For over three decades, Femi Olayebi, Founder and Creative Director of FemiHandbags, has been a towering force in shaping the landscape of African luxury craftsmanship. Her uncompromising focus on structural governance, meticulous finishing, and institutional discipline famously led her premium leather brand to become an academic case study at the prestigious Lagos Business School (LBS).
As the visionary pioneer behind the Lagos Leather Fair (LLF), now entering its highly anticipated 9th edition under the strategic theme “Beyond the Hide: Scaling Value, Building Industry, Driving Growth” Olayebi has successfully transitioned from an individual brand builder into an ecosystem reformer. Through targeted capacity initiatives like Kafawa (a technical training partnership with the Mastercard Foundation’s Young Africa Works initiative) and her selection as a prestigious Legatum Foundry Fellow at MIT, she continues to spearhead the systemic formalisation of West Africa’s multi-billion Naira leather trade.
In this insightful interview with IFEOMA OKEKE-KORIEOCHA, Olayebi pulls back the curtain on why raw material exports keep African economies at the lowest end of the global supply chain. She outlines the precise technological deficits hampering local artisans, details how creative entrepreneurs can de-risk their records to unlock tier-1 commercial banking capital, and shares the invaluable governance lessons forged across 34 years of resilient, iterative bootstrapping.
