The Tony Elumelu Foundation (TEF) has disbursed over $115 million in grants to African entrepreneurs since its inception, supporting more than 24,000 beneficiaries and creating more than 1.5 million jobs across the continent.
TEF founder, Tony Elumelu announced this at the weekend in Abuja, while unveiling 3,000 newly-selected entrepreneurs across the continent who will benefit from the foundation’s 2025 entrepreneurship programme.
The entrepreneurs carefully selected across 54 African countries will be awarded a $5,000 non-refundable grant each, to either launch or scale their businesses.
This latest cohort brings the total number of beneficiaries to 24,000 since the program’s launch in 2015.
Elumelu, who also serves as the chairman of Heirs Holdings, Transcorp, and United Bank for Africa (UBA), revealed that businesses supported by the programme have collectively generated over $4.2 billion in revenue to date, lifting more than two million Africans out of poverty.
TEF is the leading philanthropy empowering a new generation of African entrepreneurs, driving poverty eradication, catalysing jobs across the continent and ensuring inclusive economic empowerment.
It has trained over 2.5 million young Africans through its proprietary digital platform, TEFConnect, equipping them with essential business skills and entrepreneurial knowledge.
“The foundation’s ability to fund, train, mentor, and network young African entrepreneurs, has created a unique platform for catalysing growth across the African continent,” Elumelu stated.
He emphasised that the foundation’s extensive reach across diverse geographies and sectors has facilitated groundbreaking collaborations with key global organizations. These include the European Union, focusing on gender empowerment; the United Nations Development Programme, targeting conflict-affected regions; and partnerships with UNICEF’s Generation Unlimited (GenU) and the IKEA Foundation to support green businesses.
Other partnerships include with the International Committee of the Red Cross; United States Government through the United States African Development Foundation (USADF); Organisation of African,
Caribbean and Pacific States (OACPS); French Development Agency (AFD); German Development Finance Institution (DEG); German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ); African Development
Bank (AfDB), amongst others.
Elumelu noted that these collaborations have led to the creation of tailored initiatives, including programs specifically designed to empower women and drive economic growth in fragile states.
He also highlighted that the partnerships demonstrate the program’s scalability, revealing that while the initial goal during set up in 2010 was to empower 10,000 entrepreneurs, the foundation has far exceeded expectations, supporting over 21,000 by 2024.
He said: “We are keenly aware of the millions that we’ve been unable to touch yet, which is why I keep advocating that in the 21st century, what Africa needs is not aid, but investments, including in infrastructure and our young ones where the future lies.
“What we do at the foundation is not out of an abundance of wealth, but a deep realisation that if we don’t do this, we are creating problems for ourselves, it is in our collective existential interest to identify and support them.”
Elumelu emphasised TEF’s strategy is to mobilize Africans and global allies to collectively empower the continent’s youth.
Data indicates that 45 per cent of businesses funded by TEF are women-owned, collectively creating over 500,000 jobs and generating approximately $320 million in revenue.
Additionally, beneficiaries living with disabilities have generated more than $200million in revenue and created 150,000 jobs. Meanwhile, 65 per cent of beneficiaries empowered so far are from fragile states.
CEO, Tony Elumelu Foundation, Somachi Chris-Asoluka, revealed that the partnerships forged since the programme’s inception, have been “phenomenal”, and that moving forward, the plan is to scale the commitment to young Africans.
“Our entrepreneurs have demonstrated that ideas are the lifeblood of the African continent. For the 2025 cohort, we received over 200,000 applications, and from this pool, 3,000 entrepreneurs from 52 African countries will receive $15 million in funding. Each entrepreneur will receive a $5,000 non-refundable seed grant; this is neither a loan nor equity.
“We will continue to fund young African entrepreneurs, and inspire like minded partners in Africa and beyond, to work with us on this journey,” she stated.
To ensure long-term impact, she explained that the foundation has established a robust monitoring and evaluation platform, meticulously tracking each funded entrepreneur starting six months after the seed capital is disbursed.
She emphasised that the selection process is rigorous and transparent, overseen by Ernst & Young, and anchored on five critical criteria: feasibility, scalability, market opportunity, financial literacy, and leadership/entrepreneurship skills.
“We don’t expect the entrepreneurs to score 100 across board, but these are some of the things we look out for in selecting some of the most innovative ideas.
“We also want our entrepreneurs to go beyond profit, they must contribute to at least one of the Sustainable Development Goals. This is how we shortlist entrepreneurs on our program,” the CEO explained.
