March 1 Deadline Looms: African Entrepreneurs To Apply For The Tony Elumelu Foundation Entrepreneurship Programme
The Tony Elumelu Foundation, the leading African-funded and founded
philanthropy committed to empowering African entrepreneurs, has announced its last call for applications into its prestigious 2019 Entrepreneurship Programme. The application portal launched on the 1st of January 2019 to close on the 1st of March, 2019.
Open to African entrepreneurs from the 54 African countries, the Entrepreneurship Programme accepts business ideas as well as existing businesses with less than 3 years of experience in all sectors of the economy. It has been commended as one of the few accelerator-type programmes that encourage viable businesses at idea stage that can demonstrate potential to scale, generate revenue and create employment
opportunities.
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.
Some of the success stories from the Tony Elumelu Foundation
Entrepreneurship Programme include Mama Moni, founded by Nkem Okocha, a fintech social enterprise that provides loans to women in rural
communities in Nigeria; founded by Martin Ruga, Desserts Anyone, a
chocolate processing enterprise in Kenya was built from scratch and with
the infusion of the capital from the Tony Elumelu Foundation
Entrepreneurship Programme, the business now serves over two tonnes of chocolate to over 50,000 consumers; founded by Abiodun Adereni, Help
Mum, a Nigerian based enterprise that provides low-cost birth kits to
prevent child and maternal mortality recently won the first ever Google
Nigeria Impact Challenge and has attracted additional capital investments; iMed Tech, founded by Nneile Nkholise, innovates in the med-
tech space in South Africa by using technology to create breast prostheses for women with breast cancer; in Egypt, Ahmed Abbas founded SunCity
that provides mobile solar pumps for small farmers. Additionally, six of Tony Elumelu Foundation entrepreneurs were recognised on the Forbes 30 under 30 list, among many other achievements, some have been appointed on the boards of global companies, government and developmental
institutions, influencing policies at various levels.
The Programme is inspired by Tony Elumelu’s economic philosophy of
Africapitalism and his vision to institutionalise luck and democratise
opportunity for a new generation of African entrepreneurs. Applications will be judged based on criteria including feasibility, scalability and potential for growth of the product/service; market opportunity for the idea/business; financial understanding, leadership potential and entrepreneurial skills.
Applicants can apply on TEFConnect – www.tefconnect.com – the largest
digital networking platform for African entrepreneurs.
