Adaku Ufere-Awoonor, Energy Attorney and Founder of DAX Consult

Adaku Ufere-Awoonor is the CEO and Principal Consultant at DAX Consult, a consulting firm with offices in Nigeria, Ghana and Liberia, which provides legal and business advisory services to local and foreign companies. 

Adaku has an LL.B from the University of Nigeria, a BL from the Nigerian Law School, an LLM in Oil and Gas from the University of Aberdeen, and a Certification in Public Management from the University of California, Davis. 

She is a member of the Nigerian Bar Association, the International Bar Association, the Association of International Petroleum Negotiators, the Women in African Power, the Institute for Energy Security and the Young Women in Energy Association. She is also a certified Chartered Arbitrator and a Member of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators.

Adaku is an international oil and gas, gender and development lawyer with over a decade of experience in legal and business advisory in the oil an gas, power, mining and extractive industries.

She’s led multicultural and multilingual teams across Africa in the structuring, negotiation and implementation of oil & gas, power, gender, mining, infrastructure and energy policy projects in Africa.

Adaku was inspired to go into Oil and Gas law when Nigeria appointed its first female Minister of Petroleum Resources. So after one year as an associate at a law firm, she went on to get a masters degree in Oil and Gas law from University of Aberdeen. 

The award-winning lawyer describes herself as passionate about girls’ education, gender equality, women empowerment, advancing women in leadership positions and eliminating gender-based violence.

Adaku is currently the Head of Legal at STER Initiative, a Not-for-Profit organization advocating against sexual violence, providing prevention mechanisms and supporting survivors with psychosocial services.

In 2016, Adaku was named as one of Nigeria’s 40 Under 40 Leading Lawyers by the Nigerian Legal Awards and was recognised as the 2017 Attorney of the Year at the African Legal Awards.

Adaku is also a graduate of the Young Women in African Power programme presented by the Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI) Regional Leadership Centre for Southern Africa (RLC-SA) at the University of South Africa (Unisa). The programme supports the career development of a new generation of women leaders in the energy sector.

She was named Young African Professional of the Year at the 2018 African Leadership Awards and Nation Building Series.

She is a 2018 Mandela Washington Fellow and one of the women in Leading Ladies Africa’s “100 Most Inspiring Women” for 2019 list.

Adaku is a respected international conference speaker and panelist, having spoken at conferences in Equatorial Guinea, South Sudan, South Africa, the United States of America, United Kingdom, the Republic of Congo, Uganda, Ghana and Nigeria; and a prolific writer, with published articles in the field of energy and project finance. 

She is a recipient of numerous honours which include the 40 Under 40 Leading Lawyers in Nigeria in 2016, Attorney of the Year at the African Legal Awards in 2017, Young African Professional of the Year by the Independent Pan-African Youth Parliament in 2018, a Fellow of the Institute of Energy Security, Ghana and a Mandela Washington Fellow 2018.

Adaku is passionate about and lends her time to causes promoting girls’ education, gender equality, women empowerment, the advancement of women in leadership positions and the elimination of gender-based violence.