How African Entrepreneurs can Leverage TEF's Grant for Growth
Recently, African Tech-Startups have taken the center stage particularly in the area of access to funding. In 2021, African tech companies did unimaginable numbers by surpassing every prediction by experts as tech companies raised over $4 billion (more than they got in 2019 and 2020 combined) From minting five unicorns to witnessing more million-dollar raises by female CEOs.
Promising as this prospect is, yet most entrepreneurs in Africa are suffering and some do not live up to their true potentials due to lack of access to funding, particularly, due to investors’ apparent reluctance to fund early-stage businesses, which implies that many promising business projects that would have contributed to African development never got off the ground.
However, entrepreneurs in dire need of capital can leverage the Tony Elumelu Foundation’s (TEF) Grant, totaling 5,000 USD and years of mentorship to launch their ideas.
Tony Elumelu Foundation has empowered 15,847 young African entrepreneurs and has supported 1,200,000 Africans on TEFCONNECT across 54 African countries since its establishment in 2010. The foundation has equally launched WE4A project alongside its partners, specifically for the African women entrepreneurs in October last year, where 2,400 Women-owned businesses will be supported with a non-refundable sum of 5,000USD each.
Recently Tony Elumelu Foundation entrepreneurship program, Elumelu and his team trained 1.5 million young Africans across the continent. The course content revolved around setting up and scaling businesses for maximum value, profit, and effect on the economy in general. To set them off, TEF empowered each of these 5,000 Africans with a jaw-dropping $5,000 to serve as the beneficiaries’ seed capital and interestingly 68 per cent (3,369) of the beneficiaries are women.
Beneficiaries of Tony Elumelu Foundation’s grants are “trailblazing businesses in their various communities, creating jobs and exporting local African produce to a global market.” Meanwhile, the foundation has started accepting applications for its 2022 edition.
With access to funding, more African entrepreneurs would be able to proffer solutions to some of the infrastructural and service gaps in the continent and build a prosperous Africa.