TEF ’s 7 years of ‘creating legacy’

The Tony Elumelu Foundation (TEF) last week turned seven and the founder called for a reflection of how his foundation “has grown and how our ambitions have risen to the challenges, are moving towards achieving scale and continent-wide impact.”

Seven years ago, Tony Elumelu, Chairman of United Bank for Africa (UBA) and Heirs Holdings, founded TEF after retiring as CEO of UBA, having spent 13 years as the bank’s CEO, helping shape its positioning as one of the leading financial institutions in the country. Elumelu retired on the Central Bank of Nigeria’s 10-year limit for banks’ chief executive policy in the country.

“When we launched, we wanted to change the narrative on African development. We wanted to reframe the agenda, so that economic development would no longer be centred on foreign aid. We would show that Africa’s transformation could and should be driven by Africans,” Elumelu said in a written statement made available to Entrepreneurship+.

Per the TEF team, the foundation was founded and positioned as a 21st century catalytic philanthropy; and as primary driver of Africapitalism, a philosophy of economic transformation of Africa by Africans who are “enhancing the competitiveness and growth of the African private sector, through a push for entrepreneurship.”

For Elumelu, it was time “to reflect on the speed in which we have institutionalised internally; begun to change narratives globally; and championed entrepreneurship in Africa.”

It will be recalled that in 2014, the foundation announced Mr Elumelu’s $100 million commitment to empowering 10,000 African entrepreneurs in 10 years.

Elumelu explained the commitment as understanding the “potential for private sector investment to transform livelihoods,” saying: “I committed myself to empowering the next generation of entrepreneurs. Since 2010, the Tony Elumelu Foundation has been dedicated to resolving Africa’s most pressing social issues – empowering entrepreneurs and enhancing the competitiveness of the private sector.”

The foundation’s main philosophy is based on Elumelu’s legacy to empower a generation of successful for-profit entrepreneurs who enable economic development across Africa, foundation’s CEO, Parminder Vir once said.

Those guiding principles, Entrepreneurship+ learned are derived from an “inclusive economic philosophy of Africapitalism, which promotes that long-term, sustained and vibrant African-led private-sector investment in key sectors of the continent’s economy, will drive economic and social development.”

Through its programme and activities, “TEF seeks to empower African entrepreneurs, to ‘institutionalise luck’ and create an environment where entrepreneurship can flourish in a sustained manner.”

Years of research work aimed at developing an enabling environment for African entrepreneurs, developing the next generation of business leaders for Africa; building the networks and developing the framework for enhancing the competitiveness of African economies and identifying impact investing opportunities may have paid off as the foundation has, in the last three years since it announced its entrepreneurship programme, helped created over 160,000 direct and indirect jobs across Africa.

“As a young entrepreneur, I saw the potential of private sector investment to transform livelihoods. As we expanded the United Bank for Africa to 19 countries across our continent, I saw our positive impact, measured not just in the bottom line, but in expanding access to finance, creating stable employment and breaking down trade barriers,” Elumelu said.

“In just seven years,” the foundation has had direct impact on thousands of people, “empowering individuals to create jobs, influencing policy and becoming the leading driver of entrepreneurship across Africa,” as the foundation’s chairman put it.

To continue empowering African entrepreneurs to create jobs, the foundation, at the last Tony Elumelu Entrepreneurship Forum, the largest gathering of African entrepreneurs ever, held in Lagos last month, signed strategic partnerships with UNDP and AFD to promote development activities that support entrepreneurship and to cover risk sharing to commercial banks in Africa for loans to entrepreneurs.

The forum had 54 African countries in Lagos, Nigeria and united ecosystem players, including investors, entrepreneurs, business leaders and policy makers in attendance.

 

Seven years gone, what’s the current focus?

“Our focus now is the Tony Elumelu Foundation Entrepreneurship Programme – our $100 million commitment to empowering 10,000 entrepreneurs across all 54 African countries over a 10-year period, through the provision of seed capital, training, mentoring, and networking opportunities. Our goal is to create over a million jobs and $10 billion of entrepreneurially driven wealth,” Elumelu said.

As the foundation works on the ambitious one million jobs creation and $10 billion revenue generation, Elumelu said it was time to be “humble, knowing the scale of the challenges our continent faces; the numbers we could help if resources were limitless; and knowing the resilience and endurance that our entrepreneurs show in their own journeys.”