Entrepreneurship. Salma Okonkwo

AFRICAN WOMEN ENTREPRENEURS : SALMA OKONKWO

Salma Okonkwo is a senior business executive with over twenty years of experience in Africa’s energy sector. She has deep and wide-ranging expertise in energy from oil and gas to renewable energy. She recently launched Blue Power Energy Ltd. (BPE), an alternative energy conglomerate, developing a $200m solar farm project in Northern Ghana. Blue Power Energy (BPE) is focused on creating a sustainable energy future for Ghana and Sub Saharan Africa that will drive economic growth.

“Our purpose is to ensure that every Ghanaian, every village in Ghana, has their required petroleum products. We want to make a difference by being green, and in Ghana we’re the first company to do that,” she said in a video interview with Voices of Ghana.

Amidst the debate on climate change, alternative energy resources, and poverty, Salma Okonkwo is building Ghana’s biggest solar farm—called Blue Power Energy—expected to be opened in March 2019.

In an interview with Forbes, Salma Okonkwo explained that she was born to a family of 14 children in a clan in which #women are also active providers for the family economy. After graduating from university in Los Angeles, her career in the energy industry began upon her return to Ghana in 2003 when she was hired by the oil and gas company Sahara Energy Group.

After graduating from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California, Salma Okonkwo became the first woman CEO of Sahara Energy in Ghana. She established the UBI Group in 2008 to close the energy supply gap in Northern Ghana by trading diesel and petroleum wholesale and operating retail gas stations. In 2013, Puma Energy acquired a 49 percent stake in two of UBI’s Group’s subsidiaries, a business move that reinforced her #reputation as a formidable business strategist. UBI was the first indigenous company to support the oil industry’s upstream sector. And now Blue Power Energy is building Ghana’s biggest solar farm, half of which will be situated in Okonkwo’s ancestral village, targeting unemployment and its related #poverty. Therein lays a key secret to Okonkwo’s ongoing quest. She weaves #philanthropic objectives into solid #business principles – and unhesitatingly seeks women eager to join a mission shared by both men and women in a historically male-dominated industry. No wonder so many see her as a mentor and role model. Glass ceilings have shattered as Salma Okonkwo quietly moves industry in robust directions.

Pic and credit Salma Okonkwo.

Source : Wikipedia. Salma Okonkwo.

Curator : Munllonch

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