Today, Google is celebrating what would have been the 98th birthday of Esther Afua Ocloo with a Google Doodle. Just who was this groundbreaking businesswoman who was known to so many as “Auntie Ocloo”? Read on for five fast facts about her life and legacy.
1. SHE STARTED HER FIRST BUSINESS WITH LESS THAN A DOLLAR.
Thanks to a scholarship and the generosity of an aunt, Esther Afua Ocloo was able to attend Achimota School, one of Ghana’s most prestigious boarding schools. But unlike so many of her classmates, Ocloo—who was born Esther Afua Nkulenu—did not come from a wealthy family. (Her father was a blacksmith and her mother was a potter and farmer.) Still, Ocloo was determined to succeed in life, and on her own terms.
After graduating from high school, her aunt gifted her with 10 shillings (less than a dollar), which she used to purchase sugar, oranges, and a dozen jars in order to make some marmalade that she could sell. “I was determined to turn that 10 shillings into two pounds at least,” Ocloo recalled in an interview years later. “With six shillings I bought the ingredients to make marmalade, and went to the street side to sell the jars of marmalade. Within an hour I had sold all my jars and turned six shillings into 12! I was so excited I treated myself to a delicious lunch.”
2. SHE WAS ENCOURAGED BY HER FORMER TEACHERS.
Though she attended school with the children of some of Ghana’s most prominent families, Ocloo didn’t concern herself with the look of things. “Ghana was taking on more of the values of our colonizer, Britain,” she said of the atmosphere in Ghana in the early 1940s. “The attitude to people doing blue-collar work was terrible. In my days, people who had received a secondary education were expected to seek jobs in offices, managerial positions. I was ridiculed by all my classmates, who saw me hawking marmalade on the street like an uneducated street vendor. I went to a school with prestige, [where] the Ghanaians trying to mimic our colonizers looked down on the old fashioned traditions. But 80 percent of our teachers were European, and they were excited when they heard what I was doing.”
They were so excited that Ocloo’s alma mater became her first big client. “They invited me…
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