The Tony Elumelu Foundation

The Tony Elumelu Foundation (TEF) was founded in 2010 by Nigerian businessman Tony O. Elumelu, and positioned as a 21st-century catalytic philanthropy. As a primary driver of Africapitalism, the Foundation is committed to the economic transformation of Africa by enhancing the competitiveness and growth of the African private sector, through a push for entrepreneurship.

In 2015, TEF consolidated its various programmes and initiatives and made investing in Africa's next generation of entrepreneurs and business leaders a priority. The future of the Tony Elumelu Foundation centres on the provision of structured, robust, and multifaceted support to entrepreneurs around Africa through the Tony Elumelu Foundation Entrepreneurship Programme.

The vision for the Foundation is to unlock the obstacles that Africa's entrepreneurs face as they grow their start-ups into small to medium enterprises (SMEs), their SMEs into national growth companies, and their national growth companies into African multinationals.

The Foundation aims to promote excellence in business leadership and entrepreneurship across Africa.[3] One of its driving aspirations is the improvement of the competitiveness of African economies.

• The Foundation's main philosophy is based on the founder's legacy to empower a generation of successful for-profit entrepreneurs who enable economic development across Africa.
• The guiding principles 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

As of August 2019, the Foundation is led by Ifeyinwa Ugochukwu as Chief Executive Officer, a lawyer and a passionate advocate of entrepreneurship who served as the Director Partnerships of the Tony Elumelu Foundation since November 2017. Its advisory board features several public and private sector figures including Harvard Business School's Professor Michael E. Porter as its founding patron.

Other board members are Alexander Trotter, TEF Trustee, partner and Founder of Newmarket Asset Management, a specialist investor in frontier African equities based in the United Kingdom; Dr. Awele Elumelu, TEF Trustee, Chairperson of Avon Healthcare Limited and CEO of Avon Medical Services Limited. She is also an Investment Professional at Heirs Holdings Limited. Jamie Cooper Hohn, Advisory Board Member, co-Founder and Chair of the Children's Investment Fund Foundation; Bruno Wenn, Advisory Board Member, former Chairman of the Management Board, DEG; Lionel Zinsou, Advisory Board Member, French-Beninese economist and investment banker who was Prime Minister of Benin from 2015 to 2016; Parminder Vir, OBE, Advisory Board Member, Film Producer and Former CEO, The Tony Elumelu Foundation; and Rabbi Avraham Berkowitz, Advisory Board Member. Avraham Berkowitz serves as a senior advisor to companies and non-profits in Education, Health, and Technology in their PR strategy, social responsibility and philanthropic impact.

• The Tony Elumelu Entrepreneurship Programme: A decade-long $100m initiative designed to give training, mentorship and seed capital to 10,000 entrepreneurs with start-up business ideas they want to execute in Africa. The commitment was made by the Elumelu family with the intent to create at least 1million jobs and contribute over $10billion in revenue to the African economy.[4]
• The Tony Elumelu Entrepreneurship Forum: An annual conference designed to bring entrepreneurs across the continent together to network and share ideas, and connect with private and public sector leaders in one location to tackle entrepreneurship challenges on the continent. The fifth edition held in Abuja, the Nigerian capital on 26&27 July 2019 and had in attendance Nigeria's Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo; Nigeria's First Lady, Aisha Buhari; President of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Felix Tshisekedi; President of Rwanda Paul Kagame; Macky Sall, President of Senegal; Ruhakana Rugunda, Prime Minister of Uganda; Director-General, World Health Organisation, Tedros Ghebreyesus; and President, African Development Bank, Akinwunmi Adesina, among others.[5]

• The Mtanga Farms Investment: The Foundation's inaugural impact investment was in Mtanga Farms Limited, a mixed arable farming business operating in the Southern Tanzanian Highlands.[6]
• The Elumelu Legacy Prize: An award established by Tony O. and Dr. Awele Elumelu to recognize homegrown academic excellence in subject areas representing their career paths and fields of academic study. The awards were given to the overall best graduating students and best performing students in Economics, Business Administration, and Medicine within top tertiary institutions across Nigeria's six geopolitical zones. It was also given to recipients who have excelled in training programmes from the Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria. The annual Prize was designed to promote academic excellence and inspire the next generation of Nigerian leaders.
• The Elumelu Professionals Programme (EPP) recruits experienced professionals graduating from prestigious Masters in Business Administration and Masters in Public Administration (or Public Policy) programmes to work in SME companies and public sector agencies. The recruits work on specific strategic projects over the course of a 10-week placement. Since 2011, the Foundation has placed over 85 professionals in more than 40 companies across seven countries in Africa.
• The Blair Elumelu Fellowship Programme (BEFP) is a partnership between former British Prime Minister Tony Blair's Africa Governance Initiative and TEF. It was scheduled to run for three years. Tony Blair's office has hailed it as "bringing together the best of innovative European government delivery models with the best of African private sector acumen and execution.[7] "
• The Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN) is a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to increasing the effectiveness of impact investing. TEF is dedicated to impact investing and is a member of the GIIN Investor Council.[8]
• The Foundation's focus on research delivered white papers on different topics in 2012. Their founder, Tony O. Elumelu, contributed to the Nigerian Leadership Initiative's white paper in 2011.[9] The GIIN published a case study in November 2011 on the Foundation's investment in Mtanga Farms[10]
• The Africapitalism Institute also released a comprehensive report on the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Africa, analysing challenges facing African entrepreneurs and their proposed solutions.[11][12][13][14] Titled Unleashing Africa’s Entrepreneurs: Improving the Enabling Environment for Start-ups, it was first released to the public at a world-press conference on the sidelines of the 6th Global Entrepreneurship Summit in Nairobi, Kenya on 25 July 2015. The data used was based on original research leveraging the Foundation's pan-African network of over 20,000 early stage African businesses.

A leading light in African philanthropy,[15] TEF has relationships with several other organisations around the world.[16][17]

During the Global Entrepreneurship Summit that was opened by President Barack Obama, three Tony Elumelu Entrepreneurs were part of the official GES programme and gave "Ignite talks" on their entrepreneurial journey to the global audience including President Obama and President Kenyatta of Kenya.[18][19] Shadi Sabeh, CEO Brilliant Footsteps Academy, Nigeria; Tonee Ndungu, Founder, Kytabu, Kenya; and Jean Patrick Ehouman, Co-Founder and President, Akendewa in Côte d'Ivoire were the speakers representing their companies and are beneficiaries of the Tony Elumelu Foundation.[20]

"Unleashing Africa's Agricultural Entrepreneurs", the Foundation's report on the potentials of agribusinesses in transforming the continent, was launched on the sidelines of the 26th World Economic Forum on Africa in Kigali, Rwanda, 11–13 May 2016. Elumelu was also one of the co-chairs of the forum.

In June 2016, Tony Elumelu Entrepreneurs: Transforming Africa, a 30-minute documentary film chronicling the story of the Foundation's Entrepreneurship Programme. The documentary has since premiered in different cities across the world from Paris[21] to St. Gallen, Kigali, Lagos and London.

• The Tony Elumelu Foundation website
• The National Competitiveness Council of Nigeria (NCCN) website
• Tony Elumelu Entrepreneurs: Transforming Africa documentary film