In this spotlight, we meet inspiring women leaders who are rewriting the rules. They are bold thinkers and builders who are not only chasing personal dreams but also creating solutions that touch lives and transform industries.
They share similar things in common. They dared to start, have the resilience to keep going, and the vision to keep solving real problems around them.
Their journeys hold trials, lessons, breakthroughs, and hard-won victories. The kind that reminds us what becomes possible when determination aligns with purpose.
In their own words, they share what they’re building, the hurdles they’ve had to confront, and the milestones that continue to fuel their drive.
1. Adaku Ekwueme: Co-Founder & COO, SUBA Capital
What She’s building
Adaku Ekwueme is the Co-Founder and COO of SUBA Capital, a membership platform designed to help young people and small business owners access capital by leveraging high-yield savings and digital wallets.
The platform features two community engagement models: an offline component and an online component. The online side is a SUBA Capital app that allows its members to save in bits to reach their financial goals. With a healthy financial track record, they are eligible to access peer-to-peer loans. The loan is guaranteed by two other members using the SUBA Capital app. This is unlike other savings and lending options that require so much in documentation, collateral and more.
Her journey so far
Adaku’s journey began in childhood. She watched her father work hard to build his business while struggling with endless requirements to access funding. It made her wonder why small businesses had so little support. After her father passed, her mother continued their family business, only to lose a large portion of her savings to an Ajo (thrift collection) group. What seemed like a simple solution for accessing capital became a trap filled with hidden fees and broken promises. These experiences pushed Adaku to start building real solutions for small businesses and young people who need fair, reliable access to capital.
She joined SUBA Capital in 2022 during its pivot from AgricTech, having previously worked with her CEO, Silas, in 2018 on another venture, KampusTV NG, a digital media and entertainment business.
The problem she’s solving
SUBA Capital tackles the problem of limited access to capital for young people and small businesses. The SUBA Capital platform offers a unique digital wallet with tiered Savings and investment plans that allow users to set their goals and maturity time frames. Traditional savings and lending options often come with heavy documentation requirements, collateral demands, or hidden fees. SUBA Capital instead builds on community trust and social capital through its online and offline models. This saves everyone’s time and ensures trust within the community. The offline model leverages a growing network of community agents or collectors to bridge the gap between our tech-savvy and non-tech-savvy community members.
On the SUBA Capital platform, members are charged only a 2% transaction fee when they withdraw at the maturity of whatever plan they have chosen.
Key challenges she’s faced
Adaku recalls the early difficulties of pivoting from AgricTech and finding ways to build a product that truly solved community needs. One challenge was designing a system that eliminated the hidden costs she witnessed in traditional savings groups.
Her proudest wins and milestones
SUBA Capital raised a family-and-friends round in 2019/2020 and has secured grants, including the Edo Innovate Challenge Grant by CcHub and the Gates Foundation.
Her vision for the future
In the next five years, Adaku envisions SUBA Capital becoming a household name for nano and small businesses, providing appropriate financial tools and evolving into a microfinance bank to serve Nigeria’s 80 million financially excluded people.
Her advice to women entrepreneurs
The solution is not always such a big and fancy place; you can start from home. I started from home when we were testing the offline model with my mum, who was more than happy to share the news. Start small, start crappy, just start, and grow big from there. You’ll figure it out as you go. Like we say at SUBA Capital, start small, grow BIG!
What keeps her motivated
Adaku draws motivation from the impact SUBA Capital has on people’s lives.
My motivation on tough days stems from the number of people who meet their financial obligations using the product and our services we offer. Also, the opportunity to work on an impact product like SUBA Capital that facilitates access to capital for possibly 8 million people in Africa and the globe is more than enough motivation for me.
🔗 Connect with Adaku on LinkedIn
2. Omolara Olarerin: Founder, Pocketfood
What She’s building
Omolara Olarerin is the founder of Pocketfood, a web app platform transforming the way businesses in Nigeria handle workplace meal planning and delivery. Currently active across Lagos, Abuja, and Ibadan, Pocketfood connects businesses, employees, and food vendors through an easy-to-use interface that enables both flexible subscriptions and one-off orders. Companies and businesses can sign up, invite team members, choose a payment plan, schedule deliveries, and get fresh, customized meals delivered straight to their offices.
Pocketfood positions itself as a promoter of healthy eating tied to productivity at work. The platform emphasizes wholesome, well-balanced meals via affordable subscription options, designed to relieve professionals of the daily chore of deciding what to eat, especially in environments hampered by traffic delays and logistical challenges.
In summary, we are a company that offers an innovative, technology-driven solution for workplace meal delivery in Nigeria, while emphasizing the need to adopt smarter ways to boost productivity and retention of talents through healthy eating habits at work.
Her journey so far
Her entrepreneurial journey started long before Pocketfood. As a student, Omolara experimented with fashioning bags, jewellery, and shoes from Ankara fabrics. Her peers loved them, but the manual labour proved unsustainable.
My friends in school loved it, and I soon started getting orders to make similar accessories. This was back-breaking work for one person.This business died a natural death after gaining admission into the University.
Her second venture came in university, when she noticed how difficult it was for students to find reliable handymen in a small town. With a developer friend, she launched JackApp, a handyman marketplace for students. Though it never secured funding, the project gave Omolara hands-on lessons in product management, from prototyping to feature prioritization. These are skills she still leans on today.
I noticed how difficult it was to get a handyman to fix broken electronics and other household items, mainly because my school was located in a small town far away from the city. Indigenes were most times our only hope of getting our stuff fixed. The challenges included language barriers, unreliable availability and monopolized prices. I came up with the idea of ‘JackApp’, a handyman marketplace for students, by students. I reached out to a well-known software developer to build with. Uzo loved the idea, and together we started to develop Jackapp. This project was bootstrapped from my allowance, and so began my first knowledge of product management.
After failing to secure funding to keep this project alive, I realised I still had a lot to learn as a first-time founder. I wanted to continue building products, so I started to work in product-led companies after graduating
In 2022, while working at a tech company, her third attempt at entrepreneurship kicked off. She noticed something closer to home. She realized that the workplace dining culture in Nigeria needed major restructuring. Unlike other parts of the world, employers rarely provide lunch for their staff in Nigeria. Many employees survive on junk food, skip meals, or struggle through long queues, hurting both health and productivity. Omolara herself experienced health issues. She suffered from high cholesterol and weight gain due to poor food choices at work. The idea of PocketFood.io came from these struggles and her desire to change the Nigerian workforce’s eating culture.
The problem she’s solving
Employees often miss lunch, waste time in queues, or make poor food choices that hurt their energy levels.
How often do you miss lunch at work? I can bet it’s more than you can count on both hands. Then you must agree with me that most employees struggle with what to eat, where to buy from, and long lunch queues that leave them exhausted, hurting productivity in more ways than we can imagine.
To bring in numbers, there are about 8.5m ppl without access to healthy food at their work space in Nigeria and I was once one of them.
Pocketfood solves this by giving businesses one dashboard to manage everything, such as vendor vetting, meal planning, delivery, financing, and even payroll integration for meal allowances.
At Pocketfood we are helping business feed their staff healthy meals on the go without the overhead logistics or operational costs. We give businesses one dashboard that solves meal operation head aches, from vendor vetting, to meal management, financing and delivery to manage and pay for staff meals. We also offer meal financing. Companies can “eat now, pay later” with one monthly invoice, and even send meal allowances straight to employees which can be integrated with payroll.
Key challenges she’s faced
Her journey hasn’t been without challenges. Inflation and volatile fuel prices have threatened meal affordability and delivery logistics. To combat this, Omolara and her team are negotiating bulk-purchasing deals with local farmers, optimizing delivery routes with digital tools, and rolling out tiered subscription plans. They’ve also subsidized parts of logistics to ensure meals remain high-quality and affordable.
Her proudest wins and milestones
Despite these hurdles, Pocketfood have expanded operations to three cities, Abuja, Lagos, and Ibadan. And they recently launched Pocketfood’s business dashboard, which has already seen strong adoption by clients. For her, the goal is about creating a smarter, healthier, and more productive workplace culture across Nigeria.
🔗 Connect with Omolara on LinkedIn
3. Adaugo Ezeala: Co-founder & COO, SokoSQ
What she’s building
Adaugo Ezeala is the Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of SokoSQ, a social commerce platform created to make life easier for small and medium-sized businesses in Africa. With SokoSQ, business owners can set up a fully functional website in a few minutes, accept instant payments, and manage orders, inventory, and expenses in one place.
The platform also includes simple marketing tools powered by artificial intelligence that help entrepreneurs create content, run ads, and reach new customers. SokoSQ is not just a website builder. It is a one-stop solution that helps businesses move from being visible only on social media to running proper digital storefronts that can grow with them. In less than a year, almost 2,000 businesses have joined the platform, and together they have recorded more than ₦500 million in gross merchandise value, showing that small businesses are not only using the platform but are also thriving through it.
Her journey so far
Adaugo’s entrepreneurial journey has been shaped by her love for marketing and her belief that African businesses deserve tools that reflect their reality. She began her career in marketing with a pan African e-commerce company and worked on global products such as Flutterwave and irokoTV. At Flutterwave, she contributed to growth campaigns that reached more than one million verified users and managed budgets worth over one million dollars.
These experiences showed her how powerful technology could be when applied with the right strategy. She also holds a Master’s degree in Management with Digital Marketing, which strengthened her expertise in building growth systems for businesses. Working closely with entrepreneurs over the years, she noticed a recurring challenge. Many of them depended completely on social media because it was easy to use, but they were limited by its lack of proper business tools. This insight led to the idea of SokoSQ. Together with her co-founder, she built a platform that is simple and affordable. The vision is to make it possible for any small business owner to create a functional online store without needing technical skills or a large budget.
The problem she’s solving
About 76% of small businesses in Africa rely on social media for sales. While social media provides visibility, it cannot fully support operations. A fashion retailer may get customers from Instagram, but struggles with confirming payments, tracking inventory, or following up with multiple customers at once. On the other hand, most website solutions available are too expensive or too complex for small businesses.
SokoSQ addresses these challenges by offering websites that are affordable, mobile-friendly, and designed for African markets. For example, a food vendor using SokoSQ can set up her store in minutes, accept payments in her local currency, manage orders and expenses, and even run ads from one dashboard. This saves her from juggling multiple tools and allows her to focus on serving her customers.
Key challenges she’s faced
One of Adaugo’s biggest challenges has been convincing business owners to trust a new platform. Many of them had tried other tools in the past that promised more than they delivered, so they were reluctant to try again. It took consistent education, community engagement, and proven results to earn their trust.
Another challenge has been breaking through as a young female founder in the technology space, which is still male-dominated. Conversations around funding and partnerships sometimes came with extra layers of doubt that her male counterparts did not face as strongly. Instead of being discouraged, she used these moments as motivation to prove the value of SokoSQ through clear results and real business success stories.
Her proudest wins and milestones
-
Onboarding nearly 2,000 businesses in under a year.
-
Supporting these businesses to record over ₦500 million in sales. This figure represents the total value of goods and services sold by businesses using SokoSQ, showing that the platform is actively driving results.
-
Growing SokoSQ’s merchant base by 500% month-on-month in its first four months.
-
Establishing the SokoSQ Network, a community where business owners share ideas and receive practical tips on how to grow their businesses. This has strengthened trust and built loyalty beyond the product.
-
Organising free training sessions and growth events for thousands of business owners.
-
Being featured in respected media outlets such as This Day, Guardian Nigeria, and Business Insider Africa, which highlighted her work and the mission of supporting African SMEs.
🔗 Connect with Adaugo on LinkedIn
4. Kehinde Ruth Onasoga (KRO): Marketing Strategist, MD of Pandora Agency
What She’s building
Kehinde Ruth Onasoga (KRO) is a marketing strategist and business leader who helps companies grow by leveraging strategic partnerships, marketing communications, and media relations. She works closely with C-suite executives and business leaders to build and manage their perception, both in Africa and North America.
As Managing Director of Pandora Global Agency Ltd (Africa) and Pandora Agency LLC (North America), she leads teams that have been recognized among the Top 100 Fastest-Growing SMEs and Most Influential Marketing Agencies in Sub-Saharan Africa. Under her leadership, the agencies are anchored on one core belief: creativity must be driven by measurable marketing impact.
We have the African arm, which is Pandora Agency Limited, and we also have the North American arm based in the United States. For the Nigerian arm, which is the African arm. We provide 360 marketing to corporate organizations as well as SMEs, and sometimes MSMEs, depending on the scope. We connect them through either growth marketing or experiential marketing or brand development, or perception building. Now, for the diaspora markets, we connect the internet, which connects African businesses to the diaspora markets; that’s what that particular arm of the business is for. We have ties for African businesses on cable networks such as Paramount Plus in the United States of America.
Her journey so far
Her entrepreneurial journey has been nothing short of transformative. After spending seven years in 9–5 roles, mostly with startups, she gathered insights into how young businesses grow, adapt, and sometimes struggle. That experience, she says, became the foundation of her pivot into entrepreneurship. Today, every day in business brings a new lesson: talent management, recruitment, business development, client relations, and, more recently, the integration of AI into marketing strategies.
“It’s been a learning curve, but one I would never trade for anything,” she reflects.
The problem she’s solving
At the heart of Pandora’s work lies a mission to help businesses succeed by making sure customers know they exist, understand what they offer, and connect emotionally with their stories.
We’re bridging the gap between businesses that are looking to succeed in the market. Because to succeed in any market at all, you need customers, right? People need to know, first of all, that you exist (your brand awareness). Secondly, is to ensure that this is what you actually sell or service that you actually provide and in what scope.
For KRO, storytelling is about bridging the gap between a brand’s vision and the audience it seeks to serve, whether through TV commercials, content creation, social media, or strategy development.
And when it comes to telling stories and helping businesses connect their customers to their offerings, that’s where we step in and bridge the gap. That happens through storytelling and creative development, whether it’s shooting a TVC, creating content, managing social media, running social media marketing or digital marketing, or developing strategy, which is really the core of everything we do.
Key challenges she’s faced
In Africa, KRO notes, “everyone thinks they understand marketing.” Too often, people believe one aspect of marketing is the whole picture, or worse, they rely on friends and family to do what only professionals can deliver. This makes client acquisition a tougher road, as part of the job becomes educating clients before even working with them.
The challenge is that getting people to truly understand the value of working with expert marketers often requires extra effort, and we don’t mind doing that. Our case studies speak for themselves and show the depth of our expertise.
But everyone now thinks they’re a marketer. Many hold on to just one part of marketing and treat it like it’s the entire field, and they’re often unwilling to learn about the other elements that actually make marketing work. That’s where the friction comes in. So that can be an issue.
Customer acquisition, I would say is an issue, but not so much. Why? Because again, everybody thinks they’re a marketer. So they would either say their friends and family can do what they hope to get from an agency, which obviously, is ridiculous.
Yet, she doesn’t see access to finance as a major obstacle. “Money follows value,” she insists. “Once you create value, the money will come.”
Her proudest wins and milestones
One of her most rewarding experiences is attending high-level conferences and introducing her company, only to see people already know who they are and what they do.
Just mentioning our agency’s name and having people immediately know who we are and what we do is a huge win.
While awards like Most Influential Marketing Agency in Sub-Saharan Africa and inclusion among the Top 100 Fastest Growing SMEs are meaningful, KRO doesn’t dwell on them, but always motivates her to keep delivering great work.
The wins and awards are very important, but at the same time, we need to continue our great work and keep winning more awards.
Too often, she explains, the continent relies on imported tools from the West, which rarely fit the unique realities of African markets. Within the next 12 months, Pandora plans to launch a solution born out of its experience across regions, built by Africans for Africans.
Beyond her executive role, KRO is also a columnist for Marketing Africa, a Kenyan-based publication. She’s a faith-driven entrepreneur who champions education and leadership, and is a global contributor through the Harvard Business Review Advisory Council. With certifications from Cornell University, Harvard Extension School, and Tai Solarin University, she continues to deepen her expertise while training and mentoring others in the field.
She is a member of the Advertising Practitioners Council of Nigeria (APCON), the Chartered Institute of Marketing (UK), and the National Institute of Marketing of Nigeria (NIMN). Her expertise is also recognized globally through her role on the Harvard Business Review (HBR) Advisory Council, where she contributes insights for content development.
For KRO, the goal is to create sustainable value, empowering businesses to tell their stories and ensure that African brands are not just participants but leaders in the global marketplace.
🔗 Connect with KRO on LinkedIn & Instagram
5. Taiwo Tella: Founder & CEO, JourneyWise
What She’s building
Taiwo Tella is the founder of JourneyWise, a B2B SaaS sales execution platform designed to help sales and marketing teams track, engage, and convert leads more effectively. Unlike traditional CRMs that leave a gap in execution, JourneyWise unifies inbound and outbound workflows into one streamlined system. JourneyWise brings lead capture, auto-enrichment, engagement tracking (emails, calls, meetings), AI-powered dual lead scoring, buyer persona insights, task management, and scheduling into one platform, which is the execution layer CRMs are missing.
Her journey so far
Her entrepreneurial journey began in March 2025, after years of working as a marketing analyst across SaaS and financial services. Time and again, Oyindamola watched teams struggle with siloed data, manual processes, and disconnected tools. Those frustrations became her fuel. Instead of accepting the inefficiencies, she decided to create a solution that empowers revenue teams to work with clarity, precision, and efficiency.
The problem she’s solving
Revenue teams today are buried under disconnected and siloed tools like CRMs, Outbound tools, spreadsheets, schedulers, task management and point solutions that don’t talk to each other. This leads to missed opportunities and wasted time. JourneyWise eliminates that chaos by giving teams one place to manage engagement from the first touch to closed deals.
Key challenges she’s faced
As a female founder in the competitive B2B SaaS space, Oyindamola has had to navigate limited resources, fundraising hurdles, and the pressure of building credibility. Managing a distributed engineering team while pushing through product delays has also tested her resilience. Yet, each obstacle has only sharpened her resolve.
Her proudest wins and milestones
JourneyWise launched its MVP stage in November 2025. Oyindamola also secured her UK Innovator Founder Visa endorsement, a recognition of the platform’s potential. She has built an early team of passionate engineers and designers, attracted beta users who believe in the mission, and, most importantly, turned her own career frustrations into a scalable solution for global teams.
🔗 Connect with Taiwo on LinkedIn
6. Precious Adesina-Ola: Growth Marketer & Business Leader
What She’s building
Precious Adesina-Ola is on a mission to build a community that helps women grow in careers, business, and personally. Her work is rooted in creating the kind of growth leverage that both individuals and organizations need to thrive.
Her journey so far
Precious describes herself as both an entrepreneur and an intrapreneur. While she has tried her hand at several ventures of her own, she has also played critical roles inside organizations, driving innovation, growth, and execution from within. Each path, whether successful or not, has contributed to her understanding of what it takes to build and sustain growth.
The problem she’s solving
The problem she is solving is creating growth leverage for people and organisations. Too often, people and businesses struggle without the right structures, resources, or support systems. Precious wants to change that by building a space where women in particular can find the support, tools, and accountability they need to rise.
Key challenges she’s faced
In her own words, failed businesses often come down to poor structural setup, leading to a lack of business sustainability. She also struggled with limited access to the community, the kind of network that could guide, support, and hold her accountable as she built. These lessons have deeply shaped her current vision.
Her proudest wins and milestones
Even with these hurdles, Precious has celebrated remarkable milestones. She played a key role in scaling the growth of a startup by 3x, proving her ability to execute and deliver results. In 2024, she was recognized as NITA TechSales Personality of the Year, a testament to her impact and influence. And these achievements are only the beginning.
🔗 Connect with Precious on LinkedIn
Each of these women reminds us that entrepreneurship is not a straight path. It’s a journey of resilience, learning, and small wins that add up to big impact. Their stories reflect the determination to solve problems that matter, while carving a place for more women in leadership and innovation.
As they continue to build, they leave us with lessons worth holding on to. Start where you are, stay true to your vision, and never underestimate the power of persistence.
