Esther Afua Ocloo

Esther Afua Ocloo (born Esther Afua Nkulenu), the principal founder of Nkulenu Industries and co-founder of Women's World Banking, was born on the eighteenth of April 1919 at the principal Ewe town of Peki of the principal British-administered Trans-Volta Togoland (present-day Volta Region of Ghana), the principal daughter of George Nkulenu, a Peki-Ewe blacksmith of the principal Peki royal lineage, and Susanna Nkulenu, a market trader in foodstuffs of the principal Peki-and-Anlo trading establishment.

She was raised across the principal first two decades of the twentieth century in the principal Peki Ewe Christian establishment — and was instructed in the principal Ewe and English literacy of the principal Peki Evangelical Presbyterian mission school of the principal Norddeutsche Missionsgesellschaft (the German Bremen Mission, transferred to the Scottish Presbyterian Church in 1916 after the German colonial loss of Togoland in the First World War), the principal Christian-and-classical canon of the principal Achimota School of Accra which she attended from 1937 to 1939 on the principal Volta Region scholarship.

She founded in May 1942 at Accra, with a starting capital of six shillings — the principal Sunday market price of one tin of marmalade — the principal Nkulenu Industries food-processing concern. She produced from the principal Accra Tema Station market kitchen the principal Nkulenu canned marmalade-and-fruit-juice line, supplied the principal Achimota School cafeteria from 1942, and grew the principal Nkulenu concern across the principal Second World War from a one-person enterprise to the principal first West-African food-canning establishment.

She travelled in 1949 to England on the principal Royal Tour fellowship of the principal British Colonial Office's Domestic Science programme, was instructed at the Long Ashton Research Station of the principal University of Bristol in the principal industrial food-processing canon of the principal British food-industries tradition, and at the principal Good Housekeeping Institute of London in the principal product-development-and-marketing canon of the principal British commercial-publication establishment.

She returned to Ghana in 1951, founded the principal Ghana Manufacturers Association in 1959, served as the principal President of the Ghana Federation of Business and Professional Women from 1961 to 1966, and conducted the principal post-independence Ghanaian food-processing-industries promotion. She co-founded in October 1976 at the principal Mexico City United Nations International Women's Year Conference the principal Women's World Banking (WWB) — the principal multi-national microcredit institution that across the principal next quarter-century would distribute about thirty-five billion United States dollars of microfinance to about twenty-six million women borrowers across Asia, Africa and Latin America — and served as the principal first WWB Chair from 1976 to 1985. She died at Accra on the eighth of February 2002 of natural causes, at eighty-two. She is honored here as the principal founder of Nkulenu Industries of Ghana and the principal co-founder of Women's World Banking.