Ghana’s Herman Chinery-Hesse left out in 2012 FP Top 100 Global Thinkers list
The name of Herman Chinery-Hesse, Ghanaian and one of Africa’s ICT guru, was missing in the 2012 Top 100 global thinkers list released yesterday November 26, 2012 by US Foreign Policy (FP) Magazine.
Mr Chinery-Hesse was among the top global thinkers in the 2011 edition of the list. He placed 62nd, ahead of personalities such as South Africa’s Archbishop Emeritus, Desmond Tutu (listed 80), former Managing Director of the World Bank and now Nigeria’s Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala (listed 92) and also Mayor of London Boris Johnson (listed 95).
Mr Chinery-Hesse was named as a global thinker in 2011 for “bringing Africa into the mobile age.” The FP magazine which described his works said; “Twenty years ago, when Herman Chinery-Hesse returned home after studying in the US with plans to start a Ghanaian software company, his friends told him he was crazy. But his company, SOFTtribe, is now West Africa’s leading software company, helping imagine a new Africa for a digital age.”
The magazine continued “… Chinery-Hesse is working to develop a payment system via mobile-phone text messages that will allow African entrepreneurs to sell their products abroad. Ghana can be a world-class center of technological innovation, he insists — a Singapore for the continent — but the technology has to meet local needs by being what he calls “tropically tolerant.” His ambition is nothing less than the reimagining of an entire continent: “more tech-savvy, more prosperous, but always African.”
The 2012 global thinkers list which placed Burma’s Member of Parliament, Aung San Suu Kyi and her President, Thein Sein, at first, had only two Africans making it. They were Malawi President Joyce Banda who placed 22nd and Nigerian prolific writer Chinua Achebe who was listed 68th.
Some prominent personalities who made the 2012 list include US President Barack Obama, Melinda and Bill Gates, Bill and Hillary Clinton among others.
Ghanaian personalities like Mr Kofi Annan, former UN Secretary-General and Economist, George Ayittey have all been listed in the magazine’s previous editions.
The Foreign Policy magazine published its annual list and it includes novelists, activists and heads of state from around the world.
By Ekow Quandzie