Ed: Big ups to G. Pascal Zachary, whom I knew from my Business 2.0 days, who just published this piece called The African Hacker in the IEEE magazine, Spectrum.
“Saviors” are common in Africa, and they usually come in the form of demagogues or rebel leaders, missionaries or medical doctors, peacekeepers or refugee-camp managers. Rarely are they Birkenstock-wearing engineers or software programmers. That’s why Chinery-Hesse is worth getting to know. Because if Africa has a sunny future, Chinery-Hesse will be a part of it. He is emblematic of the little-known world of African code writers, hackers, engineers, and entrepreneurs who have chosen to live and work in their homelands, persevering against great odds and on the margins of global technological change.
These people, often self-taught and sometimes surprisingly well paid, are the beneficiaries of the accelerating spread of the Internet, the increasing power of cheap computers, and the burgeoning global community of programmers. The African hackers are quiet heroes, however, because they embody a side of the region that is entirely missed by the world’s media: they represent an Africa where blacks are using their brains to try to build a better future against a backdrop of spotty electricity, unfettered piracy, inferior computers, and mediocre universities.
Nowadays, Soft is focusing on document management software for government agencies and large multinationals doing business in Ghana. It also supplies accounting software for small and medium-size businesses, such as stores and restaurants. Its cash register program, for instance, tallies the bill at Accra’s largest grocery store. And one of the most popular dining spots in Accra, Frankie’s Hotel and Restaurant, uses Soft’s code to manage inventory, process payroll, and pay taxes [see photo, “Would You Like Code With That?”]. Hotels, gold-mining companies, and Internet caf�s do, too. Even a few cocoa plantations calculate their piecework pay with Soft’s code.
Here’s why Soft’s programs are essential: programs from the United States and Europe are usually too expensive and require lots of memory and the latest machines. By contrast, those that Soft offers are small enough to work with the Intel 486- and even 386-based PCs that are readily available in Ghana for as little as $100.
