{"id":369243,"date":"2026-08-08T16:29:14","date_gmt":"2026-08-08T16:29:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/369243\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T16:29:14","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T16:29:14","slug":"who-is-isaya-yunge-the-tanzanian-tech-entrepreneur-who-won-charlene-rutos-heart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/369243\/","title":{"rendered":"Who is Isaya Yunge? The Tanzanian tech entrepreneur who won Charlene Ruto’s heart"},"content":{"rendered":"

Isaya Yunge\/COURTESY<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u200e<\/p>\n

President William Ruto’s daughter Charlene Ruto’s traditional engagement to Tanzanian technology entrepreneur Isaya Yunge has thrust the spotlight on the innovator behind a career built on technology, entrepreneurship and digital solutions for young Africans.<\/p>\n

Yunge, the man at the centre of Charlene Ruto’s Koito ceremony, is the co-founder and chief executive of SomaApps Technologies, the company behind SomaApp, a mobile platform that connects African students with scholarship opportunities.<\/p>\n

\u200eAccording to multiple reports gathered by The Star, his technology journey was shaped by an ambition to use digital tools to solve problems affecting young people.<\/p>\n

\u200eSomaApp was developed after Yunge and his team identified a problem: many local and international scholarships go unclaimed because potential beneficiaries do not know they exist.<\/p>\n

\u200eThe platform seeks to bridge that gap by bringing scholarship opportunities together and matching students with opportunities for which they may qualify.<\/p>\n

\u200eBut SomaApp is not his only venture.<\/p>\n

\u200eYunge has also founded KAYA, a smart speaker that uses artificial intelligence to collect Africa-related data, and Somafit, a smartwatch designed to monitor health indicators including blood pressure and heart rate in real time.<\/p>\n

\u200eHis wider ambition is to accelerate the adoption of mobile software, artificial intelligence and Internet of Things technologies in Tanzania and across Africa.<\/p>\n

\u200eYunge\u2019s academic and professional journey has taken him beyond Tanzania. <\/p>\n

He holds a bachelor\u2019s degree from the Institute of Finance Management and has studied at the University of Cambridge.<\/p>\n

He has also undergone training by the Swedish Institute on sustainable business models and has pursued studies in leading change at Cambridge.<\/p>\n

\u200eHis profile has been built not only around business but also youth leadership and advocacy.<\/p>\n

\u200eIn 2006, he was elected chairperson of the Junior Council of the United Republic of Tanzania.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u200eHe later represented young people at international forums, including speaking at a G8 Summit in Berlin after being selected as a UNICEF Africa Youth Ambassador.<\/p>\n

\u200eHis achievements in technology have also earned him recognition.<\/p>\n

\u200eIn 2017, his startup won the GSMA Mobile Money Africa Hackathon award for best startup in Africa.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u200eHe was subsequently named among Forbes Africa\u2019s 30 Under 30, an annual recognition of young entrepreneurs and change-makers on the continent.<\/p>\n

\u200eYunge also received the Queen\u2019s Young Leaders Award in 2018 from the late Queen Elizabeth II for his work using technology to develop sustainable solutions and improve communities.<\/p>\n

\u200eIn 2019, he was named among Tanzania\u2019s 50 most influential young people.<\/p>\n

\u200eBehind the accolades, however, Yunge has described a difficult childhood that was far removed from the privileged circles in which he now operates.<\/p>\n

\u200eHe was raised by his grandmother and spent part of his childhood herding goats and cattle and working around rice plantations.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u200eHis interest in technology intensified in 2014 after attending a talk by American economist Jeremy Rifkin on the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the sharing economy and collaborative commons.<\/p>\n

\u200eThe experience, he said, reinforced his belief that digital technology could provide solutions to some of Africa\u2019s challenges.<\/p>\n

\u200eToday, Yunge employs several people through SomaApps and continues to advocate for a technology-friendly environment for startups and innovation.<\/p>\n

\u200eHe is also an alumnus of the Harvard Ministerial Leadership Programme and has positioned himself as an advocate for youth participation in developing technology-driven solutions.<\/p>\n

\u200eHis engagement to Charlene, therefore, brings together two young people with prominent backgrounds and public profiles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Isaya Yunge\/COURTESY \u200e President William Ruto’s daughter Charlene Ruto’s traditional engagement to Tanzanian technology entrepreneur Isaya Yunge has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":369244,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[31],"tags":[4535,80,351,785,176574,352,98,100,36736,353,24574,101,350,99,176573],"class_list":["post-369243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-kenya","tag-charlene","tag-kenya","tag-kenya-news","tag-ruto","tag-soma-app","tag-star","tag-star-news","tag-star-news-kenya","tag-star-newspaper","tag-star-newspaper-kenya","tag-tanzanian","tag-the-star","tag-the-star-kenya","tag-the-star-newspaper","tag-yunge"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@africa\/117060840520921916","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=369243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369243\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/369244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=369243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=369243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=369243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}