College & Education: Richest Black Woman: Her story: Corruption Mongers can check

The richest black woman in the world: Folorunsho Alakija

Wednesday, 05 December 2012 09:04 Wires

Oprah Winfrey has lost her long-held title as the richest black woman in the world to a Nigerian oil tycoon, according to a report by an African business magazine.

Edging out Oprah is Folorunsho Alakija, a 61-year-old woman from Nigeria who is reportedly worth at least $3.2 billion, or roughly $500 million more than Oprah's $2.7 billion net worth, Ventures Africa reported.

Alakija is the founder and owner of Famfa Oil, which owns a 60 per cent 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.

Also a fashion designer and philanthropist, Alakija is married and has four grown sons, as well as one grandchild. She owns at least $100 million in real estate and $46 million private jet, Ventures Africa reported.

Born into a wealthy Nigerian family, Alakija started out as a secretary in the mid 1970s at the now defunct International Merchant Bank of Nigeria.

Several years later, she quit her job and moved to London, where she studied fashion design. She later returned to Nigeria and launched her fashion line, Supreme Stitches, which caters to upscale, high-society women.

While she was building her name as a fashion designer, Alakija in 1993 applied for an Oil Prospecting License -- an expensive permit that allows for oil exploration in a specified area.

The Nigerian government granted her request and allocated a 617,000-acre block of land to Alakija for oil exploration -- but she knew nothing about finding and extracting oil.

So in September of 1996, she appointed Star Deep Water Petroleum Limited -- a subsidiary of Texaco -- to act as a technical adviser for her business.

In 2000, Star Deep Petroleum determined that Alakija's land contained an excess of one billion barrels of oil. When this was discovered, the Nigerian government tried to re-acquire half of the oil-rich block it had sold to Alakija.

The Nigerian government was successful and Alakija lost control of all but 10 percent of her oil company until 2012, when Nigeria's highest court reversed the government's actions.

With Alakija now back in control of 60 percent of the oil company, her net worth has shot up to $3.2 billion, an estimate that Ventures Africa calls extremely conservative.

Alakija's sons now run Famfa Oil and her husband, Modupe Alakija, is the chairman of the company.

She recently purchased a $102 million property at One Hyde Park in London, as well as a Bombardier Global Express 6000 jet, which she bought earlier this year for $46 million.

Her charity, Rose of Sharon Foundation, gives out small grants to widows and orphans.

--- On Wed, 12/5/12, Divine Rhyme <hittback@yahoo.com> wrote:

From: Divine Rhyme <hittback@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [cameroon_politics] Richest African Dangote (Nigerian), Richest Blackwoman Alakija Nigerian (Not Oprah), Nigeria 5th highest recipient of remittance from Abroad i.e. US$21 billion when Cameroon budget is US$5.5 billion.
To: cameroon_politics@yahoogroups.com
Date: Wednesday, December 5, 2012, 11:51 AM

Hello Tumasang Martin,
Remittances are indicators of poverty level in that country. India is a rich country but still have a substantial population under the poverty level. It is a very corrupt country as well, hence the level of poverty.
And don't throw praises on ill gotten wealth. There is no way anybody can make legitimate wealth anywhere in the world amidst such societal chaos, and corruption, resulting to the misery of a good majority of the population. When we celebrate such wealth we are simply contributing to its means of acquisition. And then we turn around and pretend that we are fighting injustice and deprivation by the government in place? That is pure hypocrisy. Even though you might find it hard to trace the origins of such wealth, the invincible hand of government corruption cannot be absent from there.
But I should make something very clear before anybody raises an argument against my point of view. Ill gotten wealth can be found in every country no matter how much effort is put to check it. But there is a difference when it happens in different countries. In the US there are people like Madoff who amassed ill gotten wealth. But in the US while the Madoffs exploited the the ambitions, capabilities and also the possible greedy longing for more from his fellow countrymen, the Nigerian wealthy(Madoffs) on their part exploited the deprivations, inabilities and grinding needs of fellow Nigerians. The people Madoff exploited wanted more of what they had. They would have willfully chosen not to deal with Madoff. But the ordinary Nigerian is a sitting duck helplessly seeing his/ her barest livelihood being taken away by the more powerful - and there is nothing he/she can do about it.
Acquiring wealth in one of our corrupt countries should never be any reason to celebrate. If the playing field was level it might not have been the present rich because corruption deprives many smarter persons from getting a shot at the competition. That is unfair.
FEN

--- On Wed, 12/5/12, Tumasang Martin <tumasangm@hotmail.com> wrote:

From: Tumasang Martin <tumasangm@hotmail.com>
Subject: [cameroon_politics] Richest African Dangote (Nigerian), Richest Blackwoman Alakija Nigerian (Not Oprah), Nigeria 5th highest recipient of remittance from Abroad i.e. US$21 billion when Cameroon budget is US$5.5 billion.
To: "cameroon_politics@yahoogroups.com" <cameroon_politics@yahoogroups.com>, "camnetwork@yahoogroups.com" <camnetwork@yahoogroups.com>, "ambasbay@googlegroups.com" <ambasbay@googlegroups.com>
Date: Wednesday, December 5, 2012, 10:51 AM

Richest African Dangote (Nigerian), Richest Blackwoman Alakija Nigerian (Not Oprah), Nigeria 5th highest recipient of remittance from Abroad i.e. US$21 billion in 2011 when Cameroon budget in 2012 is US$5.5 billion. Frogs think being a Nigerian or going back to Nigeria is an insult. In Africa and even in a level playing field abroad in the diaspora they still out perform.

Nigeria, a top 10 global receiver of remittances

Wednesday, 05 December 2012 00:00 PATRICK ATUANYA

Remittances to developing countries will surpass $400 billion in 2012, according to the World Bank, and this has become an important source of capital and foreign exchange inflows for these countries.

Officially recorded remittances to developing countries are expected to reach $406 billion in 2012, up by 6.5 percent from $381 billion in 2011. The World Bank estimates that the true size of remittance flows, including unrecorded flows through formal and informal channels, is significantly larger.Compared with private capital flows, remittance flows have shown remarkable resilience since the global financial crisis, registering only a modest fall in 2009, followed by a rapid recovery.

The size of remittance flows to developing countries is now more than three times that of official development assistance.

The top recipients of remittances in 2012 are India ($70bn), China ($66bn), the Philippines ($24bn), Mexico ($24bn), and Nigeria ($21bn).

Others are Egypt ($18bn), Pakistan ($14bn), Bangladesh ($14bn), Vietnam ($9bn), and Lebanon ($7bn).

For Nigeria the size of its 2012 remittance inflow, amounts to about 7.7 percent of 2012 Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and nearly 50 percent of CBN foreign exchange reserves.

The cost of sending remittance is a key driver of remittance flows, World Bank research shows.

Consequently, reducing remittance cost has been identified as a key policy objective to facilitate these flows.

In 2008, the G8 (and later in 2011 the G20) countries committed to reduce the global average remittance cost by 5 percentage points in five years.

The unweighted average remittance cost, based on World Bank's Remittance Prices Worldwide (RPW) database, for the top 20 largest bilateral remittance corridors has declined from 8.6 percent in 2008 to about 7.5 percent in the third quarter of 2012.

The average remittance cost, weighted by the size of the bilateral remittance flow, reveals a similar story.

The global average remittance price (i.e., average based on all countries for which price data is available) has declined over the same period from 9.81 percent in 2008 to 8.96 percent in the third quarter of 2012.

Sub-Saharan Africa is the most expensive region to send remittance to, with a transfer costing (in third quarter of 2012) about 12.4 percent of the amount transferred.

This is almost twice the corresponding figure of 6.5 percent for South Asia.

The promise of mobile remittances has however yet to be fulfilled. The World Bank says that although channeling international remittances through mobile phones has the promise of expanding access and lowering costs, this service has yet to take off in a substantial way.

The use of mobile phones has skyrocketed worldwide from 0.7 billion in 2000 to 6.0 billion in 2011, of which 4.6 billion are being used in developing countries.

Mobile phones have also been used to facilitate international remittances.

Services such as Mobile cash-out, allow households to receive money in accounts linked to their mobile phones (mobile wallet) and subsequently use it to conduct mobile transactions or cash-out the money at an agent.

Mobile cash-in services allow migrants to send money from their mobile wallet. Other branchless cash-out services allow migrants to send money to a cash card held by recipients, who can then withdraw funds at ATMs or make purchases with the card.

As of early-2012, only 20 percent of 130 mobile banking operators worldwide offered international remittance services.

Major players in this market include G-Cash and Smart in the Philippines, M-PESA in Kenya and Tanzania, and Digicel in Fiji, Samoa, and Tonga.

Traditional money transfer operators, such as Western Union and Moneygram, have also partnered with some of these providers to offer international remittance services via mobile phones.

Sadly, Nigeria is not a major player in this category.

Cross-border mobile remittances have not taken off due to a variety of regulatory and operational challenges.

Anti-Money Laundering (AML), Combating Financing of Terrorism (CFT) and "know-your-client" requirements also exacerbate the regulatory hurdle for mobile money operators that raise cost and operational burden.

Mobile remittances fall in the regulatory void between financial and telecom regulations, a reality which creates regulatory uncertainty for potential market entrants.

Many central banks do not allow non-bank entities to conduct cash-in and cash-out services.

Mobile remittances will not take off until central banks and telecom authorities come together to craft rules that facilitate branchless banking.

International remittances via mobile phones will also not take off until there is an ecosystem of domestic services built around mobile payments.

The World Bank says Kenya and the Philippines are ahead of the curve in fostering an ecosystem of mobile payment services, while most other countries are much further behind at this point