Give it to the very enterprising Ms. Lola Masha for breaking boundaries and barriers posed by exclusion and stereotypes associated with our environment. The quiet but cerebral woman has been an industry leader across numerous industries including technology, financial services and energy. The former country manager of OLX Group was Director for Trust and Safety, working across over 30 OLX markets, ensuring that buyers and sellers transact safely on the world’s leading online classified platform. Before joining OLX Group, she was one of the earlier Google executives in Sub-Saharan Africa when the technology company began its operations in the region. She led various product partnerships efforts across Europe, Middle East and Africa as well as shaped the regional strategy and led business development efforts with key partners including the telcos, OEMs, digital content providers and local entrepreneurs. Prior to that assignment, she had also worked in the Chicago office of Mckinsey & Company where she spent time advising senior executives on extensive strategic management topics. After making her impacts at the highest levels creating jobs for Nigerian youths in various organisations, Lola transited from the tech world to agri-business. She has now gone into a new terrain of commercial farming as the executive director for corporate services at Babban Gona Farmer Services, a social impact organisation focused on supporting smallholders’ farmers, particularly women, to increase their yields. As a firm believer in the strength of women, driven primarily by her desire for business growth, transformation and optimization, she has joined Babban Gona to serve at the bottom of the pyramid to help transform agriculture into a job-creation engine.
Babban Gona has worked with over 60,000 farmers in Northern Nigeria and has ambition to raise one million farmers out of poverty by 2025. And this falls within her responsibilities: to provide them with finance operations, business intelligence, supply chain, logistics, procurement, sales and marketing. And she’s obviously ready for the task. She holds a doctorate degree in engineering from the University of California, Berkeley and a Bachelor of Science degree in engineering from the University of Virginia.