Herman Chinery-Hesse (Africa's Bill Gates): African Voices Exclusive Interview

He's been acclaimed as Africa's father of technology, a successful Ghanaian innovator and software pioneer. The technology is just one component. We're setting up a whole new ecosystem. He's already created one of Ghana's most successful software companies and is spawning innovations to help break down trade barriers between Africa and the rest of the world. Poor people in the villages being able to do international trade. This week on African Voices, Herman Chinri-Hesse, an optimistic visionary, passionately positive about Africa, making sure the waves of technology spread across the continent. Watch this space. Africa is it. In Takoradi, Ghana, traditional fishing boats sail in from the Gulf of Guinea. This rural port city may look behind the times in terms of technological advancements, but like many small West African towns, Takoradi is in the midst of a big industrial change. Herman Chinri-Hesse is one driving force. Essentially, we grew up in those houses. After independence, my parents were handed the keys to our house. My dad was handed the keys to our house and there was a colonial guy who was living there. He left. I think he was head of forestry. It's a white man. And he left and then we got the keys. And it was wonderful growing up in those houses. He shows us around his childhood hometown. Takoradi joined the ranks of Africa's oil producers at the end of 2010. But Chinri-Hesse believes success and wealth are more important in the hands of Africa's people and that technology offers massive opportunities for local businessmen to compete in the global market. I thought, oh, got it. We'll set up an African amazon.com type thing slash eBay and set up an African PayPal. How will we do it? Well, the communication to the merchants in the bush will work on SMS because there's SMS in most parts of Ghana and spreading very fast in most parts of Africa. And then on the front end, where the people in the West are ordering, they would order through the internet and then we'll hook it up into a courier system and we're in business. He calls his latest software design Shop Africa 53. Shop Africa 53, 53 African countries. It's best for it to be owned by the merchants who trade on it. The technology is just one component. We're setting up a whole new ecosystem. And so we've been working on that and we're quite excited about it. We've had all kinds of strange merchants, including people who are trying to set up as merchants, streaming video. Now online or on a mobile phone, one can shop anywhere in the world for African products and services from art, clothes and jewelry to food products, cookware and appliances. Chinri Hesse believes the possibilities are endless. I came to understand trade and how goods moved and merchandising and so on. And the accounting there, what's where and what's wanted, where and what and that kind of thing. So I came up with this concept. I thought, hmm, our people are poor. They don't need to be poor. There are impediments to the average person who's illiterate in the village and can carve a good xylophone. There are impediments to him or his ability or her ability to export it to Germany. They don't speak English. They don't know where Germany is. They don't know how to use DHL. They don't know how to set up a website. And they basically don't understand how to take their products to the market. Africa only does 3% of global business, which is ridiculous. And the 3%, I'm quite certain, is in stuff like oil and stuff. It's not normal Africans exporting. So if we could remove all these impediments and bypass the traditional blockages,