Mike Macharia

Mike Macharia, 41, is a qualified Chartered Accountant and the founder and CEO of Seven Seas Technologies (SST) Group, which he started as a precocious 25-year-old.

Mike’s contribution to Kenya has been recognized in some of the world’s top media publications, including the Financial Times, TIME magazine and The Economist, for his passion, commitment and deep-seated belief in how technology plays a fundamental role in transforming lives and changing communities: SST Group’s brand mantra.

Mike has attended numerous management development courses all over the world and is also Executive Management Alumni of Nairobi’s Strathmore University and Spain’s IESE Business School – one of the top-ranked executive institutions in the world. He is also a member of the Young Presidents Organization, Kenya Chapter (YPO), the world’s premier peer network of chief executives and business leaders.

From humble beginnings, SST Group has grown from a tech start-up to a major respected corporate player in the African technology arena. Just as it has grown in excellence and performance, adding major customers to its client list, including the region’s largest telecoms companies, banks and Government institutions, so it has received several accolades for its growth.

Mike, who is passionate about technology and how it can be used to transform Africa in the way we live, work, play and govern, has overseen the company’s expansion to several countries in Africa, under a philosophy of ‘transforming lives and changing communities’, which has catalyzed SST’s work in the areas of Healthcare, Homeland Security and Social Services.

His advocacy of social entrepreneurship has manifested itself through a series of SST Group initiatives that have created a sustainable impact on people in Kenya. Through his organization, Mike has been able to give back to the community, via the sponsorship and launch of the Knowledge for Life (K4Life) initiative, which is a program focused on enabling students to understand and get career direction. This initiative walks with students on their journey to securing a job and starting entrepreneurial careers. K4life mobilizes SST staff to mentor young students who may not have a supportive environment or family and is evolving into the K4LIFE Foundation, focused on being a talent accelerator. Today the program has over 1,000 alumni students.

Always the entrepreneur, Mike is also an art and architecture enthusiast and has medium-term plans of building an African venture capital fund that will be involved in technology start-up companies, with a vision of redefining the continental tech market through convergence of relevant technology and society. With one eye on giving back and helping future African stars, Mike also served as the founding curator for the Kenya Chapter of the World Economic Forum (WEF), Global Shapers Community, and was one of 19 talented business people admitted to the 2014 Class of WEF’s Young Global Leaders Community from Sub-Saharan Africa, and 214 in total worldwide, hailing from 66 countries across seven regions, with a split across the public and private sector.

It means Mike joins a unique, multi-stakeholder community of more than 900 exceptional global young leaders committed to making the world a better place.

He also acts as Chairman of the Kenya Information Technology & Outsourcing Society (KITOS), a trade association representing Kenyan Information Technology Enabled Service (ITeS) member businesses and a platform through which local SMEs in the sector engage with the Government and other players in the ecosystem.

KITOS, through its newly constituted board, drove Kenya’s first ICT National Innovation Forum, an event which Mike played a key role in as Chairman of the Strategic Advisory Committee, and saw the Government lend its support to an entity that will help entrepreneurs at various stages of the innovation life cycle, still in the planning process.

Mike was also recently voted the Chairman of the ICT Sector Committee for the Kenya Private Sector Alliance (KEPSA).

The 40-year-old self-described ‘Maverick CEO’ is also recognized as an ICT influencer in his writing in local media in the Business Daily newspapers, with his comment articles on the Africa Rising narrative, which have been read by thousands of Mike’s followers.

He is the first Kenyan CEO to publish on LinkedIn Pulse, where his thought- provoking content is read alongside Richard Branson, Bill Gates and other thought leaders, and is read by thousands of people all over the world.