A grand total of 3,200 entrepreneurs from across Africa will each access US$5,000 in grant funding and other forms of support after being selected for the 12th cohort of the Tony Elumelu Foundation’s TEF Entrepreneurship Programme.
Disrupt Africa reported in December 2014 the Tony Elumelu Foundation had announced the launch of a US$100 million entrepreneurship programme, aiming to create 10,000 businesses spanning the African continent.
The first cohort of 1,000 entrepreneurs was selected the following March, and since then the foundation has continued to operate the programme annually. This year, more than 265,000 applications were received from 54 African countries, with 3,200 eventually selected.
The extended cohort is the result of help from partners. 1,751 entrepreneurs were backed through Heirs Holdings Group, and another 1,049 in partnership with the European Commission, OACPS, BMZ and GIZ.
The Sèmè City Development Agency; German development agency DEG; the IKEA Foundation, UNICEF’s Generation Unlimited and the Dutch Government; and UNDP and the Rwandan Ministry of Youth and Arts each backed a further 100 entrepreneurs.
Each selected Tony Elumelu entrepreneur will receive US$5,000 in non-refundable seed capital, access to world-class business management training on TEFConnect, one-on-one mentorship, and entry into a powerful network of investors, partners and fellow entrepreneurs.
So far, the Tony Elumelu Foundation has empowered over 2.5 million young Africans with access to business management training on TEFConnect, and disbursed over US$100 million in seed capital to more than 24,000 selected entrepreneurs.
“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,” foundation founder Tony Elumelu said in his annual letter.
