It was an evening of cocktails as the advisory board of the Tony Elumelu Foundation met last weekend to discuss the way forward for the foundation.
Top on the agenda that evening was the development of small and medium enterprises (SMEs), entrepreneurship support through programs that develop leadership skills of young entrepreneurs, and making impact investments that support growth of budding African businesses.
Making this known during the Tony Elumelu Foundation (TEF) sixth Advisory Board meeting, Tony Elumelu, founder, TEF, says that the private sector, national governments and development agencies should work together to achieve long-term impact that creates economic prosperity and social wealth for all Africans.
While Africans are admonished to look inwards to lead the development through investment, Elumelu discloses that the continent is now at a pivotal historical moment of sustained economic growth, and has the potential to realise prosperity for its population on a broader scale than any time in recent history.
According to Elumelu, “I founded the TEF to create similar opportunities for entrepreneurial young African men and women who may not otherwise be able to realize their dreams. We strive to achieve this mission through catalytic philanthropy designed to create transformational changes through access to finance, leadership development, competitiveness advocacy that create the enabling environment for entrepreneurs to succeed.”
Elumelu adds that the Foundation makes impact investments that support growth of budding African businesses and sponsors research that provides critical insights into the environment in which African entrepreneurs operate.
“We are very involved in creating a better enabling environment for business in Africa. We have done a lot to draw attention to the fact that there may be a new way of engaging in philanthropy in Africa that has less to do with charitable aid and more to do with impact investment for the future. By establishing a Foundation with global standards and ambitions, we have helped changed the conversation around Africa’s development – placing Africans and African donors firmly at the centre,” Elumelu concludes.
Wiebe Boer, chief executive officer, TEF, states that a paradigm shift is happening in Africa with focus on driving entrepreneurship and competiveness in the continent.
While early growth stage businesses are critical for job creation, ultimately for Africa’s development, Boer reveals that the SME sector represents 90 percent of all enterprises in sub-Saharan Africa yet, contributes less than 20 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
“At TEF, we believe that fostering entrepreneurship and creating a more competitive operating environment will bring more people out of poverty than any other solution. That’s why our efforts focus on training, mentoring, networking and providing capacity for entrepreneurs to reduce the 95 percent of small businesses that currently fail annually; providing access to finance to help close the $80 billion funding gap; drive business friendly policy change through institutions like the National Competitiveness Council of Nigeria which we are instrumental in creating and creating capacity in government to support decisions that positively affect the private sector.”
“The second part of our mission is to ‘institutionalise luck’-where preparation meets opportunity – by supporting relevant research, and working with relevant government agencies to implement policies that will improve competitiveness in Africa. The TEF is a catalytic philanthropy, using multiple tools ranging from impact investments to in house programmes to grants to advocacy and media to achieve our objective of long-term, sustainable impact. Our continuing support of market-based solutions in key development areas will create the kind of change that will actualise this shift to African-led economic transformation and prosperity,” Boer explains.
The foundation’s advisory board include Shaukat Aziz, former Prime Minister of Pakistan; Stewart Paperin, executive vice president, Open Society Foundation; Henik Skovby, founding global managing partner, Dalberg; Lady de Rothschild, chief executive, EL Rothschild LLC( a private investment company with investments in media, information technology, agriculture and real estate); Jamie Cooper-Hahn, co-founder and chair, Children’s Investment Fund Foundation; Vimal Shah, CEO, Bidco Group; and Carol Civita of Civita Foundation, one of Brazil and Latin America’s leading foundations.
ALEXANDER CHIEJINA
