•Nearly 5,000 African entrepreneurs from across all 54 African countries will receive TEF seed capital funding of $5,000

The Tony Elumelu Foundation (TEF), the leading philanthropy empowering young African entrepreneurs, will announce the beneficiaries of the 2021 TEF Entrepreneurship Programme at the official Selection Announcement event holding in Lagos, and streaming live online, on November 12, 2021.

The ground-breaking hybrid event will unveil 4,800 African entrepreneurs chosen from all 54 African countries who will be joining the 2021 cohort of the Foundation’s annual programme.Every year on January 1^st, the Tony Elumelu Foundation opens its application portal to African entrepreneurs with businesses of less than five years.

This year’s beneficiaries have been chosen from a pool of over 400,000 applications, selected based on their innovative and impactful business ideas. In line with the Foundation’s mission to catalyse entrepreneurship in Africa, the selected beneficiaries will consist of both new start-ups and existing young businesses in varying operational stages across different sectors.

As part of TEF’s objectives to ensure that African entrepreneurs are well equipped to build investable and profitable businesses, each beneficiary has undergone world-class bbusiness management training and mentorship conducted exclusively on TEFConnect, the Foundation’s proprietary digital platform that provides capacity-building support, advisory and market linkages to over 1 million Africans and counting.

The platform’s unique training curriculum covered insightful topics such as Starting Your Business, Business Management & Fundamentals, Leadership & Business Growth, Marketing Strategy, Product Design, and Selecting & Building a Team, amongst others.

Commenting ahead of the Selection Announcement event, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Tony Elumelu Foundation, Ifeyinwa Ugochukwu, said: “This year, with support from our global partners, we will be scaling our impact and empowering nearly 5000 entrepreneurs.

“A major priority for us at the Foundation for 2021 remains the economic recovery of Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SMEs) following the Covid-19 disruption to economic activities. We are very excited to be unveiling the 2021 cohort of the Tony Elumelu Entrepreneurship programme. I believe the $5,000 we are giving to each entrepreneur will address some pressing demands and reduce the burden brought about by the pandemic.”

“Year after year, we are greatly inspired by the tenacity and quality of business ideas that come out of Africa. This only proves that young Africans need organisations like the Tony Elumelu Foundation who are willing to take a chance on them and their ideas,” she concluded.

Through the US$100million TEF Entrepreneurship Programme which was launched in 2015, the Foundation empowers thousands of entrepreneurs annually who benefit from mentorship, business management training, access to new markets, US$5,000 in non-refundable seed capital, and networking opportunities to promote their businesses to a global audience. Since the programme’s inception, TEF has trained over 1.5 million young Africans and funded over 10,000 entrepreneurs across all 54 African countries.

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