Esther Afua Ocloo Facts: Google Doodle Honors Pioneer Of Microlending On Her 98th Birthday

Tuesday's Google Doodle honored Esther Afua Ocloo to mark the pioneer of microlending's 98th birthday. The Ghanaian entrepreneur was born on April 18, 1919, and died on Feb. 8, 2002, at the age of 82 after she developed pneumonia.

"As both an entrepreneur and an advocate for microlending, “Auntie Ocloo” worked tirelessly to help others like her succeed. Esther Afua Ocloo had only six shillings to her name — less than a dollar — when she made and then sold her first jar of marmalade as a teenager in the 1930s," Google wrote describing the pioneer. "Esther was determined to expand her livelihood of making marmalade and orange juice, but she needed a loan to increase production, and credit was hard to come by for women with little economic resources. It took persistence and a supply contract to secure the money to start her company, Nkulenu Industries."

The Google Doodle art shows "Esther empowering the women of Ghana with the tools to improve their lives and communities."

Here are 10 quick facts about Esther Afua Ocloo:

1. Esther Afua Ocloo was the first person in west Africa's Gold Coast to start a formal food-processing business.

2. Her father was a blacksmith and her mother a farmer and potter.

3. Ocloo founded and became the chairwoman of Women's World Banking, a global nonprofit that helped low-income women with microloans that could allow them to start their own businesses.

4. She traveled to England in 1949 to learn the latest techniques in food processing.

5. Ocloo was the first black woman to receive a cooking diploma from the Goodhousekeeping Institute in London.

6. After a string of achievements, Ocloo was elected the first President – from 1959 to 1961 – of what became the Federation of Ghana Industries.

7. Ocloo began to develop recipes for commercial food canning after she returned from her second trip to England in the 1950s.

8. In 1975, she was invited to the first UN World Conference on Women as an adviser.

9. Esther was married and had four children — one daughter and three sons.

10. After her death in 2002, Ocloo received a state funeral in Accra, Ghana’s capital.