This week the world lost Herman Chinery-Hesse, oft called “the Bill Gates of Africa”.
But the Ghanaian tech entrepreneur was much more than that. I was introduced to him by his niece, my friend and BloggingGhana cofounder Sandra Chinery-Hesse and he seemed to accept me as part of the family from day 1.
He was controversial and always walked his own path. He was an organised humanist in one of the world’s most religious countries. He was innovative and always found a way. He followed his body clock for working hours (and cleverly avoided the Accra traffic) and was never seen before noon. He would often accept visitors lying down on a bench resting, not getting up, but rather throwing jokes at you from his horizontal position. At the tender age of 30, he told me some hard truths about midlife that I could only appreciate recently.
In addition to being unapologetically himself, he possessed – in my view -the most prized quality of them all – JOIE DE VIVRE. Alongside being one of Ghana’s more successful entrepreneurs, he loved to laugh, joke, make merry and party. My friend Ruth Wade Kwakwa wrote in her remembrance post that he was living LARGE, which I found just right.
Just last week we had an interaction online about there being a space in Google’s headquarters named after him, but no space, building or room in Ghana (I expect that is about to change). He included three (!) smiling emojis!
Without Herman the world is a bit more boring, square and gray. That is if we do not fill the void by taking it all both more seriously and more lightly.
RIP Herman Chinery-Hesse.
