About Her:

Clarisse Iribagiza was born on January 28, 1988. She is married to Joseph Abakunda. She is a Rwandan mobile technology entrepreneur. She is the CEO and co-founder of HeHe Limited; a leading mobile technology company in Rwanda founded in 2010. Her mother is an entrepreneur while her father is a teacher. Clarisse believes she is a mashup of what her parents do.

• She has a degree in Computer Engineering and Information Technology at the University of Rwanda College of Science and Technology.
• She was named among the 20 movers and shakers of Africa at the continent CEO Summit in 2012.
• In 2013, Imbuto Foundation awarded her with its ‘Celebrating Young Rwandan Achievers’ (CYRWA) by Rwandan First Lady, Jeanette Kagame.
• An Italian think tank, LSDP (Lo Spazio della Politica) named Clarisse among their top 100 global thinkers.
• Forbes magazine recently nominated her among Africa’s most promising young entrepreneurs under 30 for 2015.
• She attended the Incubation Programme at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Her Work:
Clarisse founded Hehe limited in 2010, with other Co-founders after spending six weeks at the Accelerating Information Innovation Program from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2010.

HeHe regularly holds a “Hack-a-thon” as part of their efforts to encourage high school students to think creatively and use coding to solve real world problems.

In 2011, Iribagiza together with other young ICT entrepreneurs launched The Hills; Rwanda’s tech start-up network. The platform provides mentoring, access to finance and markets for tech start-ups in Rwanda. Within five years, she has inspired many people in and outside of Rwanda.

In November 2014, her company worked with SafeBoda in Uganda to connect customers with drivers that have been trained in road safety, customer service, motorbike maintenance and first aid through a partnership with the Ugandan Red Cross.

Her company HeHe, runs a few number of labs across Rwanda while working with over a 100 students from high school and colleges in Rwanda.

GirlHub; a project running through her company; has empowered more than 13,000 teenage girls and has over $200,000 revenues annually. Mrs Clarisse was part of the team that built a software for Nike Foundation to help give feedback and opinions on the activities of Girl Hub in Rwanda.

Why TechHer Loves her:
Her amazing innovation has leveraged on technology to make her immediate community a better place by providing relevant information to Rwandans. This Enables several businesses to reach their target audience/customers and to give feedback through easy and affordable platforms.