For millions of young Africans standing at the crossroads of ambition and uncertainty, the future often feels delayed and sometimes denied. Yet, a different narrative that insists opportunity is not a privilege reserved for a few, but a possibility that can be built, expanded and shared is being nurtured.
It is a message that Africa’s vast youth population is not a burden, but the continent’s greatest advantage if properly empowered.
That was the message of the Founder of the Tony Elumelu Foundation (TEF), Mr. Tony Elumelu, during last weekend’s announcement of the 12th cohort of the TEF Entrepreneurship Programme.
A total of 3,200 young entrepreneurs from all 54 African countries received funding, mentorship and access to the organisation’s digital platform, TEFConnect.
One of the most inspiring stories that emerged from this year’s cohort was the rise of women entrepreneurs, as 51 percent of the entrepreneurs selected this year were women.
The selection was purely by merit and not by quota. Across thousands of applications, women stood out, through the strength of their ideas, the clarity of their business models and the ambition of their vision. This sends a powerful message that when opportunity is accessible, African women do not simply participate, but they lead.
The event, which coincided with his 62nd birthday, became more than a celebration of personal success for Elumelu, as it evolved into a powerful reaffirmation of his lifelong belief that Africa’s transformation will be driven not by chance, but by deliberate investment in its people, especially its young, enterprising minds.
“Wherever I travel, I meet our entrepreneurs—individuals who share stories of growth, expansion, and dreams realised. Each encounter reaffirms that our work is an investment in Africa’s most renewable resource: its people.
“For a long time, I believed luck was something that simply happened to you. Then I came to understand: luck can be engineered. Opportunity can be democratised. Hope is not just a feeling — it is a system we can build.
“Our story of hope began in 2010, when my wife and I made a commitment to empower young African entrepreneurs through the Tony Elumelu Foundation,” the Chairman of Heirs Holdings said.
In a world filled with uncertainty, Elumelu, who is also the Chairman of the United Bank for Africa (UBA), made a deliberate choice — year after year — to plant certainty in the lives of young African entrepreneurs.
For Elumelu, Africa’s greatest resource has never been oil or gold, but its people.
“Our belief was simple: entrepreneurship—and the ingenuity of young Africans—would become a driving force for the continent’s economic transformation. We saw firsthand how entrepreneurs were creating value within their communities, and we asked a simple question: what if we could multiply this impact across Africa? Today, we have our answer.
“Through the Tony Elumelu Foundation, we have witnessed that when young Africans are empowered, they create jobs, build sustainable businesses, drive innovation, and catalyse prosperity across the continent,” he added.
For him, the initial goal was to identify, train, mentor, and fund 10,000 African entrepreneurs with $5,000 in non-refundable seed capital. However, 16 years later, that ambition has nearly tripled.
To date, the TEF Entrepreneurship Programme has disbursed over $100 million in seed capital to more than 24,000 entrepreneurs across Africa. Eighty percent of the entrepreneurs supported through the programme have scaled beyond their early stages, a dramatic shift from the years when typically only 10 to 20 percent of businesses survived long enough to grow.
This means that four out of five businesses under the entrepreneurship programme succeed compared to one out of five globally. Equally, over four million African households have been positively impacted through this initiative, with one million lifted out of poverty, $4.2 billion in revenue generated by TEF Entrepreneurs, five million jobs created, and over 2.5 million Africans granted access to trainings.
This is Africapitalism in action. That is, the belief that Africa’s private sector, especially its entrepreneurs, must drive the continent’s economic and social transformation. Africapitalism, which Elumelu promotes, advocates for a form of capitalism that prioritises long-term economic and social value in Africa.
It’s a call for the private sector to play a leading role in the continent’s development, not just for profit, but for shared prosperity. In the face of global trade uncertainties, this philosophy offers a beacon of hope.
It calls for the creation of a new Africa via the initiatives of a resurgent private sector that will deal with societal challenges by starting companies and creating wealth for the local community.
Certainly, Africa offers countless untapped economic opportunities as the last frontier of capitalism. That is why the continent needs an endogenous growth model in which it manufactures goods for its markets as a first foundation, spreading out regionally from that base and emerging as an economic power in its own right through competitive advantage.
One way to do so is to invest heavily and simultaneously in job-creation strategies and in education systems that will create skilled workers to take opportunities that will be created by expanding economies, the promoters of Africapitalism argue.
Also, proponents of Africapitalism maintain that the private sector can also contribute to the continent’s development by making long-term investments in critical sectors that will foster social welfare and economic prosperity.
Elumelu strongly believes that entrepreneurship is a vital tool for eradicating poverty in Africa. More importantly, for him, entrepreneurship would get youths in the continent busy and keep them out of social vices, as well as create employment opportunities in the continent.
According to him, Africa’s development requires massive private global capital to fire and power investments in the area of infrastructure, to create employment and eradicate poverty.
Beyond these, Elumelu has helped redefine Africa’s development narrative, from aid dependency to partnership. This framework is now studied and discussed by leading global institutions, governments, and think tanks. By framing Africans as creators of value rather than beneficiaries of aid, it challenges a long-standing global narrative. When young Africans begin to see themselves as builders of enterprises rather than seekers of employment, a fundamental shift occurs.
Ultimately, what is unfolding through the TEF initiative is not just philanthropy, but institution-building through individuals.
Therefore, the message from Elumelu is that if Africa is to create wealth sufficient to sustain economic growth, it must sharpen its entrepreneurial focus on the continent, promote long-term investments with social impact that can offer outstanding return opportunities when compared with short-sighted, rent-seeking types of economic activities that had been Africa’s private sector for decades.
