How my foundation supported 24,000 entrepreneurs with over $100 million in 16 years – Elumelu

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The chairman of United Bank for Africa and Transnational Corporation of Nigeria, Tony Elumelu, has said his foundation, the Tony Elumelu Foundation, has disbursed more than $100 million in seed capital to over 24,000 Africans through its entrepreneurship programme over the last 16 years.

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Mr Elumelu, who made the declaration in an annual letter posted on Facebook on Monday and written on the occasion of his birthday, highlighted how the philanthropic initiative he and his wife conceived in 2010 has helped many young entrepreneurs create value while driving economic transformation across the continent.

“In a world filled with uncertainty, we made a deliberate choice – year after year – to plant certainty in the lives of young African entrepreneurs,” he said.

“Our initial goal was to identify, train, mentor, and fund 10,000 African entrepreneurs with $5,000 in non-refundable seed capital. 16 years later, I am humbled that we have nearly tripled that ambition,” he added.

According to its website, the foundation has trained more than 2.5 million young Africans through its digital hub, TEFConnect, and the entrepreneurs it has financially supported have gone on to create 1.5 million direct and indirect jobs.

On Sunday, the entrepreneurship programme announced its 12th cohort in Abuja, comprising 3,200 young entrepreneurs from across 54 African countries, on course to receive funding, mentorship, and access to its digital platform.

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51 per cent of the selected entrepreneurs are women, chosen based on merit and based on the “strength of their ideas, clarity of their business models and the ambition of their vision,” Mr Elumelu stated.

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He also observed that more than 80 per cent of the entrepreneurs backed by the foundation’s programmes have scaled beyond early stages, representing 4 out of every 5 businesses, well above a global average of 1 out of every 5.

The foundation has stated an aspiration to pursue what it called “Africapitalism” – the belief that Africa’s private sector, especially its entrepreneurs, must drive the continent’s socio-economic transformation.