Tony Elumelu Foundation Highlights Youth Engagement for Global Actions

Tony Elumelu Foundation, TEF, foremost African non-profit organization has called for increased youth engagements across the continent for global actions. 

TheConscienceNG reports that the foundation popularly known for promoting,  nurturing and sponsoring youth entrepreneurship development in Africa made this call on the occasion of the global commemoration of the International Youth Day 2020.

Tony Elumelu Foundation (TEF) joined the United Nations and other global organisations to mark the International Youth Day on August 12, 2020, with a line-up of pan-African speakers discussing the theme, “Investing in Africa’s Future: Youth Empowerment through Entrepreneurship”.

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This online newspaper gathers that the International event which was anchored by TEF CEO, Ifeyinwa Ugochukwu, featured respected pan-African entrepreneurs and speakers from the development sector.

Ugochukwu highlighted the peculiar challenges of startup African entrepreneurs during the pandemic. “The SMEs are the major contributors to African economies. We must not underestimate the level of disruption and uncertainty that young people all over the world have faced as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic in Africa.”

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Ugochukwu explained that the African youths, who form the largest part of the continent’s population, need to be empowered and motivated to harness potentials and drive through challenges to success with dogged and sustained entrepreneurship. “Everything necessary should be done to ensure that young Africans are assisted with required resources to become great entrepreneurs,” she said.

Wambui Gichuri, Ag. VP Agriculture, Human, and Social Development, African Development Bank noted: “Entrepreneurship is an essential part of Africa’s employment challenge and it is where we have to put our focus as a multilateral development bank”.

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“In 2012, when I was invited to the Tony Elumelu Foundation to pitch my idea, I was very fortunate to pitch directly to Mr. Elumelu and I was surprised a couple of days after, we got the grant for Wecyclers” Bilikiss Adebiyi-Abiola, Founder, Wecyclers Nigeria and past fellow of the Tony Elumelu Foundation recalled.

In 2015, the Foundation launched the TEF Entrepreneurship Programme, a $100 million commitment by Tony Elumelu to empower 10,000 African entrepreneurs over 10 years.

So far, the Tony Elumelu Foundation has trained, mentored, and funded over 9,000 young African entrepreneurs across 54 African countries through its Entrepreneurship Programmes, and provides capacity-building support, advisory and market linkages to over 1million Africans through its digital networking platform, TEFConnect.