Folunsho Alakija- Executive Vice-Chairman of Famfa Oil Limited and The Group Managing Director of The Rose of Sharon Group.

Folorunsho Alakija is a businessman and a giver from Nigeria. She was born on July 15, 1951. She is the executive vice-chairman of Famfa Oil Limited and the Group Managing Director of The Rose of Sharon Group.

Forbes said that Folorunsho Alakija is the richest woman in Nigeria, with a net worth of about $1 billion in 2020.

Educational Background

He was born on July 15, 1951. Folorunso’s father had eight wives and 52 children. The first was Folorunso’s mother.[5] Alakija went to the UK to go to school when she was seven years old. Alakija went to Muslim High School in the Nigerian city of Sagamu. Then she went back to England to study at Pitman’s Central College, London, to become a secretary.

Career: Alakija got her start in banking as an executive secretary at Sijuade Enterprises in Lagos, Nigeria, in 1974. She worked there for 12 years. She went to work as the Executive Secretary to the Managing Director at the old First National Bank of Chicago, which later became FinBank and was bought by First City Monument Bank. She became the new head of the Corporate Affairs Department at the International Merchant Bank of Nigeria, which used to be the First National Bank of Chicago. Later, she became the office assistant for the Treasury Department.

Alakija then went to The American College in London and the Central School of Fashion to study fashion design. She started a clothing line called Supreme Stitches. In 1996, it was renamed The Rose of Sharon House of Fashion. She was the head of the Fashion Designers Association of Nigeria (FADAN) and a member for life.

In May 1993, Alakija asked for an OPL, which is a license to look for oil. Alakija’s company, Famfa Limited, was given the right to look for oil on a 617,000-acre block in the Agbami Field, which is about 100 km off the coast of Nigeria. In September 1996, Alakija made a deal with Star Deep Water Petroleum Limited, a fully owned subsidiary of Texaco, to work together. As part of the deal, Alakija gave Star Deep a 40% stake.

After they found oil, the Nigerian government said it had a 40% share and then asked for an extra 10%. The government said that Alakija and his family could make $10 million a day if they could keep their block. This claim was challenged by Alakija, and he won.

Recognition Alakija has been on the Forbes list of the 100 most important women in the world more than once. On July 17, 2021, Benson Idahosa University in Benin City gave her an honorary Doctorate in Business Administration.

Philanthropy: Alakija set up the Rose of Sharon Foundation, which gives scholarships and business grants to widows and children to help them.[19] Alakija has given Lagos’s Yaba College of Technology (Yabatech), a higher education school, a center for learning new skills.

Life at home

Alakija married Modupe Alakija in November 1976.  They have four boys and live in Lagos, Nigeria, with them. Their son Folarin Alakija married an Iranian beauty named Nazanin Jafarian Ghaissarifar in June 2017.