Nigeria’s Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has been ranked as the 48th most powerful woman in the world by Forbes magazine.
Okonjo-Iweala is not the only Nigerian woman to have make the list, as billionaire, Folorunsho Alakija was ranked the 87th.
On Okonjo-Iweala, Forbes wrote:
The minister of finance for Nigeria, has helped the country’s economy, the largest in Africa, grow an average of 6% (per annum) over three years.
She is credited with developing reform programs that helped improve governmental transparency and stabilizing the economy. Okonjo-Iweala is the first woman to be the finance minister and the foreign minister of the West African country with a GDP of $502 billion.
But the start of the year has been difficult for Nigeria.
The country voted in former general Muhammadu Buhari as president, ousting long-time President Goodluck Jonathan, with the hope he will help fight against the local terrorist group Boko Haram. Harvard- and M.I.T.-trained Okonjo-Iweala spent 21 years as a development economist at the World Bank.
Other notable women on the list include: Liberia President, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf (96); Singers Taylor Swift (64) and Beyonce (21); Actress Angelina Jolie (54); Queen Elizabeth II (41); Oprah Winfrey (12); America’s First Lady, Michelle Obama (10); US Presidential Candidate, Hillary Clinton (2) and German Chancellor, Angela Merkel who was ranked as the most powerful woman in the world
See the full list below:
1. Angela Merkel
2. Hillary Clinton
3. Melinda Gates
4. Janet Yellen
5. Mary Barra
6. Christine Lagarde
7. Dilma Rousseff
8. Sheryl Sandberg
9. Susan Wojcicki
10. Michelle Obama
11. Park Geun-hye
12. Oprah Winfrey
13. Ginni Rometty
14. Meg Whitman
15. Indra Nooyi
16 Cristina Fernández de Kirchner
17. Irene Rosenfeld
18. Ana Patricia Botín
19. Abigail Johnson
20. Marillyn Hewson
21. Beyoncé Knowles
22. Marissa Mayer
23. Helen Clark
24. Safra Catz
25. Angela Ahrendts
26. Ellen Kullman
27. Michelle Bachelet
28. Anna Wintour
29. Ursula Burns
30. Arundhati Bhattacharya
31. Sri Mulyani Indrawati
32. Ruth Porat
33. Lucy Peng
34. Loretta Lynch
35. Chanda Kochhar
36. Federica Mogherini
37. Gina Rinehart
38. Nancy Pelosi
39. Adena Friedman
40. Ewa Kopacz
41. Queen Elizabeth II
42. Sheikha Lubna Al Qasimi
43. Ho Ching
44. Laurene Powell Jobs
45. Renée James
46. Drew Gilpin Faust
47. Ertharin Cousin
48. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala
49. Samantha Power
50. Ellen DeGeneres
51. Amy Hood
52. Bonnie Hammer
53. Mary Callahan Erdoes
54. Angelina Jolie
55. Beth Comstock
56. Phebe Novakovic
57. Sofía Vergara
58. Donna Langley
59. Sheikh Hasina Wajed
60. Katie Jacobs Stanton
61. Arianna Huffington
62. Margaret Chan
63. Mary Jo White
64. Taylor Swift
65. Rosalind Brewer
66. Nemat (Minouche) Shafik
67. Lubna S. Olayan
68. Peng Liyuan
69. Zhang Xin
70. Güler Sabanci
71. Elvira Nabiullina
72. Elizabeth Holmes
73. Tory Burch
74. Dana Walden
75. Diane von Furstenberg
76. Carol Meyrowitz
77. Mary Meeker
78. Solina Chau
79. Miuccia Prada
80. Katharine Viner
81. Shakira Mebarak
82. Yao Chen
83. Fabiola Gianotti
84. Padmasree Warrior
85. Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw
86. Kaci Kullmann Five
87. Folorunsho Alakija
88. Judy Faulkner
89. Patricia Harris
90. Gwynne Shotwell
91. Sara Blakely
92. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey
93. Shobhana Bhartia
94. Beth Brooke-Marciniak
95. Weili Dai
96. Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf
97. Raja Easa Al Gurg
98. Jenny Lee
99. Greta Van Susteren
100. Lee Boo-Jin
