Africa is home to many successful people who have made fortunes. However, it is not often that we hear about successful women from the continent. Forbes once named Nigerian businesswoman Folorunsho Alakija one of the world’s most powerful women. With a net worth of $1 billion, equivalent to nearly a staggering £775 million, Alakija has really made a name for herself as the world’s wealthiest woman.
She currently serves as the Vice Chair of Famfa Oil Limited, one of Nigeria’s largest crude oil exporters. However, the businesswoman’s success story did not start with the oil industry. Folorunsho Alajikija had a 12-year banking career from 1974, during which time she worked as an executive secretary at Sijuade Enterprises in Lagos and as an Executive Secretary to the Managing Director of the former First National Bank of Chicago.
Following that, the Nigerian billionaire became the Head of the Corporate Affairs Department of the International Merchant Bank of Nigeria and later became the Office Assistant to the Treasury Department.
After working in the financial sector for over a decade, she studied fashion design at the American College in London and the Central School of Fashion and then launched her own brand called Supreme Stitches before renaming it The Rose of Sharon House of Fashion in 1996.
While pursuing her fashion career, she also applied for the allocation of an oil prospecting licence (OPL) and was granted the license to explore for oil on a 617,000-acre block in Agbami Field, around 100 kilometres offshore of Nigeria.
Famfa Oil Limited is currently one of the largest indigenously owned exporters of crude oil in Nigeria, “committed to developing one of the deepest and largest offshore discoveries in the Gulf.”
The business was incorporated in 1991 and, according to the website, was founded on “the faith and the confidence that Nigerians can and should invest in and explore the country’s energy and natural resources.”
The company is also involved with a number of social projects around Nigeria, most of which involve schools. Folorunsho Alakija herself is also a philanthropist. She established the Rose of Sharon Foundation, which grants scholarships and business grants to widows and orphans.