The Digital University for Entrepreneurs: What the World Can Learn from The Tony Elumelu Foundation’s TEFConnect 

Entrepreneurship has become the defining skill of the 21st century, but access to knowledge, capital, and networks is still distributed unevenly.  

In emerging markets especially, the difference between an idea that thrives and one that fades often comes down to access: who you know, what you have been taught, and whether you can secure that elusive first investment. 

Africa, with its booming youth population and unmatched entrepreneurial energy, has pioneered a bold solution. It’s called TEFConnect, the flagship digital platform of the Tony Elumelu Foundation (TEF). More than just a website, TEFConnect functions as a digital university for entrepreneurs, offering practical and real-world applicable skills. 

And it might just be the blueprint the world has been waiting for.  

 

Why Emerging Markets Need Digital Universities 

Traditional education systems prepare graduates for employment, not entrepreneurship. Accelerators and business schools are limited to a privileged few.  

Meanwhile, in Africa, 1 in 5 adults is starting a business, the highest entrepreneurship rate in the world. But most lack access to training, mentorship, or finance. 

 TEFConnect. A free, pan-African, digital-first platform that collapses the barriers to entrepreneurship support by providing: 

• Accessible training, tailored for African realities. 

• Seed capital, tied directly to completion of training. 

• A borderless network, connecting entrepreneurs with peers, mentors, and investors across 54 countries.

 

Education at Scale: The Digital Curriculum 

The beating heart of TEFConnect is its 12-week training delivered digitally to thousands of entrepreneurs each year. Through interactive modules and video content, participants learn: 

• Financial planning for small and growing businesses. 

• Marketing and customer acquisition strategies. 

• Legal and compliance essentials. 

• Digital tools for scaling operations. 

Unlike generic online courses, these are rooted in context-specific challenges: how to thrive in informal markets, how to use mobile money for transactions, how to navigate fragile infrastructure. 

The platform also provides masterclasses from experienced African founders and panel sessions on innovation. In effect, TEFConnect has digitised the entrepreneurial wisdom of an entire continent, making it free and accessible to anyone with internet access. 

 

Networks Without Borders 

TEF Connect platform also serves as a pan-African marketplace for connections. Entrepreneurs can: 

• Connect with mentors across industries. 

• Network with peers facing similar challenges. 

• Access a knowledge base that gives them access to global investors looking for African opportunities. 

In our Masterclasses, entrepreneurs pitch, share experiences, and collaborate across borders. In one workshop, a Ugandan agripreneur exchanges lessons with a Nigerian fintech founder, the kind of cross-pollination that accelerates ideas into scalable ventures. 

 

Proof of Impact 

The results of this digital university are visible: 

• Over 2.5 million entrepreneurs engaged through TEFConnect. 

• More than 24,000 trained and funded through the platform. 

• Alumni generating billions in revenue and creating hundreds of thousands of jobs. 

These are not classroom exercises. They are real-world businesses born from a digital university. 

 

A Model the World Should Replicate 

TEFConnect’s genius lies in its replicability. For continents where youth populations face similar barriers, TEFConnect offers a ready-made blueprint: 

• Digital-first delivery makes it low-cost and scalable. 

• Curriculum + capital + network ensures end-to-end support. 

• Pan-regional access bridges geographic and gender divides. 

In effect, TEFConnect is doing for entrepreneurship what Khan Academy did for education, democratising access at scale. 

 

A Challenge to Institutions 

Global institutions spend billions annually on traditional aid and university systems. But TEFConnect proves that a fraction of that, deployed digitally, can create entrepreneurs instead of dependents, builders instead of job seekers. 

The question is not whether the model works — the results are in. The real question is: why aren’t more institutions adopting it? 

 

The Future of Entrepreneurial Education 

TEFConnect is not a platform. It is a digital university for entrepreneurs, producing not degrees, but businesses, jobs, and hope. It delivers what the world’s youth need most: the skills to build, the capital to start, and the networks to grow. 

As our founder, Tony O. Elumelu, C.F.R., has argued,  

 

“Entrepreneurs are the driving force behind Africa’s economic transformation.”  

The next wave of global growth may not come from traditional universities or development aid, but from digital universities for entrepreneurs — with TEFConnect showing the way.