Nigeria's Finance Minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has been named among the most powerful women in the world by Forbes.
Also on the list is Nigerian billionaire, Folorunsho Alakija, who occupies the 87th spot.
Okonjo-Iweala, who also recently received an honorary degree from Yale, is number 48 on the list.
Find their profiles and the full list below:
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala:
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.
Folorunsho Alakija:
The richest self-made woman in Africa and one of just two female billionaires on the continent. Folorunsho Alakija's first company was an upscale fashion label that catered to Nigeria's elite, including the wife of the former military president, Ibrahim Babangida.
This connection paid off: the president later gave Alakija's company a prospecting license for one of the most lucrative oil fields in Nigeria. The drop in oil prices has dented the fortune of Alakija, one of just two women billionaires in Africa.
