Folorunsho Alakija, 61, is reportedly worth at least $3.2 billion, Ventures Africa reports.
Alakija is the founder and owner of Famfa Oil, which owns a 60 percent interest in OML 127, an offshore oil field that produces roughly 200,000 barrels of oil per day and is worth an estimated $6.44 billion.
Alakija started her career as a bank secretary in Nigeria. She quit her job and moved to London to study fashion design. When she returned to her native country, she started a fashion line called Supreme Stitches. Her clients were upscale, high-society women.
In 1993, Alakija had the prescience to apply for an Oil Prospecting License, a permit that allows oil exploration in a specified area. Her request was granted by the Nigerian government and she was allocated a 617,000-acre block of land. Because this was an industry completely new to her, Alakija enlisted Texaco to act as her technical adviser.
In 2000, she learned that she had an excess of one billion barrels of oil on her land, which led to the Nigerian government trying to seize half of the oil-rich block of land they sold to her. They were successful initially and she lost control of 90 percent of her land. This year, Nigeria’s highest court overturned the government’s reacquisition and her net worth rocketed to $3.2 billion.
A philanthropist, like her richest black woman predecessor, she has a charity, Rose of Sharon Foundation, which issues grants to widows and orphans.
