Njeri Rionge, the co-founder of Wananchi Online, a once popular Internet Service Provider (ISP)which grew to become East Africa’s leading pay-TV, broadband Internet, and VoIP services firm has passed on.
TechMoran is yet to establish the details of her death but the once successful and revered serial entrepreneur is likely to have ignored her health after joining suspicious religious cults which emphasized intensive religious fastings, prayer and repentance above food, work and networking.
Good bye Njeri. We will miss you greatly. pic.twitter.com/K6qcTvsqNq
— Joe Mucheru EGH (@mucheru) October 2, 2023
In 1999, Rionge, together with former ICT Cabinet Secretary Joseph Mucheru co-founded multi-million dollar firm Wananchi Online which grew to become Wananchi Group, Zuku’s parent firm. Rionge and her team saw the company from idea to conceptualization, to their final exit. Rionge and her team saw Wananchi Online raise several rounds of both equity and debt financing from Private Equity firms such as Liberty Global, Emerging Capital Partners, Export Development Canada, Altice, and Prudence Holdings, among others to form what is now know as Wananchi Group with operations in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda, Somalia, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Zambia, Malawi, and Mauritius among others.
Rionge, ventured out into business early at just 20. She was selling yogurt to the International School Of Kenya and Loretto Convent Musongari High School students from her car trunk during their breaks and also moonlighted as a hairdresser. She could later start going to London to bring in re-sale luxury merchandise for her growing clientele. Then she and the group founded Wananchi Online in the early days of computers and internet in Africa.
After Wanachi Online merged with a cable television service to form Wananchi Group Holdings and 75% stake sold to foreign firms, Ms. Rionge who had then acquired a degree in Business Administration, put all her energies behind Ignite Consulting, working with startups and entrepreneurs in Nairobi and Toronto. The serial entrepreneur was also a director and board secretary of the Corktown Residents and Business Association, a Northern Secondary School Council member and Co-Secretary. She was also Co-Chair for Elevate Tech 2018 Toronto, and is well known events speaker globally, including attending the 2015 Oscars for Cadillac.
In Kenya, she has held board positions at Unilever Tea (Brooke Bond Kenya), the Institute of Directors (Kenya), the Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the East African Tea Trade Association (EATTA), and Ambulance Air Rescue (AAR) Holdings, as at the Wananchi Group. She was also an advisory committee member of Sport at the Service of Humanity at the Vatican. Before her demise, Ms. Rionge was one of the few female pioneers in the technology sector in Africa and she was raising capital for an African private-equity based in the Cayman Islands. These plans were likely thwarted when Rionge went neck deep into new found zeal into the alleged cult. Rionge has always been a staunch born-again christian throughout her entrepreneurial life but the alleged cult made her too zealous and directionless.
Wananchi Group is now owned by Triple Hold Co Limited, Liberty Global Europe 2 Limited (Liberty), and Altice Africa S.A.R.L (Altice).
