The most powerful woman in Africa?

Business magazine, Forbes, made a list of "The 100 Most Official Women": The top African on the list is the United Nations' top human rights official, Navi Pillay, from South Africa.

Navi Pillay. Via UN Office on Human Rights.

Since African women need to be saved by Nicholas Kristof, I’m not surprised to find that only two of them made Forbes’s America-centric (surprise, surprise) list of “The 100 Most Official Women”: The top United Nations human rights official, Navanethem (Navi) Pillay (she’s South African) and the President of Liberia, Ellen Sirleaf-Johnson, also probably the most media-savvy African President, making up for her shortcomings with good PR .

Is Pillay the most powerful woman in and from Africa?

The top five women on the lists are: German Chancellor Angela Merkel, top US government finance official Sheila Bair, Pepsico Chief Executive Indra Nooyi, Anglo American chief executive Cynthia Carroll and Ho Ching, the chief executive of Singapore’s flagship sovereign wealth fund.

By the way, you know what I think about the uselessness of these kinds of lists. For the fill list, go here.

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