Meet Funke Opeke, electrical engineer who became WISCAR’s distinguished award recipient

Funke Opeke, the chief executive officer of Main One was on December honoured as the Women in Successful Careers (WISCAR), ‘Distinguished Award Recipient’ 2024 by the non-profit organisation committed to equipping professional women to achieve leadership excellence.

According to Amina Oyagbola, founder and chairperson of WISCAR, Funke was nominated for the award for exceptional leadership quality and resilience which made her excel in a career mostly dominated by the male gender.

Opeke is a Nigerian electrical engineer, and the founder of Main Street Technologies and chief executive officer of Main One Cable Company, a communications services company based in Lagos State.

She was born in 1961, and attended Queen’s School in Ibadan, Oyo State for her post-primary education.

She is from Ile-Oluji in Ondo State, Funke as a teenager grew up in Ibadan, the capital city of Oyo State, Born into a family of nine, her father was the first Nigerian director of the Cocoa Research Institute of Nigeria while her mother was a teacher.

Opeke attended that Obafemi Awolowo University where she obtained a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, and Columbia University for her master’s degree.

After she graduated from Columbia University, she pursued a career in ICT in the United States as an executive director with the wholesale division of Verizon in New York City.

In 2005, she joined MTN Nigeria as chief technical officer (CTO). She served as adviser at Transcorp and chief operating officer of NITEL for a brief period.

After moving back to Nigeria, Funke started MainOne in 2008, when she noticed the poor internet connectivity in Nigeria. MainOne is West Africa’s leading communication services and network solutions provide.

The company built West Africa’s first privately owned, open access 7,000-kilometer undersea high capacity cable submarine stretching from Portugal to West Africa with landings along the route in Accra (Ghana), Dakar (Senegal) in 2019, Abidjan (Côte d’Ivoire) in 2019 and Lagos (Nigeria).

As a successful woman in her career, Opeke’s desire to add value to her home country gave rise to the establishment of the Africa’s biggest cable company.

After pledging all her savings, facing more challenges of raising capital for the start-up cable business, carrying out in-depth foundational works, feasibility studies, business plans, and technical plans, Main One Cable Company become more tangible.

In 2015, her company started operations of what is reputed to be Nigeria’s largest Tier III Data Centre, also extending a submarine cable from Lagos into Cameroon.

Her achievements are a source of inspiration to many other women and Nigerians as a whole.

Opeke’s achievements have earned many awards including the 2012, CNBC All Africa Businesswoman of the Year; 2013, Africa’s Most Powerful Women In Technology; 2018, Forbes list The World’s Top 50 Women In Tech; 2022, Officer of the Order of the Niger (OON); and currently 2024, WISCAR Distinguished Award Recipient.