Oyinkan is an independent non-executive director at Lafarge Africa Plc. Lafarge Africa PIc is a member of Holcim – the global leader in innovative and sustainable building solutions. Lafarge Africa is a publicly quoted company on the premium Board of the Nigerian Exchange Limited, and serves Nigeria with a wide range of building and construction solutions.
Oyinkan is a leading and highly experienced banking sector finance expert, with over 30years track record in Chief Financial Officer roles. Oyinkan has sat on Boards since 1998. Until Oct 2018, she was the CFO of a leading international commercial bank based in Nigeria.
Previous roles include CFO, Citibank, West Africa where she had responsibility for finance across seven countries. Oyinkan has successfully led bank turnarounds and transformations, establishing world class finance functions from scratch.
Adewale is the recipient of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor’s commendation for meritorious service to the banking sector. Oyinkan was CBN-appointed turnaround CFO at Oceanic Bank, where she also supervised all the bank’s subsidiaries. She co-founded SIAO, a leading indigenous accounting firm that played a key role in the banking sector consolidation under then CBN Governor, Charles Soludo.
She led SIAO to win several due diligence and financial advisory mandates that subsequently led to M&A transactions. In addition, Oyinkan was the pioneer MD/COO at Renaissance Capital Africa. She is passionate about helping other professionals bridge the financial literacy knowledge gap through her customised training sessions.
Oyinkan is bothered about the unemployment rates of women in Nigeria. According to her, there is the urgent need to reduce it, and to match the unemployment rates in the UK, she says we would need to create 7.1 million jobs.
As the World Economic Forum estimates that by 2060, Nigeria will be the third most populous country in the world, behind India and China, Oyinkan says this paint a clear picture of the scale of work that needs to be done to ensure that there are sufficient jobs for the working class. “We would be mistaken to assume that the government is capable of providing enough jobs to cater to our ever-growing population.” She stated.
On becoming an entrepreneur, Oyinkan Adewale advises that starting a business also requires managerial skills, because as one begins to build up a workforce, it is important to pull together a high performing team that will positively contribute to the business.
She insists that you must start by identifying what you have a passion for, and whether or not there is a demand for that product or service, because an entrepreneur who is not passionate about his product or service will not be able to defend it effectively before a potential financier.
