Ada Osakwe is the Chief Executive of Agrolay Ventures, an investment firm dedicated to growing the agricultural and food sector in Africa.

Osakwe has served as the Senior Investment Adviser to Akinwumi Adesina, Nigeria’s Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, advising the minister on all agriculture investment-related activities involving private sector investors, and led investment policy and financing initiatives, such as the “Government-enabled, private sector-driven” Agricultural Transformation Agenda.

Osakwe also led the development and launch of the US $100 million Fund for Agricultural Financing in Nigeria (FAFIN), an innovative private equity fund dedicated to investing in small and medium agribusiness companies in Nigeria.

Prior to that, Osakwe was a vice-president at Kuramo Capital Management, a New York-based private equity firm that manages the US $110 million Kuramo Africa Opportunity Fund for Sub-Saharan Africa.
Osakwe was also a senior investment officer at the African Development Bank Group (AfDB) in Tunisia, where she led multi-disciplinary teams through the evaluation of debt financing and equity investments worth over US $1 billion across the energy and transport sectors in Africa.