EbonyHerald Stores Ebony Herald News24
Related Articles
As Adolf Joffe wrote Leon Trotsky shortly before his death by suicide, that human life has meaning only to that degree and as long it is lived in the service of humanity, it is side-splitting that many leaders in Africa award meaning to human life in reverse order and live in opulence rather than urbane life where everything is gained for the society they represent.
As this no doubt contributes to the backwardness of Africa among other continents of the world, a continuous education of leaders across Africa on the importance of human capital development is a sine qua none for the proper utilization of our abundant natural resources to develop and make the continent another world order. And as we learn in Public Relations that a good deed must be publicized, we must begin to bring to light some of the fine Africans who are living for others as leadership legacy that must be emulated in order to move the continent forward.
The just concluded entrepreneurship programme of Tony Elumelu Foundation (TEF) where 1,104 candidates across the 54 African nations received a non-refundable $5,000 each to scale-up their businesses, has again revealed Anthony Onyemaechi Elumelu as one of the finest sons of Africa who copiously took the burden of empowering young Africans and lead them out of poverty on his shoulder with much joy.
Being the commemoration of his 61st birthday anniversary, he has used the occasion to demonstrate that there is no place like one’s home and that a river that forgets its source will surely dry off. This is the secret of leadership that this business czar has learned over the years and has kept him afloat as an acceptable leader in Africa ahead of others.
This is what we bring to you in this episode. Let leaders across board (Political in particular) fasten their seatbelt and learn from the life of Tony Elumelu.
Tony Elumelu is a detribalized Nigerian who retired as chief executive officer of the United Bank of Africa in 2010 and founded Heirs Holdings and the Tony Elumelu Foundation (TEF) which is a non-profit organization and a pioneer member of the Global Impact Investment Rating System (GIIRS) with headquarters in Lagos.
Beyond banking industry, Tony has also travelled the path of hospitality industry successfully as seen in the leading role Transcorp Hilton plays as a long standing five-star Hotel for many years with no rival. But let us bother ourselves with TEF in this treatise.With a mission that is rooted in Africapitalism that situates the private sector and entrepreneur as catalysts for the social economic development of Africa,
TEF is an annex of the stanch believe of Tony Elumelu in youths as the transformative agent that Africa needs, hence the need for a deliberate mentorship and empowerment through job creation, poverty eradication, women empowerment et al.
This initiative which officially began in 2010 and was designed to cut across barriers of gender, ethnicity, religion and other sentiments, has indeed lived up to its expectation by reverberating across the 54 countries in Africa.
Since the initiation of TEF Entrepreneurship Programme in 2015 to concentrate on investing in Africa’s next generation of entrepreneur and business leaders, the foundation has trained over 1.5 million young Africans on its digital hub, TEFConnect.com which is the Africa’s largest digital entrepreneur ecosystem and has disbursed over USD$100 million in direct funding to about 20,000 young African women and men regardless of their social, ethnic and religious background.
Interestingly, as the right to receive is the duty to give, statistics has shown again, that these young Africans empowered by TEF has so far generated and given back more than 400,000 employments to other Africans and revenue of more than $2.5 billion generated, as the chain goes on It is however important to established that TEF empowerment goes beyond political empowerment where ₦5,000 or ₦10,000 from our commonwealth would be given by government or political office holders in the name of loan with elaborate celebration on the pages of newspapers and on our TV stations.
We must also establish that this is not constituency empowerment like wheel barrow, hoe, cutlass, motorbike and such ridiculous empowerment instruments by our politicians upon which you are expected to bring your head as collateral or a lifetime of loyalty. Rather, TEF since 2015 has consistently funded more than 20,000 young Africans each with $5,000 non-returnable seed capital.
Again, placing Elumelu’s empowerment side by side with political empowerment, can we really referred to the donation of ₦5,000 or ₦10,000 to a loved one (as seen in our politics) an empowerment or impoverishment? Okay, if we can call that empowerment, what should we call Elumelu’s $5,000 donation? Our political leaders and government should sincerely stop the charade of ridiculing their constituents and learn the true concept of empowerment.
Not enough, the foundation has also directly invested about $102 million as seed capitals to support and grow African start-up with other great contributions that has brought many out of poverty whereas political empowerment plunges people more into poverty. Contrary to the poor attitude of government towards academic excellence in some African countries, where even first class graduate would be allowed to roam the street without job,
Tony Elumelu empowerment of young African is also extended to educational empowerment. With Elumelu Legacy Prize, homegrown academic excellence is being recognized, particularly in subject areas representing their career paths and field of academic study with awards given to the overall best graduating students and best performing students in economics, Business Administration and Medicine within the top tertiary institutions across Nigeria’s six geopolitical zones.
Extended also to candidates from the Chartered Institute of Bankers in Nigeria, Elumelu Legacy Prize which is an annual Prize is basically meant to promote academic excellence and build future leaders.
Both government and political leaders should learn from this gesture. If a private individual from private effort can contribute this magnitude to educational development, government and political leaders should make it a duty to revamp our dying community schools (primary and secondary) particularly in the villages and give priority to rewarding academic excellence.TEF as a leading entrepreneurship foundation in Africa, maintains solid relationship with many organizations around the world in order to promote the image of Africa.
For instance, it is a member of the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN) which is a non-profit organization set aside to increase the effectiveness of impact investing.
In this direction, the Blair Elumelu Fellowship Programme (BEFP) is a partnership programme between former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair’s Africa Governance Initiative and TEF. This partnership has brought together the best of innovative European government delivery model with the best of African private sector intelligence and execution.
These and many others are testimonies of Tony Elumelu partnership with stakeholders across the globe in order to bring Africa to world stage.
AsTEF has placed over 85 professionals in more than 40 companies across African countries since 2011, over 46 per cent of TEF beneficiaries across board are women. This of course emphasizes the foundation’s commitment to gender inclusion and equity. In case you are interested, some of the foundations beneficiaries and the employment revolutions they have initiated include: Stella Sigana, the founder of Alternative Waste Technologies and Vital Sounouvou, the founder of Expotunity, an e-commerce platform that promotes export opportunities for Africans by connecting producers with traders.They are both from Kenya. Nora Chaynane is a Moroccan entrepreneur and founder of Shine Space, a socio-educational initiative aimed at bridging the knowledge gap and guiding students in their career path and many other who are doing great in their businesses.
As Fareed Zakaria, a CNN Host, said of TEF that “there is extra ordinary energy and enthusiasm represented by the TEF entrepreneurs, represented by the youths of Africa, I would love to see the same energy and dynamism in the government of Africa to open up the system for this people”, I joined Fareed to call on federal, state, local government including private bodies to strengthen and run government institutions according to law tailored towards the need of the people and not politicizing everything thereby rendering our institutions ineffective in addressing the need of the masses.
Government should be run with human faces without sentiment, ethnic or religious consideration while government officials at all levels, politicians corporate bodies should create genuine interest in the people that they represent.
The former Prime Minister of Uganda, Ruhakana Rugunda, regarding TEF once said: “I salute the programme because it is going touch on mindset change of our young people to look at Africa as their home and their continent and the programme is promoting Pan-Africanism.” There is no doubt that with many empowerment programmes doing what TEF is doing, the Japa syndrome among some African countries would be reduced drastically because many people would be engaged nurturing and using their talent to develop Africa thereby bringing the continent to the world of technological innovation.
In this direction, as Dr Tedros A. Ghebreyesus, a Director of World Health Organisation, once opines that too often great ideas do not have the impact they deserve because they lack scale sustainability, he expressed happiness that the seed capital provided by TEF is important to provide a vital investment in getting new idea off the ground. Other great leaders across Africa should therefore follow suit to create windows of opportunities for young ones to be able to use their creativity to move Africa forward. Now to our dear leader, as Ngugi Wa Thiong’o explains in his great book Wizard of the Crow that there are two kinds of saviors: those who want to soothe the souls of the suffering and those who want to heal the sores on the flesh of the suffering, where do you belong as you continue to climb the ladder of leadership? To heal the sores in the flesh and allow the soul to continue to thirst for life necessities or soothe the soul so the soul can soothe another until it gets to the very last person in Africa?
As Former Vice President Yemi Osinbajo Puts, all the very many stories of businesses and lives transformed by TEF and its various initiatives are themselves a representation of fraction of what is out there across the continent.
There is therefore enough space for participation in the development of Africa.Since everything in life is guided by law, living for others is one of the laws of genuine leadership that African leaders should embrace.
As Anthony Onyemaechi Elumelu has decided to live for youths in Africa, let all elected government officials live for the people of their constituency. If this can be replicated across board without sentiment, ethnic, religious and gender biased, our society would be a great place to live.
Again, as the founder of TEF celebrated his 61st birthday by transforming about 1,104 lives each with $5,000 which no doubt would change their lives forever, let our political leaders be genuinely interested in individual development and by extension, Africa. Youths should not always be seen and use as instrument of thuggery to ascending political ladder.
Happy birthday, Anthony Onyemaechi Elumelu.
Olushola Omogbehin a public affairs analyst Writes from Abuja Nigeria omogbehino@yahoo.com 08069220040
