Adenike Oluwole

Nigerian educator who established groundbreaking girls' schools in rural Yoruba communities.

Adenike Oluwole (1925–2001) revolutionized Nigerian education through her creation of the first girls' boarding schools in Oyo State. Born in Ibadan, she studied at the University College Ibadan before founding the Oluwole Girls' Academy in 1954, which became a model for gender-equitable education. Her innovative curriculum integrated Yoruba cultural studies with modern sciences, training over 5,000 students by 1970. Oluwole's 1968 pamphlet Education for Empowerment argued that girls' education was critical to national development, influencing Nigeria's 1970 Education Decree mandating girls' access to secondary schools. She pioneered scholarship programs for impoverished students, later establishing the Adenike Oluwole Trust in 1985. Her work inspired similar initiatives across West Africa, though her contributions were often eclipsed by male contemporaries. The 2003 biography Building Futures details her struggles against traditionalists who opposed girls' education. Oluwole's legacy endures through the annual Girls' Education Summit she co-founded, now a continent-wide movement. Her advocacy laid groundwork for Nigeria's current policy of free primary education for girls.