Nairobi — WHEN JYOTI MUKHERJEE won the top ICT Business Woman award at the 9th African ICT Achievers Awards at the Sandton Convention Centre in South Africa recently, many felt it was a well deserved victory, given her contribution to ICT in the region.

Mukherjee, one of the five Kenyan winners, is the group managing director of Software Technologies Ltd (STL), which has branches in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and India, as well as partners in Nigeria, Zambia and the Middle East.

Under her leadership, STL has developed a high standard enterprise resource planning (ERP) software for human resources, eHorizon, whose potential for growth have been widely recognised.

The software, which won the Best HR Solution award for the second year running, is widely used by many medium and large organisations in East Africa. Designed with customers in Africa in mind, it has frequently been compared with, and even been preferred to, internationally recognised brands.

Mukherjee set up STL in 1991 after working at a family printing supplies shop on Nairobi's Kijabe Street for eight years. Today, STL is one of the region's biggest software distribution companies, with annual sales in excess of $3 million (Sh192 million). She is planning to list the company on the Nairobi Stock Exchange within a year, if market conditions improve.

Over the past 10 years, STL has built a strong reputation among the local business community. It currently supports over 150 large corporations in East Africa alone, making it the most recognised provider of Oracle-based solutions and Oracle support. Indeed, its client list reads very much like a list of who's who in East Africa.

The company provides a variety of services, including customised systems development, consultancy and implementation, support and training, both on the Oracle e-Business suite and its own generic range of products, eHorizon.

Before founding STL, Mukherjee had acquired management and systems design experience from working with various international groups for 17 years.

Mukherjee and her husband have started many philanthropic projects to provide IT education services to the underprivileged in society by providing facilities for needy students in their own company, as well as by setting up community telecentres in Huruma, Kivuli and Shalom in Nairobi.

In addition to her work at STL, Mukherjee is a founding member of the Kenya Information Society and is also a director of the Centre for Corporate Governance.

During the awards ceremony, the chief judge recognised Mukherjee's contribution to ICT by saying, "While awards traditionally recognise the better known names in the sector, perhaps the time has come for an award ceremony that recognises the real innovators in the industry."

Locally, Mukherjee has won several awards for her work in IT, including the Best Entrepreneur of the Year 2000 from the Computer Society of Kenya.

The daughter of a freedom fighter who is inspired by her father's philosophy of "simple living, high thinking," Mukherjee has been praised as a leader with a vision by the ICT industry.

After attending Premier High School in Nairobi, she worked briefly as a secretary. She later attended Bombay University, where she graduated with a bachelor of commerce degree. She also has a degree in computer programming and management information systems as well as an MBA.

Another Kenyan winner at the African Achievers' awards, which brought together competitors from 20 African countries, was Brian Llongwe, who won the top ICT Business Man award. He has been instrumental in the country's ICT development, and is best known for pushing for a local Internet exchange point that has seen local traffic grow exponentially.

Other winners were Mwende Gatabaki, who scooped the Top Public sector CIO award for her work at Kenya Tea Development Authority and Computers for Schools, which bagged the Top Civil Society/NGO honours.

Also recognised was Rebecca Wanjiru of The People newspaper for her insightful journalism while 3 Mice were runners-up in the best ICT Small Micro Enterprise category.