Regina Honu has a long list of credits to her name, but the Ghanaian software engineer, social impact entrepreneur, thought leader and feminist is, above all, a problem solver.
It started as just another ordinary working day in Accra, the capital city of Ghana on West Africa’s Atlantic coast. But on that hot, bright afternoon in March 2012, Regina Honu made an impulsive decision – with life-altering consequences.
“When I woke up that morning, I had no idea that I would quit my comfortable, well-paid job in a bank. I was shy and risk-averse, but I remember thinking, ‘Now is the time to take this step, I need to do this,’” says Honu, the founder and chief executive of Ghana’s Soronko Academy, which trains girls and women, and more recently boys and people with disabilities, in coding and human-centred design.
Honu was working as a software developer and data analyst in a local city bank when she was encouraged to apply to Microsoft. At the time, the software giant was looking to recruit African technologists into the recession-hit United States, and she had made it through to the final round of interviews.
Taking a job in the US may have seemed a logical decision, but the 28-year-old bright spark knew that if she left Ghana, she would never return. “I’d heard that the best and the brightest were leaving Africa, but I love my country and everything that comes with it,” she told The Brilliant.
Tired of hearing one-sided negative stories in the media that “Africa has this problem, or that problem”, says Honu, she wanted to be part of the solution.
So, on her return from Seattle, literally ‘wowed’ by technology in action at Microsoft’s headquarters, Honu spotted a gap in the market. At the bank, technology literacy was poor, and although young people were being trained to use products such as Microsoft Word and PowerPoint, they weren’t involved in creating them.
“I was one of the first people to flip that script and ask: what would happen if we teach young people, and especially girls and women, to write code and build solutions for the local market?” says Honu.
Needless to say, many people thought her decision to leave a safe job in financial services was crazy, turning down a job at Microsoft even crazier. She acknowledges that if she had thought about it too much, “I would never have had the courage.”
Nearly a decade on, however, and her decision to act on impulse and walk away from a city bank that sunny day in 2012 has paid off, and she has never looked back.
The missing link
Honu’s story is not one of rags to riches. She is from a middle-class family, was encouraged to express herself at home, and had access to a good education. At high school, she showed an aptitude for science and technology, but it was only on an exchange program to Norway that she began to understand the limitations of her education. “I could memorise formulas and draw advanced electrical circuits, but if you gave me two wires and a light bulb, I had no idea know what to do,” Honu explains.
On return to the classroom in Ghana, she asked endless questions – too many questions, her teachers said. As a girl she was expected to smile, accept abstract definitions and not worry about what they meant.
But this desire to problem-solve could not be stemmed. While studying computer science at university, for example, she developed a virtual science laboratory, to give schools that couldn’t afford science equipment the opportunity to carry out simulated experiments.
Honu may have had the benefit of a tertiary education, but a career in banking was far from guaranteed. In 2010, just 1.4% of Ghanaian women were permanent employees in the workforce, according to the Ghana Statistical Service.
Although she is too modest to admit it herself, she was obviously special, and the path ahead of her ‘unique’, which is the meaning of soronko in Twi, a dialect of Akan, the principal native language of Ghana.
True calling
Starting a social impact business in 2012 was far from easy. Honu didn’t see herself as a born entrepreneur. She was in unchartered territory, had no mentors to speak of, and little understanding of how to secure funding. She was also a woman, and while things may have changed since then, says Honu, a decade ago, Ghana was a deeply patriarchal society.
What she lacked in confidence and business acumen, Honu made up for in clarity of vision. Above all else, she wanted to benefit society through the practical application of STEM. Aware of the limitations of donor-funded projects, her strategy was instead to run a for-profit business and reinvest for social impact.
Honu says she discovered the niche for her business “by accident”. Instead of focusing on large contracts in a male-dominated field, she looked to small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Then, as is the case now, more than 80% of businesses in Ghana were SMEs, according to the International Trade Centre.
Before long, she was building everything from websites to mobile apps, and bespoke CRM (customer relationship management) solutions tailored to the needs of small companies. Money was beginning to roll in, and by 2014, she had launched the Soronko Foundation, and was ready to give back.
Driving the gender agenda
Prior to founding the Academy, Honu had experienced sexism, discrimination and stereotyping but she also knew that being able to code and develop software had given her economic power. “I knew then that my true calling was to close the gender gap in technology and empower girls into meaningful and economically rewarding work,” she says.
Today Honu is a leading light for African women in STEM. At home, she is involved in driving government policy, and globally, she has been recognised as one of the BBC’s 100 most inspirational and innovative women of 2017. That same year, she received an Emerging Global Leaders Award from the Roberta Buffet Institute at Northwestern University in Illinois. There are many more to name, but it is not these awards, nor the boards she sits on, of which she is most proud. That distinction falls to the Soronko Academy.
Amid a global pandemic, in 2021 the Academy helped 560 Ghanaian women, who had no prior experience in coding or technology, to find work. One woman is forging a future in online advertising, for example, and another has developed a legal advice app for women. One woman, who has sickle cell disease, a genetic blood disorder that affects 3% of babies in sub-Saharan Africa, has launched her own foundation to raise awareness of the disease. Another ex-student is teaching coding with dance.
Since being founded in 2017, the Academy has trained over 20,000 women and girls in 13 regions in Ghana and expanded to Burkina Faso.
Brand power
In spite of her reserved nature, Honu intuitively understood the importance of a strategic media and communications plan. “Right from the start, I wanted to be a thought leader in my field. I was deliberate and focused in the messaging for my own personal brand and my company’s,” she explains.
It helped that social media was gaining traction in Ghana at the time, and that people were searching for positive, powerful voices from the continent. For a shy person, social media turned out to be an excellent tool for advocacy – “without me physically having to go out and talk!” she says.
In the early days, Honu relied on photographer friends for help, ensuring that every piece of content she posted on social media included powerful, professional images.
“I also made sure that the story kept evolving, because our followers wanted to hear what happened next,” she says. Today, with a presence across five social media platforms, the story just keeps on evolving.
“It’s no longer shocking that women are good at technology,” she says. “We’ve dented that perception. We are part of the solution.”
Follow Regina Honu on Twitter | LinkedIn | Instagram | Soronko Academy Website
Article by Pamela Whitby