The Tony Elumelu foundation alumni

Aaron Ejeme

Sourcegig is an online Marketplace that helps SME’s find and hire affordable African Graphic designers on Demand. Sourcegig connects businesses with the best professional freelance talent around, thereby making outsourcing of jobs easier and helping businesses save cost from hiring full-time staff.

Adebimpe Oni

Adebimpe Oni is the founder of D’Rose recycling, 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.

Agboneni

Neni’s Auto Care is a full-service automobile repair and maintenance company. Agboneni, the Founder, set out to create jobs for the unemployed youths in her community.

The business recently partnered with Cancer Foundation and an old people’s home in her community to generate funds for their upkeep and wellbeing, as well as provide free/ heavily discounted maintenance services to them.

She recently launched a Safety campaign targeted at automobile garages prone to accidents, as a result of not eliminating workshop hazards. By offering 99% quality service and using high tech technological equipment and machines to carry out automotive services in a faster and better way, Nenis Auto Care has successfully reduced accidents caused by poorly maintained vehicles in her community.

She is one of the beneficiaries of the Tony Elumelu Foundation Entrepreneurship Programme.

Agbor Ashumanyi  Ako

Agbor  Ashumanyi  Ako is one of the co-founders of  GiftedMom, a digital health platform based in Cameroon that gives pregnant women and mothers across Africa access to vital health information and care. As a digital-first platform, GiftedMom is able to expand faster than traditional health care systems and the start-up aims to reach 10 million women in the next 10 years. The platform now has over 170,000 users. The award-winning app has significantly improved both pregnancy check-up attendance and vaccination turnouts, with an ultimate goal to see a world free of preventable maternal and infant deaths. In collaboration with the Ministry of Public health, 28 health facilitiesm and 40 community workers in Cameroon, Agbor has been able to follow up with over 29,000 pregnant women and nursing mothers across the country.

Akapko-Lado Gbagbode Edouard

Having completed his graduate studies in Technology, Akapko-Lado Gbagbode found that there was a lack of processing machinery in African countries, and often the purchase of these machines from outside was expensive and required costly external expertise in the event of breakdowns.

After his selection as one of the beneficiaries of the Tony Elumelu Entrepreneurship Programme, he received several training sessions that focused on diverse business management topics. The technical and financial support enabled him to turn his ideas into reality, embarking on research towards the manufacturing of Agro-food.  Since then, he has been able to meet the needs of his communities, while preserving the economy and creating jobs.

Angelo Octavio

Angolan entrepreneur Angelo Octavio decided to delve into the Healthcare sector to manufacture a new kind of disposable gloves (latex powder-free, Vinyl, Nitrile), in order to ease the high demand of hospital ready-to-use materials in Angola, and hopefully contribute to the decrease of public health risks experienced in public hospitals.

His company, AAEI Empreendimentos Lda came about during his first second year doing Chemical Engineering in Angola. “I realized that getting a degree was not going to fulfill me because I wanted to think and be part of the solution that could solve some of the most basic problems in Luanda,” he says.

It was there that he met one of his business partners, who would join him to bring life to some projects that could bring some solutions to common problems.

Avotriniaina Stannie

In July 2020, Madagascar born Stannie Avotriniaina launched a little factory named Mahatsara, with the aim of producing dried fruits and vegetables, but have more products like arranged rhum with dried fruits.

Through the Tony Elumelu Foundation Entrepreneurship Programme, Stannie has been able to sharpen her entrepreneurial skills to the benefit of herself and her community. The knowledge received during the training has significantly contributed to the sustainable development of her community, and she continues in her quest to create more jobs for rural women.

Since the programme, Stannie has empowered young entrepreneurs around her to contribute effectively and create positive impacts in among their communities. Her ambition is to have the biggest dried fruit processing factory in Africa, giving access to nutrients to everyone who needs it, especially in the southern part of Madagascar and in Africa too.

Barbara Kamba-Nyathi

Barbara Kamba-Nyathi is an author, social psychologist, inspirational speaker, mediator, poet, entrepreneur, and lifestyle and wellness coach. She is a two-time TEDx speaker and the co-founder and CEO of Bold Dialogue Investments P/L, an organisation that aims to empower, inspire and guide women to become the best versions of themselves.

Bold Dialogue creates an atmosphere of healing, transformation and growth. In addition to bringing women together to support, mentor, and encourage one another, Bold Dialogue hosts vision boarding workshops that enable women to bring their dreams to life, and presents master classes on various topics that enable women to rise above their circumstances. Through its online activities, the organisation engages with women across the African continent.  Bold Dialogue also offers coaching and mentorship services, and publishes a newsletter that empowers women from the bedroom to the boardroom.

In recognition of her work towards women empowerment, she was named one of Amahle Magazine’s 25 most influential women in Zimbabwe for 2020.

Belema Alagun

Belema Alagun, CEO of Britts Foods a start-up focused on delivering the best of sandwiches and smoothies to customers. Belema is one of the 1,000 selected TEF entrepreneurs from 54 African countries. She started her business in a small one-bedroom apartment and has been able to transform her business to a point where they own their pick-up hub.

Bethelhem Dejene Abebe

Bethelhem Dejene Abebe is the Co-founder and CEO of Zafree Papers, a company that is introducing a 100% tree-free paper pulp made from agricultural waste. Based in Ethiopia, Bethelhem’s company, Zafree makes pulp, paper and paper products 100% free from trees by using agricultural waste as an input instead of wood. The company operates in two African countries, Ethiopia and Zambia, following a Pan-African Business model aiming to duplicate Zafree in different African countries.

In 2019, Bethelhem was among the 2,100 African entrepreneurs selected to benefit from the TEF-UNDP Entrepreneurship Programme, where she received $5,000 seed capital, mentorship and the TEF business training on entrepreneurship. She has also been financed by the Development Bank of Ethiopia which enabled her to procure land in Debre Berhan’s industrial park for her soon to be built factory specially purposed for her innovative business process.

Her company deals directly with over 8,000 smallholder farmers, with customers across the continent.

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 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.

Bonno Tose Mannathoko

Bonno Mannathoko started UGoo.com (registered under Khoisan Technologies group) an online shopping website that offers a range of quality products including E-commerce and solutions that focus on efficiency and enhanced productivity of meetings.

Bosun Tijani

Bosun Tijani is a Nigerian entrepreneur and co-founder and CEO of Co-Creation Hub, a technology innovation centre that provides a cushy nest for Innovators and Creatives solving pressing social problems in Africa. In 2012, the Tony Elumelu 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.

Caroline Ocanda

Through New Beginning Investments Limited, Caroline has empowered many girls who have dropped out of school and have no source of income and women who are total dependants of their husband and even single mother who are struggling to survive.

Cephas Simwanza

Tribology Energies (Z) Ltd distributes lubricants to mining contractors, construction companies and the retail market i.e auto shops. We further collect used lubricants and resell them to be used in furnaces as part of our environmental management responsibilities.

Chidi Ohammah

With the lockdown implemented across Africa and the world, Nigerian-based Chidi Ohammah, CEO of Sevenz Healthcare and a Tony Elumelu Foundation entrepreneur devised an innovative way for people to get tested from the comfort of their homes.

With KompleteCare’s team of over 15,000 doctors and technology, individuals can easily check for symptoms of COVID-19, undergo a health check and make better decisions about their well-being. KompleteCare also provides real-time data to government agencies for contact tracing and data accuracy.

Chimezie Nicholas Chukwunta

Chimezie Nicholas Chukwunta is the founder of 4Figure, a company working on the prototype of the first cross-cultural communications-and-learning app in Nigeria. He has been able to catalogue about 30 basic phrases from 10 Nigerian languages including but not limited to Igbo, Hausa, Yoruba. They are also cataloguing more than 30 Nigerian delicacies and trivia questions on the culture of the diversity of the Nigerian people from all tribes.

Chinedu Emenalo

After several years in the banking sector, it was easier for Nigerian-born Chinedu Emenalo to identify the challenges around financial service faced by customers. With this, Chinedu and his colleague – who would become his co-founder – decided to launch a startup. Kobopay, to offer a more seamless platform for affordable financial services at a micro-scale.

In 2016, Chinedu became a Tony Elumelu Entrepreneur, taking among many things, the importance of excellent customer service. Till today, the philosophy that customer is king remains the mindset and driving force at Kobopay. The duality is to this enterprise is that they provide customer-centric services while also ensuring customer satisfaction.

This determination has led to the organic growth of the organization, with about 20,000 users and over $2M in transaction volume through bootstrapping. Currently, their focus is on rural and semi-rural communities with little to no formal banking presence. In these communities, Kobopay is partnering with local businesses such as market women and neighbourhood convenience stores to serve as Kobopay agents. In return, they are providing an extra source of income to these local businesses and employment to the community at large.

For Chinedu, the goal is to be the universal provider of Financial services to all and sundry in Nigeria in a customer-centric manner. The most important impact Koboypay has is that it allows underserved people to conduct their financial activities with less stress and exertion and more ease, all at a lower cost.

In addition, people in these communities get to access formal financial services and obtain formal, government identity through the Bank Verification Number (BVN) for the first time. Access to government programmes and services such as micro-insurance, Micro-credit, micro-pensions over time are also added value provided by Kobopay.

In the next two years, Kobopay aims to secure a microfinance banking license to improve the list of services they can offer to their customers and thereafter transition over time into a full-scale digital bank focusing on democratizing financial services in sub-Saharan Africa.

Chioma Ifeanyi-Eze

Chioma Ifeanyi-Eze is an entrepreneur-accountant with a zest to increase the sustainable 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 organisations.

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.

Chioma Ukonu

Chioma is the founder and COO of Recycle Points a waste recycling Social Enterprise that motivate post-consumers to recycle by creating value from their everyday waste. With her team, she has been able to develop a POINT-BASED incentive model with which they collect recyclable material (cans, glass bottles, newspaper, etc.)  from registered post-consumers and in turn reward them with POINTS, which when accrued can be used to redeem household items and cash.

With the seed funding from TEF, Chioma was able to drive innovation by procuring two electric cargo tricycles (first of its kind in Africa) for door to door recyclable material collections. In 2017, Recycle Points had about 7500 registered subscribers earning from their recycling activities with over 590,000kg of waste recovered from going to the landfill where they contribute to pollution (if burnt) and climate change.

She was able to reach about 37,500 people with the “culture change” message of waste recycling and has so far created 25 direct employment and about 130 indirect employment.

Chris Kwekowe

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Daniel Oulai

Profile

Daniel Oulai, hailing from a small village in Dainé on the western region of Côte D’Ivoire, saw time after time, how farm producers sweat and complain about the selling prices of their crops as well as the loss of major portions of their harvest due to poor pest control.

That was he founded The Grain Library (Grainothèque), a business created to provide social support to farmers in rural areas by providing access to quality seeds, relevant data and necessary technological tools needed for maximum agricultural output, precision management and general improvements in food production.

About Grainothèque

Grainothèque, a social innovation laboratory for young rural entrepreneurs and heads the start-up Grainothèque, a social enterprise that works to promote the genetic diversity of African food plants and the microbiological potential of the soil. Founded in October 2016, Grainothèque, supports rural farmers with access to quality farmer seeds, mobile technologies for agriculture for precision input management and improvement. of food production through an intensive integrated system. This support helps strengthen food sovereignty based on biodiversity and develops solutions to preserve varietal seeds of local food plants and integrates solutions for the natural fight against plant pests and diseases.

Danso Kwabena

Danso Kwabena is the CEO of Booomers International, a subsidiary social enterprise of The Yonso Project, which produces and markets bamboo bicycles and accessories to both the Ghanaian and international markets.

The company manufactures different types of bamboo bicycles and their accessories – such as bicycle stands and baskets – to help improve transportation, youth employment, and mitigate climate change issues.

Dare Odumade

Dare Odumade 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.