Offscript with George Gachara

HEVA’s board chair on building East Africa’s largest creative industry investment vehicle.

“The first mistake I made, as many founders do, was staying too long and burning myself out. I later realised I should have had more balance.”

George Gachara, founding partner and board chair of HEVA Fund, was reflecting on the leadership transition at the firm in 2022. That year, Wakiuru Njuguna, HEVA’s investment manager, succeeded him as managing partner, marking the end of Gachara’s nine-year run leading the company. Under his leadership, HEVA had grown from a small investment collective into East Africa’s most prominent creative financing firm, backed by heavyweight partners such as the European Union, the African Development Bank, and Afreximbank.

However, his understanding of leadership did not begin with HEVA, but many years earlier, as a young boy watching his grandfather, a village head in Nakuru, a small agricultural town in southwest Kenya.

“He was very community-minded. I remember my grandfather's telephone was the village telephone, where people would come to make calls to their relatives abroad. I grew up around the warmth of community and the responsibility of community.”

Gachara soon began to emulate some of the traits he admired in his grandfather, and people around him started to recognise his leadership abilities. In secondary school, he was made head prefect a year earlier than was typical, and by his first year at university, he was already serving as a student representative.

His original plan was to study law at university, but when he enrolled, the law program at his university had not yet been accredited.

So, he began with communication and media studies, intending to switch to law a year later, when, hopefully, the law program would have been accredited. Unfortunately, that was not to be. By the time he graduated, the program had still not been accredited, so he finished communications and media studies with a PR major and a media minor. “It was an accident, but I think it’s the best accident that ever happened to me.”

Apart from student leadership, Gachara began to nurture his creative muscle during his university years, writing his first book, The Reverse Is True, a semi-autobiographical collection of essays, while in his final year. But it was after university that his work began to carry more weight. In 2007, following a tightly contested election marred by irregularities, Kenya descended into anarchy. Ethnic groups and political parties turned on each other as families were displaced. When the violence finally subsided, it left more than 1,000 casualties in its wake.

Gachara found it impossible to look away. “Kenya needed an intervention that was not tribal or politically motivated. Something that brought everybody together after a conflicting election season.”