Before his engagement to Charlene Ruto put him in Kenya’s spotlight, Isaya Yunge had already built a career spanning youth advocacy, scholarship technology, smart-home solutions and entrepreneurship across Africa.
From speaking at the G8 at 17 to building technology ventures
Isaya Yunge is entering a new chapter in the public spotlight, but his story did not begin with his recent engagement to Charlene Ruto. It began much earlier with a teenager speaking on a global stage, a youth advocate working with UNICEF and an entrepreneur betting on technology to expand access to opportunity for Africa’s young people.
At 17, Yunge spoke at the G8 Summit in Germany, an unusually early entry into international policy and leadership circles. His appointment as a UNICEF Africa Youth Ambassador further positioned him among a generation of young Africans pushing education, entrepreneurship and youth development onto the global agenda.
Years later, he would take that experience into technology.
Turning scholarships into a technology problem
One of Yunge’s most notable ventures was SomaApp, a digital platform designed to connect students with scholarship opportunities in Tanzania and beyond.
As CEO of SOMAAPPS Technologies between 2016 and 2019, Yunge helped build a technology business around a problem familiar to millions of African students: finding and accessing educational opportunities.
The startup’s work earned continental recognition in 2017 when SomaApp won the GSMA Mobile Money Africa Hackathon award for Best Startup in Africa. For Yunge, the significance of technology went beyond building another app. It was about using digital platforms to reduce information barriers and connect young people to opportunities.
Building beyond one startup
Yunge’s entrepreneurial journey did not stop with SomaApp. He went on to co-found Smart Kaya, a technology venture focused on smart-home solutions, adding connected technology to his growing portfolio. He later became Director and CEO of SPEKI Technologies, serving from January 2022 to July 2023, where his work focused on business growth, innovation and organisational transformation.
Since 2019, he has also served as Chief Entrepreneur at GOODSAM Technologies, working across business and product development. The different ventures point to a career that has increasingly moved from youth advocacy into building and scaling technology businesses.
Keeping young people at the centre
Education and youth opportunity have remained a thread running through Yunge’s career. Since 2020, he has chaired the SOMAPP Foundation, which focuses on expanding access to education through scholarships and skills-based online resources.
That work extends the original idea behind SomaApp: technology can be used not simply to digitise existing systems, but to connect people with opportunities they may otherwise struggle to find. His career has therefore developed across three overlapping areas—technology, entrepreneurship and youth empowerment.
Recognition from Africa’s innovation ecosystem
Yunge’s work has earned recognition from both technology and leadership circles. Forbes Africa named him among its 30 Under 30, while in 2019 he was included among Tanzania’s 50 Most Influential Young Tanzanians. Those accolades came as his career was evolving from youth advocacy into technology entrepreneurship.
His trajectory reflects a wider African technology story, a generation of entrepreneurs moving between startups, social impact, digital products and business leadership while attempting to solve practical problems in their communities.
The Charlene Ruto chapter
Yunge is now attracting a new level of attention following his engagement to Charlene Ruto, daughter of President William Ruto. The couple held their engagement ceremony on Saturday, August 8, 2026, bringing his personal life into Kenya’s public spotlight. But beneath the celebrity headlines is a technology and entrepreneurship career that began years before the engagement.
From addressing global leaders at 17 to developing scholarship technology and leading technology ventures, Yunge has built a profile around a consistent theme: creating opportunities through technology and entrepreneurship. His engagement may have introduced him to a much wider Kenyan audience. His technology journey, however, was already well underway.