Born in 1964, Mr. Kola Adesina is an accomplished Nigerian entrepreneur and Group Managing Director of Sahara Group. He was former chairman of Egbin Power Plc, and Board Chairman of Ikeja Electric.
Adesina earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Insurance and a Master’s Degree in Business from the University of Lagos. He attended executive programmes in Harvard Business School and The Wharton School Advanced Management Program.
Apart from his Bachelor’s Degree in Insurance and Master’s Degree in Business, and also in International Law and Diplomacy, Adesina is an Associate of the Chartered Institute of Insurance.
Before his time at Sahara Group, Adesina started his career working in the insurance industry. He later joined Sahara Group where he moved up the ladder due to his selling skills, and has led various projects at the power firm, including the nation-wide strategic management of the supply chain of fuel to the emergency power plant of the defunct National Electricity Power Authority, the oil delegation on the acquisition of the Sierra Leone Refinery.
Adesina has also managed the crude oil contract of Sahara Group in Côte d’Ivoire, where he also served as the Director of Infrastructure, responsible for the acquisition of strategic assets in Africa. The leading international energy and infrastructure conglomerate has operations in over 38 countries across Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Europe.
Adesina served as a member of the Presidential Committee inaugurated by President Jonathan on the accelerated expansion of the electricity infrastructure in Nigeria, which culminated in the unbundling of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) into its current successor companies.
In 2022, he was crowned as Vanguard Newspaper’s Private Sector Icon of the Year. His experience that traverses the academia, finance, energy, trade and diplomacy.
His current vision at the helms of Sahara Power Group is to bring energy to life by deploying diversified power sources to light up lives, businesses and sustainable interventions in Nigeria and across Africa.
Adesina specifically oversees the Group’s affiliates, including Ikeja Electric, the largest privately owned power distribution business in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA); and Egbin Power Plc, the largest thermal plant in South Saharan Africa, with the installed capacity of 1,320MW, and with ongoing expansion plans to increase the capacity over two-fold; as well as First Independent Power Limited. Egbin provides a quarter of the total generating capacity in Nigeria.
He combines his years and experience in management and business diplomacy into creating and executing innovative strategies for governments across Sub-Saharan Africa in solving challenges in the energy sector. Kola is a much sought after resource person on energy related issues, especially the power sector in Africa and is also a frontline speaker at conferences across the globe.
The Sahara Group Boss is passionate about empowering young people and takes great pride in mentoring youths to seek creative ways of galvanizing their energies for sustained excellence and productivity. He is a Pan-Africanist, a seasoned entrepreneur and avowed promoter of the Pan-African Dream of regional integration and trade.