe, in 1991. It went on to become one of the leading software houses in Africa.

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He was named as one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers by Foreign Policy Magazine.

When Chinery-Hesse was honoured by Google

Google recently honoured Chinery-Hesse by naming a meeting room after him at its headquarters.

In a Facebook post at the time, he said he did not know a meeting room at the company's HQ was named after him until one of his friends informed him.

Ghanaian joins Google as a software engineer

YEN.com.gh also reported that an alumnus of the University of Ghana joined Google and worked on improving Google Maps in Africa.

Abigail Annkah said she got interested in coding after discovering a course called Computational Maths in her second year at Legon.

She was an Artificial Intelligence resident for two years before landing a permanent job at Google, helping with one of their applications.

Proofread by Bruce Douglas, senior copy editor at YEN.com.gh

Source: YEN.com.gh