For decades, the Nigerian healthcare sector is marred with challenges ranging from poor infrastructure, poor funding to inadequate equipment, but Fola Laoye, the co-Founder and CEO of Iwosan Investments Limited, is doing everything within her power to change the narrative.
According to the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa report, the African healthcare sector is estimated to be worth $259 billion by 2030 and has the potential to create 16 million jobs.
Laoye has led the charge in luring development finance organisations and private equity investors into the healthcare industry for more than 20 years. Additionally, she has taken part in transactions that have helped raise over $100 million for the African healthcare industry to date.
According to her, “If any sector needs someone to drive access to funding, it would be the Healthcare sector.”
Laoye started by reviewing investment opportunities within the healthcare landscape across Africa. In 1999, she joined Hygeia and one of the first responsibilities she handled was raising capital. “When I joined in 1999, we did one of the first deals with a Direct Foreign Investment (DFI) to raise capital for healthcare. It was a small deal (by comparison to other sectors) involving about $500,000 at the time, but it was the first of its kind. It helped pave the way for more capital to be diverted into healthcare, particularly through private equity investments,” Laoye revealed.
After doing this for a couple of years, Laoye founded Health Markets Africa in 2018 to provide Advisory and Investment Services, still within the Healthcare industry, with the aim of building healthcare companies and healthcare markets in Africa.
In 2021, Laoye partnered with Fola Adeola to found Iwosan Investments Limited, a private healthcare investment company dedicated to investing in the Nigerian healthcare market. As stated in the pitchbook, the firm prefers to invest through Buyouts and growth capital.
Education and career
Born in Lagos state to parents who were both medical doctors, Laoye attended Queen’s College Lagos, before proceeding to the University of Lagos where she bagged a bachelor’s degree in Accounting.
She worked for a while with Ernst & Young, Lagos before leaving for the United Kingdom. She later worked with Coopers and Lybrand (now merged into PricewaterhouseCoopers PwC) in London for five years. While on the job, she did her professional accountancy exams (ACA) and got certified.
She is a Member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England & Wales, and the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria. She came to Nigeria briefly after her ACA certification, after which she decided to get an MBA in General Management from the Harvard Business School, Cambridge USA.
Currently, Laoye is the co-Founder and CEO of Iwosan Investments Limited, a Health Investments Holding Company, and owners of Iwosan Lagoon Hospitals. She was previously director at Investment Fund for Health in Africa (IFHA), a pioneer private equity fund focused on Healthcare in Africa.
She was a founding board member of Hygeia Group Nigeria, founders of Lagoon Hospitals and Hygeia HMO, where she served as CEO (2002-2012) and as Chairperson (2012-2015). She is a Trustee of the Board of the Society for Quality in Healthcare in Nigeria (SQHN) and is also a member of the Board of the Institute of Healthcare Improvement (IHI), USA.
She is Chairperson of the boards of Old Mutual Life Assurance and FSDH Asset Management and is a board member of Retail Supermarkets (Shoprite Nigeria). As part of her philanthropic dispositions, she currently chairs the Elebute-LUTH Welfare Board. She is also a member of Harvard Business School Africa Advisory Board, as well as a trustee of the Harvard Business School Association of Nigeria.
In 2011, Fola Laoye was nominated as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. Two years later in 2013, she was awarded the Harvard Business School Africa Business Club Leadership Excellence Award.
Fola enjoys watching football and basketball. She equally likes networking and has several interests outside work.
She is a member of the Young Presidents Organisation (YPO), Lagos Chapter, and has joined wine networks, sports, and music networks via the group. She also sits on the Africa Regional Board of YPO.
Fola has also dabbled into some angel investing, and she says that even though it gets risky, she enjoys supporting entrepreneurs as they deploy the capital to make the business work.
