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Folorunso Alakija Distinguished Lecture on Religion and Public Life in Africa

In 2018, the Center for African Studies launched the Folorunso Alakija Distinguished Lecture on Religion and Public Life in Africa. This annual lecture is sponsored by the Harvard Center for African Studies and generously supported by the Center for African Studies’ Africa Advisory Board Member, Folorunso Alakija. 

This lecture provides a platform for the Harvard University Center for African Studies to connect faith leaders with the Harvard community and beyond in a conversation about the constantly shifting and contested boundary between the secular and the sacred, the public and the private.

Mrs. Folorunso Alakija is Executive Vice-Chairman of Famfa Oil Limited. She is a businesswoman and philanthropist with a sincere desire to help the needy, a fashion icon with an infallible sense of style, a loving wife, a caring mother, and a doting grandmother.

Past Lectures

2021 Lecture

Speakers:

- Dr. Angela Dwamena-Aboagye (Lawyer, Women’s Empowerment Advocate & Executive Director of The Ark Foundation, Ghana)

- Professor Sarojini Nadar (Desmond Tutu South African Research Chair in Religion and Social Justice at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa)

- Dr. Fatou Sow (Researcher in Sociology, University Cheikh Anta Diop, Dakar, Senegal & University Paris Diderot, France)

- Moderated by Professor Leila Ahmed (Victor S. Thomas Research Professor of Divinity at the Harvard Divinity School)

2020 Lecture

On November 12, 2020, the Harvard Center for African Studies’ Africa Office hosted the second Folorunso Alakija Distinguished Lecture on Religion and Public Life in Africa co-sponsored by Religion and Public Life at the Harvard Divinity School. Professor Simeon Ilesanmi, Washington M. Wingate Professor of Religion at Wake Forest University shared insight on the confluence of legal, political, and cultural issues that restrictive lockdown measures raise, and their implications for understanding and predicting the future trajectories of relationships between religion and state in Africa.

2019 Lecture

On April 17, 2019, we hosted the inaugural Folorunso Alakija Distinguished Lecture on Religion and Public Life in Africa which featured Bishop John Richard Bryant, retired Senior Bishop and Presiding Prelate of the Fourth Episcopal District of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Bishop Bryant shared his experience with religion as a Peace Corps volunteer in Liberia and how that influenced his preaching career to this day. The sanctuary of Memorial Church echoed with breathtaking music provided by the 2017 choir of the world, the Aeolians of Oakwood University in Alabama. This lecture was followed by a dinner where Mrs. Folorunso Alakija was the keynote speaker, sharing her own experience of how her deep faith shapes her business and philanthropy.

Watch the recording here: