Dr. Tunji Olowolafe trained as a physician before building a career in infrastructure, construction, and investment. Medicine may have stopped being his profession decades ago, but the instinct behind it has never fully left him.
This year, he funded West Africa’s first advanced ophthalmic surgical simulation centre at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital, dedicating it to the memory of his late wife, Gbemisola Olowolafe.
The facility uses virtual reality to train eye surgeons in delicate procedures before they ever operate on a living patient, a development that directly addresses the shortage of skilled ophthalmic surgeons across the sub-region and the avoidable blindness that shortage produces.
The dedication to his wife was deliberate. On the first anniversary of her death earlier this year, Olowolafe had already launched the N1 billion Gbemisola Olowolafe Miva Scholarship, a five-year endowment funding university education for 1,000 Nigerian students.
The simulation centre extends that same philosophy into healthcare, ensuring her name is attached to restored sight rather than just grief.
