• With over 35 years in top business management, Njeri is considered one of Africa’s most successful women with business acumen few can match.
• She lived and worked in Nairobi, Toronto (Canada) London (UK), Texas and Dallas (USA), Barcelona (Spain), Rome (Italy) and Athens (Greece).
Image: FILE
The late Njeri Rionge is one of Kenya’s most successful and revered entrepreneurs having co-founded several multi-million dollar tech companies.
The exact date of her death remains unclear but former ICT Cabinet Secretary Joe Mucheru broke the news on Tuesday via X, formerly Twitter, saying, "Goodbye Njeri. We will miss you greatly”.
With over 35 years in top business management, Njeri is considered one of Africa’s most successful women with business acumen few can match.
She lived and worked in Nairobi, Toronto (Canada), London (UK), Texas and Dallas (USA), Barcelona (Spain), Rome (Italy) and Athens (Greece).
Njeri co-founded Wananchi Online, now known as Wananchi Group, ZUKU’s parent company.
She founded the company in January 2000, and was CEO for the first seven years.
The firm is an Internet service provider which has grown over the years to become East Africa’s leading cable, broadband Internet and VoIP services.
Njeri also founded Business Lounge, a leading startup incubator, Ignite Consulting, digital marketing outfit Insite and Ignite Lifestyle, a health care consultancy.
Her entrepreneurial journey started when she was 20. She would sell yoghurt to the International School Of Kenya and Loretto Convent Musongari High School during their 10am and 4pm breaks.
In a 2011 interview with Forbes on Africa’s most successful women, Njeri said she would sell the yoghurt from the trunk of her friend’s car with whom she had partnered.
“We picked up the yoghurt from a farm in Limuru at 6am and returned back every second day for more stock,” she said.
During this period, she was also employed as a hairdresser with her clientele consisting mostly of high-net-worth individuals.
These clients were also her customers for luxury merchandise she would frequently fly to London to purchase using discounted courier tickets.
When asked by Forbes why she opted to be a serial entrepreneur, Njeri said she believed Africa was the next economic frontier and homegrown companies were needed to support the growth.
She set up Wananchi Online, which according to her was the most fun of them all, to dispel the myth that the internet was a reserve for the elite. Ignite, she said, was the most challenging to build.
Managing the brand value and promise of each brand is what she described as the biggest impediment.
Her biggest lesson as an entrepreneur was that one has to take responsibility for the good, bad and the ugly.
Njeri’s philosophy was that success transcends financial rewards, to her, when something she created increases in value.
Her passion lay in not only seeing her own success but that of others as well and her advice to young entrepreneurs, especially ladies, is self-belief.
Her business secret? Be flexible and open-minded, believe in yourself, trust your gut feelings, develop a clear plan, keep it simple, implement the plan step by step with courage, change course if need be and listen to your customers.
Until her death, Njeri was a successful senior executive with extensive local and international experience in strategic leadership and organizational development.
She held board positions at Unilever Tea (Brooke Bond Kenya), the East African Tea Trade Association (EATTA), and the Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).
She also was a director and board secretary of the Corktown Residents and Business Association as well as a Northern Secondary School Council member.
Njeri was involved in creating an Internet educational series on local Television and was featured in a variety of media formats, including the international media.
Besides her entrepreneurial work, Njeri also worked as an inspirational speaker in Africa, Europe, and North America including the 2015 Oscars.
She also promoted African arts to the American market via the Black Expo Conference.
Njeri was also a spiritual person. In one of her posts on Facebook on January 7, 2023, she called on people to repent of their sins.
She referenced her plea in the book of Acts 3:19 - So repent [change your inner self—your old way of thinking, regret past sins] and return [to God—seek His purpose for your life], so that your sins may be wiped away [blotted out, completely erased], so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord [restoring you like a cool wind on a hot day].
In her profile, she described herself as “Prophet — Called To The Nations — Order of The Oath of The Covenant of Melchizedek”.