NIGERIAN billionaire Tony Elumelu Foundation (TEF) has announced the fifth cycle of its entrepreneurship programme, which offers seed capital and business development training to young entrepreneurs-businesses across Africa.
BY FIDELITY MHLANGA
The TEF is a brainchild of Nigerian banker and billionaire and United Bank for Africa Plc chairman Tony Elumelu.
“The Tony Elumelu Foundation, the leading African-funded and founded philanthropy committed to empowering African entrepreneurs, is now accepting applications for the 2019 cohort of the TEF Entrepreneurship Programme. The TEF Entrepreneurship Programme is open to citizens and legal residents of all African countries, who run for-profit businesses based in Africa that are no older than three years. The deadline for applications submission is March 1, 2019,” TEF said in a statement.
The 2017 cycle saw 17 young Zimbabwean entrepreneurs drawn from various sectors of the economy getting seed capital. Last year, 21 local entrepreneurs were among 1 000 young persons who benefited from the programme.
Nkosana George Mazibisa, an alumni specialising in agro-business, was awarded the Most Impactful Award, along with five others at last year’s edition.
The programme is a 10-year, $100 million commitment to identify, train, mentor and fund 10 000 African entrepreneurs. The programme’s objective is to generate at least 1 000 000 new jobs and create at least $10 billion in new business revenue across Africa.
Now in its fifth year, the TEF Entrepreneurship Programme has empowered 4 470 entrepreneurs, using a bespoke and robust selection, training and implementation process to create visible and sustainable impact across all 54 African countries.
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Inspired by Elumelu’s economic philosophy of Africapitalism and his vision to institutionalise luck and democratise opportunity for a new generation of African entrepreneurs, the foundation has implemented one of the most ambitious entrepreneurship programmes globally.
Selected entrepreneurs from previous years have transformed their businesses and their communities after gaining from the programme’s seven pillars: $5 000 in seed capital; business development training; one-on-one mentoring; access to TEFConnect; pan-African meet-ups; TEF network membership and participation at the annual TEF Entrepreneurship Forum, the largest convening of the African entrepreneurship ecosystem.
