10 Fragen an die afrikanische Techunternehmerin Clarisse Iribagiza

Clarisse Iribagiza is the CEO of HeHe Limited, a leading mobile technologies Company founded in 2010, Rwanda. HeHe Ltd was conceived by four Rwandese students from Kigali Institute of Science and Technology (KIST). I met Clarisse at the re:publica this year where I attended a panel with her and two other inspiring women in tech from Africa. They combined competence with esprit in a way that is hardly found on the business stages in Germany or Europe.

What would be the three words to describe you best?
Visionary
Passionate
Doer

Am always dreaming up new ideas around things am passionate about and figuring out ways to bring them to life.

What are you most enthusiastic about in your job ?
The fact that the work we do is meaningful and we see the impact on people’s lives in very tangible ways. Whether it is through our high school code clubs where students are empowered to build tech solutions for their commuities or in the applications we build for farmers to access userful information that improves their production, we see very tangible results.

Who or what inspires you?
Am inspired by my country’s vision. We have very specific goals that we want to achieve as a nation by the year 2020 and we’ve steadily worked towards them. Some of these goals resonate strongly with my personal ambitions especially around econonic empowerment and education.

From which mistake did you learn the most?
The foundation of our company was not very strong. When building a team, having the right people onboard is very key. I did not know this when we started out of our college classroom. But 4 years later, strained relationships and having an almost completely new team has taught me to take that really seriously.

Who are your favourite clients?
All our clients are unique I’d say. But working with artists and writers for our African Digital Content platform has been exciting.

What means success to you?
Success is looking around you and seeing that you have helped those around you achieve their dreams, from your family, colleagues and audience you’re serving.

What is your most successful marketing activity?
Am not sure I understand the question but the time spent sharing our story and vision with different audiences has been the very helpful for us as a company.

What is your favourite social media tool?
I love instagram. Maybe it is because am a very visual person and I can get to say so much with just one picture.

Which question should every entrepreneur ask herself oder himself at least once?
What is my purpose for existance?

When and where do you enjoy your espresso the most?
Am not much of a coffee drinker, but when I do take some coffee, it is definitely at the office. We had interns this year that bought us a coffee maker so I owe it to them to drink some coffee.

Thank you very much, Clarisse!

Foto: privat