The Tony Elumelu foundation alumni

Mark Danbaba Jacob

Chimezie Nicholas Chukwunta

At 4Figure, we are currently working on the prototype of the first cross-cultural communications-and-learning app in Nigeria, we received our APK (Android Package Kit) on the 22nd of January, 2020. We have been able to catalogue about 30 basic phrases from 10 Nigerian languages including but not limited to Igbo, Hausa, Yoruba. We are also cataloguing more than 30 Nigerian delicacies and not excluding 1000 trivia questions on the culture of the diversity of the Nigerian people from all tribes inclusive.

Uchenna Agbo

In 2019, I got the opportunity to be in TEF with NOLLYWOOD INSIDER business idea, a brainchild of my main company OKIKE MEDIA. Prior to TEF NOLLYWOOD INSIDER was a website dedicated to reporting authentic news specifically for Nollywood from an Insider’s perspective.

TEF gave me the opportunity to pivot it into an Application that provides a digital Village where creatives can meet with hiring companies and get hired without the rigorous processes of auditioning and talent scouting. Okike Media as the mother company has 8 permanent staff, with three contract writers for Nollywood Insider and, in 2019, hired over 100 contract crew and cast for different film production services.

Shadrach Akpan

Harun Abubakar Ibrahim

HAIGHA TECH provides one-stop automated solution for your trade and industry. Depending on the size and field of your organization, we have different products and services to meet your requirements. We provide the optimum and customized solutions made for your organization.

HAIGHA TECH began its business operation as a hardware and software solutions providing company in January 2017. HAIGHA TECH focuses exclusively in high quality and cost-effective software development and implementation of services. We are advancing at a tremendous pace, with the involvement of skilled and experienced people working in the organization. HAIGHA TECH is currently doing business in Government, INGOs, Large Corporate, and Schools.

Harun Abubakar Ibrahim is an ICRC-sponsored entrepreneur.

David Gaaniko Daniel

Goitsemang Majaga

Goitsemang Majaga is a 28-year-old with a great desire and passion to excel in ICT and Software Development in Botswana and the rest of Africa.

Majaga started his business, Francistown College of Programming when he realized that there were not many colleges owned by Batswana, especially young people and took it upon himself to change that.

So far, Majaga has developed software for government ministries and private companies in Bostwana. For example, he developed a records management software that tracks file transfers and another for the Ministry of Youth Sport and Culture of Bostwana.

Nganga Felix

Nganga Felix is a computer engineer skilled at developing software for PCs and mobile phones. His business, Ngangalix commercial, is specialized in training centre (ITs courses) and selling ITs accessories software and hardware in one of the communities in Angola Capital (Luanda).

After deeply analysing the worst situation of his community which ranged from poor quality of education and information technology, he started out with purchasing a photocopying machine to provide copy service to my community. Soon, people his community started requesting that he also typed documents for them.

This ignited their interest to learn how to type documents and handle computers. Felix then proceeded to acquire an additional 10 PCs and opened his first training center. In space of 7 months Felix had enrolled more than 600 students in various courses and hired 4 young people.

So far, his business has trained more than 2,400 students in various IT courses.

Melissa Bime

As a nursing school student in Cameroon, Melissa Bime remembers watching helplessly as a mother struggled to find a blood match for her 5-year-old daughter, Rita. After three days of fruitless searching, Rita died. A week later, Bime discovered that a hospital 20 minutes away had had the right blood all along. “At the time I didn’t think much of it,” says Bime, 22. “I was too used to seeing people die.”​

Rita’s death may be a tragic statistic, but thanks to Infiuss — the online blood bank Bime started in December 2017 — there is now hope for residents of Cameroon’s two largest cities. In the year since its launch, Infiuss’ motorbikes have delivered more than 2,300 bags of blood to patients at 23 hospitals in Yaoundé and Douala.Before Infiuss, access to blood was a dilemma for both physicians and patients in Cameroon. But now with her innovative model, Melissa been able to cut the average time it takes for a patient to receive a transfusion from about a week, to one hour.With a staff of 13 and revenue of over $26,000, she has been able to open up a clinic and create an online bilingual app for her clients.​

Adebimpe Oni

D’Rose recycling is an eco-friendly company that upcycles solid waste like old tyres, bottles, plastics into recycled furniture suitable for homes, offices, playgrounds, studios, etc.

Adebimpe Oni’s company seeks to address the challenge posed by the tons of plastics and tyres which end up in the ocean on a yearly basis causing water pollution and which drive sea life into extinction.

Founder, Adebimpe said: “I have a great passion for combating climate change in the world. I decided to add my own quota in creating a better and cleaner environment”. Adebimpe Oni is a beneficiary of the Tony Elumelu Foundation Entrepreneurship Programme.

Msindazwe Ndhlovu

With rising urbanisation, more people are migrating to cities triggering increased demand for affordable housing in many African countries. Botswanan entrepreneur Msindazwe Ndhlovu founded The Noble Savage, a company that recycles waste plastic and waste glass to manufacture alternative eco-friendly building materials which are lighter, stronger, durable, and affordable. The company makes roofing tiles, and other material by utilising mixed post-consumer waste plastic and blending it with sand to create a polymer resin bonded product that is eco-friendly, stronger and cheaper compared to other products. The collected waste includes beer bottles and all sorts of glass blended with concrete resin and wood to create alternatives to granite, marble and ceaser stone. Msindazwe Ndhlovu says: “For centuries roofing has been made from materials that were extracted from the earth cement, clay steel or grass. But we have improved and used waste plastic to generate a far superior product that is lighter, stronger, and affordable up to 30% cheaper.”  Msindazwe Ndhlovu is a beneficiary of the Tony Elumelu Foundation Entrepreneurship Programme.

Lombola Lombola 

Bamboo express is a company that makes furniture from ecofriendly bamboo. Lombola Lombola started the company to empower the youth and women locally. Bamboo Express is solving the problem of deforestation, youth unemployment, and lack of income alternatives for rural women. They run a youth apprenticeship program and purchase 90% of raw materials from rural women.

Richard Bbaale

TEF entrepreneur, Richard Bbaale is a social entrepreneur from Uganda that founded BanaPads in 2010, a company using banana pseudostem wastes, which are usually left to rot after harvesting, to make sanitary towels. BanaPads is an award winning social enterprise registered in Uganda and Tanzania with the aim of manufacturing affordable and eco-friendly (100% biodegradable) sanitary pads to keep village girls in school and create jobs for local women. Richard Bbaale says: “This is actually a very personal story that involves me and my elder sister. I always looked up to her and we were very close. As we grew older, I realized that she would skip school for a number of days every month. I also noticed that she would use leaves to try and keep herself clean during this time because our grandmother could not afford to buy sanitary pads that were available on market. And because it’s taboo, they would not talk about it and she would miss a lot of school and get infections as well. This haunted me and I felt helpless seeing my sister stay at home when she should have been in school. Fast-forward, I am in college, while volunteering in local community I noticed similar problem with young women having to just stay at home when they had their period. Once when visiting a village, there were a number of discarded banana stems scattered around. And that is where it struck me that this ‘waste product’ could actually be used to make useful products. I learnt about its properties and realized it had very good absorption qualities to make a low-cost disposable sanitary pad.” The pads are also collected to be used as manure and this means that the waste that goes to the local landfill will be reduced since the banana pseudo-stem is a recyclable product.

Letsogile Kennedy 

Letsogile Kennedy is an award-winning social entrepreneur, architect and founder of Ecohub, a startup established that innovatively uses plastic waste to produce affordable, architect-designed flat-pack ecobricks and ecohouses.

EcoHub is a local startup company that makes eco-bricks from recycled materials. The plan is to manufacture ‘green’ building materials from waste, while at the same time providing affordable housing and sustainable housing that can last for 20 to 25 years.

The company manufactures eco-bricks that are produced from special material using waste.

Tom-Chris Emewulu

Tom-Chris Emewulu is a 2017 TEF entrepreneur and founder of SFAN, an Accra-based education company that unlocks the potential of youths. SFAN (Stars From All Nations) is a social enterprise that works in equipping young Africans with skills and opportunities they need to engage the real world, through EPIC events and a 6-weeks career accelerator program called Readyforwork. With these tools, young people receive personalized, actionable, and coach support to launch their businesses or careers.

Through SFAN, Tom-Chris established Student Entrepreneurship Week, an annual youth entrepreneurship initiative that aims to solve unemployment in Africa by helping students create businesses while in school.

When he is not building Stars From All Nations and helping rising professionals create their dream companies and careers, he’s telling African innovation stories or advocating for people-centered policies. He has been featured on Forbes, DW, Business Insider, SABC, Next Billion, and other publications.

Bosun Tijani

Bosun Tijani is a Nigerian entrepreneur and co-founder and CEO of Co-Creation Hub. Co-Creation Hub is a technology innovation centre that provides a cushy nest for Innovators and Creatives solving pressing social problems in Africa. In 2012 the Foundation provided CcHUB with a $100,000 investment to support the development of Bosun’s Hub.

Since then, Bosun has been named one of the 100 Most Influential People on the continent by New Africa Magazine. He also received and initiated the visit of Mark Zuckerberg for the first time in Nigeria in August 2016. In 2019, CCHub acquired Kenya’s iHub under Bosun’s leadership.

Bilikiss Adebiyi-Abiola

Bilikiss is the founder of Wecyclers, a for-profit social enterprise that collects recyclable rubbish from households in Lagos. Once the rubbish is sorted, her company sends a SMS messages back to the household, informing them of how many points they have earned for trading in the rubbish. Her solution is a rewards-for-recycling model that incentivizes people in low-income communities to capture value from recyclable waste by earning points that can be converted for food, cleaning products, or cellphone minutes. The company works in partnership with the Lagos Waste Management Authority. The company estimated in October 2015 that it has collected over 500 tons of rubbish, it has created value from that rubbish, employed 80 people, and created over 60,000 beneficiaries.

Oluseun Onigbinde

Oluseun Onigbinde is a Nigerian entrepreneur and open data analyst popularly known as the co-founder and CEO of budgIT, a Nigerian civic startup. Oluseun Onigbinde is a fiscal transparency advocate and firm believer in the power of Open Data. In 2012, he was awarded the Future Awards Prize for Science and Tech Innovation and on the 13 September 2019 he was appointed the Technical Adviser in the Ministry of Budget and National Planning, but stepped down shortly after.

Dare Odumade

Dare is the co-founder of Chekkit is a Nigerian-based startup that uses blockchain technology to help users verify the authenticity of products before consuming them. Since launching, Dare and his team have impacted/protected over 80,000 lives. This is measured from the number of consumer product authentications they have registered.

Chioma Ifeanyi-Eze

Chioma Ifeanyi-Eze is an entrepreneur-accountant with a zest to increase the sustainability growth rate in SME’s within Africa. She has over 11 years of experience on bookkeeping, finance and business consulting from several banking and finance industry. Mrs. Eze is a Chartered Accountant and a Chartered Tax practitioner. In 2015, she introduced a virtual and retail tech- accounting firm called the AccountingHub to address the market needs of SME’s on bookkeeping and auditing. Since establishing her business she has catered to over 500 SME’s in Nigeria by meeting their needs on staying up to date with their numbers, taxes and financials.

Jubril Odulana

Odulana (aka Debo) is a medical doctor and the founder of Doctoora, a real estate company in healthcare operating an online marketplace for health-related products and services. They are focused on increasing access to quality healthcare by enabling health professionals setup private practice with ease and connecting patients, to these quality healthcare practitioners. His business is often referred to as the Äirbnb”of healthcare for his innovative solution. Since it was launched in 2017, Doctoora has grown from a two-bedroom apartment in Lagos, to over 20 centers across Lagos and Abuja.

Gofaone Mokgethisi

With over 400 annual events (sports, conferences, exhibitions, music concerts), 360 000 attendees and at least BWP 150 000 000 in capital investment injected into the event business annually, e-ticketing company Utick, founded by Gofaone Mokgethisi, was born to provide secure access control and zero ticket fraud using RFID wristbands as tickets.

Chazha Garde

Chazha Garde created InPlay to provide an indoor entertainment complex to foster social interaction through active playing amongst children from one to twelve years of age. In addition, InPlay currently extends its business with nanny services and organisation of external parties.

Chazha was a beneficiary of the TEF-AFDB partnership in 2019

Lentlametse Mantshonyane

Lentlametse Mantshonyane started a business seeking to provide accommodation and game drives for both local and international tourists. Called Letinti Safari Lodge, it is strategically located at the entrance into the Makgadikgadi national parks and just across the Boteti river which is also the gateway to the yearly Makgadikgadi air show that has been consistently growing.

Lentlametse is a beneficiary of the TEF-AFDB partnership in 2019.

Shatho Phakama

Shatho Phakama, an agripreneur from Botswana started Unique Waves Ventures (Pty) Ltd and formulated a maintenance ration for beef animals using locally available worms as a source of protein.

Shatho says, “I want to manufacture animal feed for all livestock using locally available resources hence making the feed cheaper and thereby helping farmers buy feed at a lower cost. The feed is then pelletized to make chicken mashes, beef feed and pig feed.”

“I aim to develop and formulate feed for our local farmers using available raw materials to try and reduce the costs that are often too high for the subsistence farmer as well as the commercial farmer.”

Shatho was sponsored by the AFDB in 2019.

 Samuel Ntshiwa 

Samuel Ntshiwa, an entrepreneur in the Agri-business, Farming space uses cage culture is an aquaculture production system where fish are held in floating net pens. Cage culture of fish utilizes existing water resources but encloses the fish in a cage or basket which allows water to pass freely between the fish and the pond permitting water exchange.

Nonofo Thamage

Nonofo Thamage started Gamer’s Brawl to specifically address the demand from passionate people who just love competitive video gaming and to give players and fans some friendly, well-organised multi-platform, multi-game events to experience everything that the local esports have to offer.

Kago Monggae 

Kago Monggae is an agripreneur whose journey to entrepreneurship started in Primary school where three of my friends and I sold boxes of candy to our classmates and groundskeeping staff.

He started Kagos Bees, a Beekeeping Business aimed at the husbandry of social Honey Bees (apis mellifera scutellata) primarily for the Harvesting bottling and retail sale of Pure Honey; through sustainable and natural practices.

Kago was sponsored by the AFDB in 2019.

Kgabiso Olerato Natale

In 2019, Kgabiso Natale decided to start App A Cab, a taxi business that she wanted to operate similarly to Uber. The biggest difference is that bookings would be made on WhatsApp, with the intent to be a lot more convenient for customers to simply book a ride.

Leka Ntakhwana

Leka Ntakhwana is a Botswana entrepreneur who started the Construction company L A CAMP INDUSTRIES to provide a balanced property portfolio with a view to promote the acquisition of shares in property by purchase and development to create wealth. Leka was sponsored by the AFDB in 2019.