The Tony Elumelu Foundation (TEF), the leading African philanthropy committed to empowering African entrepreneurs has empowered 7,520 young African entrepreneurs across 54 countries on the continent within five years.
According to data, the Foundation through its $100 million 10-year Entrepreneurship Programme trained, mentored, and financially supported these young entrepreneurs to grow their businesses.
Looking at the breakdown of the data, for the first (2015) and second (2016) cycles of the programme 1,000 entrepreneurs were selected for each cycle.
However in the third and fourth cycles (2017 and 2018), the number of beneficiaries exceeded 1,000. While in 2019, the number of selected beneficiary entrepreneurs shot up significantly to 3,050.
Sectors
The most preferred sectors of the young entrepreneurs under the programme include agriculture (agribusiness), ICT, manufacturing, education and trading, fashion, energy, tourism/hospitality, waste management, among others.
What the TEF Founder said
“Since launching the TEF Entrepreneurship Programme – and committing $100 million to empowering 10,000 African entrepreneurs in a decade – we have unleashed our continent’s most potent development force, its entrepreneurs,” said TEF Founder Tony O. Elumelu, CON at the 2017 TEF Forum held in Lagos, Nigeria.
The TEF Entrepreneurship Programme is a 10-year, $100 million commitment to identify, train, mentor, and fund 10,000 entrepreneurs. Its goal is to invest in businesses that will generate at least 1,000,000 new jobs and contribute at least $10 billion in new annual revenues across Africa, according to him.
African Eye Report
