Those who coined the short-hand term, “The Bill Gates of Ghana” to describe the late Ghanaian I.T. [Information Technology] entrepreneur, Herman Chinery- Hesse, had more justification for doing so than most of those who use similar comparisons.
The contributions of Chinery-Hesse, who sadly passed in mid- September 2024, was in ways similar to those of the American IT magnate, Bill Gates. When asked, he said that he could not match Bill Gates when it came to the size of their bank balances – but that was all.
The software he created for African institutions and companies was so terrain-friendly that Microsof went into partnership with him in marketing it.
Chinery-Hesse’s uniqueness is that, unlike Bill Gates, his natural environment was in a financially and technologically parched territory. Drawbacks include a primitive technical infrastructure that is, ironically under the control of mainly short-sighted clients who have to be tiresomely persuaded to accept ingenious products specifically created to liberate their countries from dependence on systems developed for use in foreign environments.
