Tony Elumelu Foundation (TEF) has opened the application portal for Africa’s largest entrepreneurship programme on January 1, 2021 to aid Africa’s economic recovery through new job creation following COVID-19.
The Chief Executive Officer, TEF, Ifeyinwa Ugochukwu, said the foundation has trained, mentored and funded over 9,000 African entrepreneurs in the last seven years.
She explained that Africa’s economic recovery from the global pandemic is imperative.
She said “We are also excited to say that PwC in conjunction with our Foundation has just completed an impact assessment report which would be released in the first quarter, to mark our 10-year anniversary. So, there is a lot happening in our Foundation.”
Ugochukwu noted that shortly after the 2020 application closed, COVID-19 lockdown hits the continent and the rest of the world.
“We knew that we could not continue with the programme at that time because most people were under strict lockdown and there were no movements in their country.
“Most of our entrepreneurs often times needed to go to schools, business centres or offices to have access to the internet to take the programme. So, we decided to postpone the programme to 2021.
“Now, we all know that Africa had to bear the brunt of the health impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. But for the economic impact, some people have said that Africa is the epicenter of the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the SMEs, which are the heartbeat and lifeblood of economies in Africa, is on the frontline.
“Most SMEs do not have the shock absorber that the bigger organisations have. And that is why it has never been more urgent than now, to deepen and expand the work that the TEF does in empowering African entrepreneurs. That is why for us, opening the application portal January 1, 2021, marked a new beginning.
“It marked the renaissance and the beginning of recovery; and the beginning of Africa really taking its place in the global stage,” she added.
Therefore, among those that applied in 2020, the Foundation would also select qualified 1,000 entrepreneurs to be funded.
“Now, for the 2021 applicants, the world understands that Africa is critical to the world’s economic recovery from the pandemic. And that is why we have partnered with the European Union to fund and train an additional 2,400 women on the TEF Entreprenuership Programme for 2021.
“This is in addition to many other partnerships that we have been running through the years with the likes of the United Nations Development Programme as well as the ICRC. For us, we have put up a call to action for all development organisations, for African government and foreign governments that, now is the time to scale and expand the work that we have been doing in empowering African entrepreneurs with capacity building and the much-needed seed capital funding.
“We do not want to lose the gains that we have made over the last 10 years whereby we have put entrepreneurship on the global agenda. Most governments know that it the SMEs that would create the jobs needed to catalyse growth across the continent and now is the time to SMEs that have been hit-hard by the pandemic,” she added.
