Tony Elumelu Foundation to empower young entrepreneurs with $24m

The fortunes of 4,800 businesses across 54 African countries are about to change as the Tony Elumelu Foundation (TEF) is set to give them a seed capital of $5,000 each.

The Foundation will spend $24 million on the 2021 beneficiaries.

TEF, a leading philanthropy empowering young African entrepreneurs, will on November 12 in Lagos announce the lucky beneficiaries of the 2021 TEF Entrepreneurship Programme.

The Foundation said the ground-breaking hybrid event will unveil 4,800 African entrepreneurs chosen from all 54 African countries who will be joining the 2021 cohort of the Foundation’s annual programme.

Every January 1^st, the Tony Elumelu Foundation opens its application portal to African entrepreneurs with businesses of less than five years.

The 2021 beneficiaries were chosen from a pool of over 400,000 applications, selected based on their innovative and impactful business ideas.

In line with the Foundation’s mission to catalyse entrepreneurship in Africa, the selected beneficiaries will consist of both new start-ups and existing young businesses in varying operational stages across different sectors.

As part of TEF’s objectives to ensure that African entrepreneurs are well equipped to build investable and profitable businesses, each beneficiary has undergone world-class business management training and mentorship conducted exclusively on TEFConnect, the Foundation’s proprietary digital platform that provides capacity-building support, advisory and market linkages to over one million Africans and counting.

The platform’s unique training curriculum covered insightful topics such as Starting Your Business, Business Management & Fundamentals, Leadership & Business Growth, Marketing Strategy, Product Design, and Selecting & Building a Team, amongst others.

CEO of Tony Elumelu Foundation, Ifeyinwa Ugochukwu, said the priority of the Foundation this year is the economic recovery of small and medium scale businesses.

Speaking ahead of the Selection Announcement event, Ugochukwu said: “This year, with support from our global partners, we will be scaling our impact and empowering nearly 5,000 entrepreneurs. A major priority for us at the Foundation for 2021 remains the economic recovery of small and medium scale enterprises (SMEs) following the COVID-19 disruption to economic activities.

“We are very excited to be unveiling the 2021 cohort of the Tony Elumelu Entrepreneurship programme. I believe the $5,000 we are giving to each entrepreneur will address some pressing demands and reduce the burden brought about by the pandemic.

“Year after year, we are greatly inspired by the tenacity and quality of business ideas that come out of Africa. This only proves that young Africans need organisations like the Tony Elumelu Foundation who are willing to take a chance on them and their ideas.”

Through the $100 million TEF Entrepreneurship Programme which was launched in 2015, the Foundation empowers thousands of entrepreneurs annually, who benefit from mentorship, business management training, access to new markets, $5,000 in non-refundable seed capital, and networking opportunities to promote their businesses to a global audience.

Since the inception of the programme, TEF has trained over 1.5 million young Africans and funded over 10,000 entrepreneurs across all 54 African countries.

The Selection Announcement event will be streamed live via the Foundation’s official YouTube channel and our Facebook page.