The life and work of Esther Afua Ocloo has been celebrated in the latest Google Doodle, on what would have been the businesswoman’s 98th birthday.
On Tuesday, an illustration of Ocloo appeared on the Google search engine’s front page, depicting the Ghana native’s pioneering work. Ocloo, who died in 2002 at the age of 82, was an entrepreneur and a leader in microlending, according to Fortune.
Ocloo was a champion for women in business, and was the first person in West Africa’s Gold Coast to create a formal food-processing business. She is also considered one of the key figures in the development of microlending, the practice of giving low-income business owners small loans that they cannot secure from traditional banks.
After gaining success, Ocloo passed her business knowledge on to other Ghanaians, founding the Women’s World Banking organization in 1979 to help low-income women create businesses.
