Rolake Akinkugbe-Filani
Chief Commercial Officer, Mixta Africa (ARM Group)
An award-winning and versatile energy and infrastructure sector executive, Rolake has more than 17 years track-record of helping to finance and scale businesses across Africa. With a solid reputation as one of Africa’ leading female voices in the energy sector, she is a regular feature on media platforms like CNBC, BBC and CNN and has published scores of articles on African energy, infrastructure, and markets. She also currently anchors a weekly Saturday morning critically acclaimed business show, BusinessWeek, on Arise News a pan-African media platform.
She currently leads strategy and growth as the Chief Commercial Officer of leading infrastructure developer, Mixta Africa, helping the group craft and execute its commercial strategy for sustainable infrastructure, housing, and utilities projects within its Lagos New Town (LNT) development in Nigeria, and also across operating subsidiaries in Senegal, Morocco, Tunisia, Cote d’Ivoire. She is simultaneously providing strategic leadership as acting GM of Mixta’s key, iconic, hospitality asset, Lakowe Lakes Golf and Country Estate as it transitions to a new operating model, and was also recently appointed as the overseeing HQ executive for Mixta’s operations in Cote d’Ivoire and Senegal.
Prior to this, she was Senior Advisor to IFU, the Danish Investment Fund, and was head of energy for FBN Capital and FBNQuest Merchant Bank (investment banking arm of Nigeria’s largest and oldest financial services group) from 2014 - 2019. She previously served as adviser on the \private sector economic advisory group advising the Office of Nigeria’s Vice President on a range of national development policy issues and was also Group Head of the award-winning energy and oil and gas research team at pan-African Ecobank Group covering 33 African markets out of London. She was recognised as a top 275 Global Female Influencer Executives (2020) in Energy by the UK’s Energy Council, and in 2015, won the Best Africa Oil and Gas analyst award from Energy Africa US, and was in 2016 recognised as One to Watch in African Energy by Centurion LLP. She was also recognised as a Young Economic leader in Africa, by the Choiseul Institute (2018, 2019 & 2020) and was listed in the Most Influential People of African Descent (MIPAD) 100 Under 40 in the 2018 Business and Entrepreneurship Category. She has a BSc & an MSc degree from the London School of Economics (LSE) and a joint MBA degree from the London School of Economics, HEC School of Management Paris and NYU’s Leonard Stern School of Business (TRIUM).
A passionate advocate of infrastructure solutions for underserved markets, she sits on several energy industry, climate, venture capital and non-profit boards.
