• Tuesday, December 17, 2024
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Folusho Olaniyan, Independent Director, ODU’A Investment Company Ltd.

How Nigeria can harness agricultural potential: opportunities and innovations – Olaniyan

Folusho Olaniyan is an agribusiness investment and advocacy specialist with 33years experience in business development, marketing and strategy.

An Independent Director of ODU’A investment company Ltd, a leading investment conglomerate in Nigeria with investments in hospitality, real estate, agriculture, energy, financial services sectors, she chairs the investment committee, and is a member of the governance and nominations committee.

She is the ODU’A investment company group oversight director for south-west agricultural company.

Folusho is the Chairman, Board of Directors, Psaltry international, a leading agro-processing company in Nigeria. Psaltry International is the first company in Africa to produce cassava based sorbitol.

The company is a major supplier of food grade starch and high quality cassava flour to local and export markets within and outside sub-Saharan Africa. Psaltry runs a successful out-growers scheme with no less than 4,000 farmers.

Folusho is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing UK. She is also a Fellow of the Institute of Directors, and the Chairman of the agriculture and agro-allied committee of the institute of Directors Nigeria. She is a Cochran Fellow of the United States Department of Agriculture.

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Olaniyan is a member of the governing council of Ekiti state University Nigeria, the chairman of the public private partnerships committee, and a member of the university’s board of advancement and linkages.

Folusho served on the judging panel of Rockefeller foundation in 2016 for the challenge of post-harvest solutions in the cassava value chain.

She was a member of the project advisory council of BASICS, (Building economically sustainable economic projects in cassava VC in Africa) funded by Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, headquartered at international institute of tropical agriculture IITA from 2016 to 2020.

Olaniyan has served as a consultant to the World Economic Forum on investment summits and data collection.

She began her career as a management trainee with A.G. Leventis Nig. Plc in 1988 and resigned as Head of Sales and Marketing Leventis foods in 2005, to join UTC Nigeria Plc, where she served as Managing Director /CEO till 2013 when she retired to become an agribusiness consultant.

Folusho was awarded Nigerian National Honour, the Officer of the Order of the Niger in September 2014, in recognition of her contributions to the development of entrepreneurship and leadership in the Nigerian food industry.

ASSOCIATE EDITOR, BUSINESSDAY MEDIA LIMITED.

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