Folorunsho Alakija

Folorunsho Alakija is a Nigerian businesswoman who is the second richest
Folorunsho Alakija
African woman after Isabel Dos Santos and also the third richest woman of African descent in the world. She is a business tycoon involved in the fashion, oil and printing industries. She is the group managing director of The Rose of Sharon Group which consists of The Rose of Sharon Prints & Promotions Limited and Digital Reality Prints Limited and the executive vice-chairman of Famfa Oil Limited.Alakija is ranked by Forbes as the richest woman in Nigeria with an estimated net worth of $2.1 billion As of 2015, she is listed as the second most powerful woman in Africa after Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and the 87th most powerful woman in the world by Forbes.


Folorunsho has a foundation called the Rose of Sharon Foundation that helps widows and orphans by empowering them through scholarships and business grants. Her company is also a major sponsor of the Agbami medical and engineering scholarship scheme, one of the most reliable scholarship scheme in Nigeria with over a thousand people yearly as beneficiaries. 

She also founded the Folorunsho Alakija Scholarship Scheme (FASS) which has consistently aided quite a number of indigent Nigerians who can not afford good and quality education.

On 1 July 2013, the federal government of Nigeria inaugurated the National Heritage Council and Endowment for the Arts and appointed Alakija as vice-chairman of the body. While inaugurating the council, Nigeria's Minister of Tourism, Culture and National Orientation, Edem Duke, said Nigeria had identified 100 new heritage sites, which "are unique and uncommon assets that we intend to preserve and promote." He charged the council, which is headed by Igho Sanomi, to "ensure the protection and conservation of places and objects of heritage significance and the registration of such places and objects."

She serves as the Chief Matron of Africa's Young Entrepreneurs.

Folorunsho was born in 1951 to the family of Chief L. A. Ogbara in Ikorodu, Lagos State. At age seven, she travelled to the United Kingdom to begin a four-year primary education at Dinorben School for Girls in Hafodunos Hall in Llangernyw, Wales. After returning to Nigeria, she attended Muslim High School Sagamu Ogun State, Nigeria. Afterwards, she returned abroad for her secretarial studies at Pitman's Central College, London. She also studied fashion design at the American College, London and the Central School of Fashion.

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