Ada Osakwe is a Nigerian economist, food investor, corporate executive, an entrepreneur and agribusiness advocate. She is the founder and chief executive officer of Agrolay Ventures, an agribusiness investment firm in Nigeria. Ada Osakwe is an advocate of agricultural businesses and is one of the ladies creating an impact in the agro sector building businesses that creates job and increase access to opportunity in agricultural sector.
Ada Osakwe Biography
Ada was born in 1980 to Gabriel and Tonye Osakwe. She is from the South-Eastern geopolitical zone of Nigeria. Her parents were both lawyers; her mother, Tonye Osakwe also owned a chain of costume jewelry stores and designed children’s clothing.
She attended high school in Lagos before moving to UK for her tertiary education. Ada Osakwe has a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from University of Hull, UK and a Master’s degree from the University of Warwick, UK.
Ada also holds an MBA from Kellogg School of Management in Northwestern University, USA where she was awarded a Merit-based Scholarship and Kellogg Leadership Award.
Early Career of Ada Osakwe
Ada started her profession as an investment banker with BNP Paribas, London. At the age of 24, she joined African Development Bank Group (AfDB) in Tunisia as a Senior Investment Officer , leading capital market and infrastructural financing across Africa.
She was the Vice President of Kuramo Capital Management, New York where she led the firm’s private equity investments. Prior to Kuramo, she worked briefly with Actis, a multibillion dollar private equity fund focused on emerging markets investment in Nigeria.
Ada relocated to Nigeria and served as the Senior Investment Adviser to Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, former Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development between 2012 and 2015. Among all other initiatives, the beauty and brain led the development and launch of the Fund for Agricultural Financing in Nigeria (FAFIN). FAFIN is an agriculture-focused investment fund for small and medium agribusiness companies in Nigeria.
Working with the ministry helped Ada to find her passion and understand policy issues affecting entrepreneurship in Nigeria.