Former ICT CS’s sister Njeri Rionge dead

The renowned technology pioneer and co-founder of the Internet service provider (ISP) Wananchi Online, Njeri Rionge, has passed away. Joe Mucheru, a former ICT CS, who is Njeri’s brother, wrote, “Goodbye Njeri. We’ll miss you a lot.

The online rumors surrounding the 54-year-old’s passing, which we won’t get into here, were the reason she has been trending. But who was Njeri, a woman that many of her friends mourned?

The woman was a very accomplished senior executive with vast local and worldwide experience in organizational growth and strategic leadership. She was also a lawyer. From June 2003 to November 2008, she served as the first female African representative on the board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

Her former classmates claim that she worked as a hairdresser at night and that she sold yogurt to students at the Loretto Convent Musongari High School and the International School of Kenya during their breaks.

Later, she would fly to London and return with pricey products for her growing clientele. Rionge was elevated to marketing manager at Inter-Connect, a nearby ISP, after three years of hard effort and advancement through the ranks.

Both the technical manager for Wananchi Online-Her Magnum Opus Inter-Connect, Mucheru, and the marketing manager at the time, Rionge, quit in February 1999. In December of that same year, they founded Wananchi Online Limited (WOL), and in March of 2002, the company launched with a brutal price battle that included discounts of up to 90%.

The multimillion dollar company Wananchi Online, which eventually evolved into Wananchi Group, the parent company of Zuku, was co-founded by Rionge and her brother Mucheru in 1999.
From the beginning to the end, Rionge and her team monitored the company’s development. for the purpose of founding the Wananchi Group, which conducts business, among other nations, in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda, Somalia, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Zambia, Malawi, and Mauritius.

She and her group saw Wananchi Online secure various rounds of debt and equity investment from private equity companies like Prudence Holdings, Export Development Canada, Emerging Capital Partners, Liberty Global, and others.

By December 2005, WOL had established itself as a top provider of ISP services in Kenya, making it a favorite among corporate, SME, and individual clients.

She was a well-known speaker at international events, including the 2015 Oscars, which she attended on behalf of Cadillac, and she co-chaired Elevate Tech 2018 in Toronto.
In Kenya, she sat on the boards of directors for Ambulance Air Rescue (AAR) Holdings, Unilever Tea (Brooke Bond Kenya), the Institute of Directors (Kenya), ICANN, the East African Tea Trade Association (EATTA), and Wananchi Group.

She also served on the advisory board for the Vatican’s Sport at the Service of Humanity initiative. Rionge, one of the few female pioneers in the African technology sector, was raising money for a Cayman Islands-based African private equity business.

Rionge has dependably remained an ardent born-again Christian throughout her entrepreneurial career.