Nigeria's Richest Woman Never Went to University

From the TI archives — originally published September 2014.

Nigeria's richest woman has a confession she's proud of: she never went to university.

Folorunsho Alakija — valued at $2.6 billion by Forbes at the time — told students at the University of Lagos exactly that during a motivational talk in 2014. "So I am 63 and I am not yet done. So what is your excuse? I never went to a university and I am proud to say so, because I don't think I have done too badly," she said, as reported by Forbes.

Her path ran through fashion, not finance. Alakija studied fashion design in London, returned to Nigeria, and built Supreme Stitches into a label dressing the country's elite. From there she moved into real estate, acquired an oil prospecting license — the foundation of the Famfa Oil fortune — and became one of Africa's most prominent philanthropists. She and her husband Modupe have four sons.

The story gets retold as proof that degrees don't matter. The fuller picture is more interesting: she started in an industry she trained for, built a business the hard way, and parlayed one success into the next. A university education had no role in her success — but relentless execution did.