FirstRand CEO Mary Vilakazi. Picture: LinkedIn/Dr Nik Eberl/ The CEO Mindset Power no longer looks the way it used to. From boardrooms and central banks to geopolitics and global business, women are increasingly occupying positions that were once the near-exclusive preserve of men.
Forbes World’s 100 Most Powerful Women list captures this shift, spotlighting the women reshaping influence, leadership and decision-making at the highest levels. The 2025 list includes two South African CEOs, making them the most powerful women in the country. The top five most powerful women in the world all hold positions in politics and policymaking institutions.
Forbes evaluates candidates by measuring economic power, scope of influence, institutional leadership and the scale of impact they command. The recently releasedlistshows that Mary Vilakazi, CEO of FirstRand Group, is the 74th most powerful woman, making her the most powerful woman in South Africa. Vilakazi became CEO of FirstRand Group in April 2024, after being the group’s COO since 2018.
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FirstRand is the parent company to First National Bank (FNB), Rand Merchant Bank (RMB), WesBank, Ashburton Investments and Direct Axis, among others. She is also the only woman to lead one of the country’s big five banks. As of June 2025, the group held assets worth R2.5 trillion.
Vilakazi is among the highest-paid in the country, walking away with acash package of R11.2 million for the year. “She started her career at PwC; at 27, Vilakazi became one of the firm’s youngest partners across its global offices,” said Forbes. “Accounting and banking hadn’t been Vilakazi’s original career plans: She has said she wanted to become a psychologist or lawyer when she was younger.” The second South African woman on the list is 46-year-old Mpumi Madisa, Bidvest group CEO.
Bidvest, with a market cap of R79 billion, operates across a range of business sectors, including financial services, pharmaceuticals, and freight management. Madisa, ranked 89th on the list, was appointed CEO in 2020 after joining the company in 2003. “When she took on the CEO role in 2020, Madisa became the only Black female chief executive of a top-40 company on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange,” said Forbes.
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