Folorunso Alakija started as a secretary in Lagos. She became a fashion designer and then an oil-block owner.
From executive secretary to fashion house founder to holder of an offshore oil licence, Folorunso Alakija’s career shows how many chapters one business life can have.
In 1974 Folorunso Alakija took a job as an executive secretary at Sijuade Enterprises in Lagos. Over the next years she worked in banking too, at First National Bank of Chicago and the International Merchant Bank of Nigeria.
A fashion house of her own
She then studied fashion design in London and launched a label called Supreme Stitches, renamed the Rose of Sharon House of Fashion in 1996. She served as president of the Fashion Designers Association of Nigeria and remains a trustee of the organisation.
The oil licence
In May 1993 she applied for an oil prospecting licence and was granted rights to a 617,000-acre block in the Agbami Field, about 100 kilometres offshore. Her company, Famfa Limited, later entered a joint venture in 1996 with Star Deep Water Petroleum Limited. She is now group managing director of the Rose of Sharon Group and executive vice chairman of Famfa Oil Limited.
She has also served as chancellor of Osun State University. Her path is a reminder that a first career is not a final one. Skills from fashion, banking and administration all fed into the businesses she built later.
