The importance of education became more apparent to Angele Messa in 2018, following a crisis in Cameroon that led to closure of schools in two English speaking regions in her country. This first-hand experience motivated her to create EduClick Africa to promote access to quality education and decent job opportunities.

Angele’s business model helps train and mentor individuals to realise their true potential, through her online platform, EduClick Africa, and facilitate job access through her job search engine educlickcareers.com, which currently ranks as the largest job search engine in Cameroon.

Following the non-refundable seed grant of $5,000 from the Foundation, Angele was able to build her online learning platform. She has also been able to grow her business to employ 3 full time staff and 4 part time.

EduClick Jobs, a subsidiary of EduClick Africa, is a search engine which seeks to connect Cameroonian youth to decent jobs and other opportunities to boost their productivity and help them support their families and achieve their life goals.

Through her business, Angele has a vision to democratise access to decent jobs for all, irrespective of geographical location, qualifications, and gender. She has a goal to help 1 million youths access decent jobs and opportunities through EduClick Careers by 2025.

Speaking on the impact of her business since its inception, Angele said “We have over 46,000 registered users on our platforms. We have impacted over 8,000 young people within Cameroon and the Central African region with employability skills and helped over 600 people to find decent jobs”.

When asked about the impact of the TEF Entrepreneurship Programme on the current trajectory of her business, Angele emphasised that thanks to the six weeks business management training, she was able to develop a comprehensive business plan, set realistic business goals and working hard to achieve them following her learnings from trainings.

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Q: Can you tell us about your business? 

A: My Business Name is Seton Oluwabukola Oyekemi Ventures also known as SOO Ventures, a registered company with the CAC registration number BV3. I deal in packaged and bagged Ofada rice and my Trademark is AuntyKiks Ofada Rice. Ofada rice is a specie of rice which is also known as Farro 44 and botanically called Oryza Sativa. My business is in the rice production and processing value chain. Both the production and processing level demands trained and skilled workers. 

Q: What inspired your business and how old is it now? 

A: I had several training and experience in the Rice business. There was massive importation of foreign rice over the years but the Government saw a huge loss in the Gross Domestic Product and needed to resuscitate the agricultural sector under the auspices of the former Minister of Agriculture, Mr. Femi Adesina now the President of the African Development Bank (ADB). There was a need to revamp the Agricultural sector with emphasis on some staple crops like Rice; an embargo was placed on importation of foreign rice to encourage Rice Cottage Industry to gain the necessary strength and stamina to be able to adequately and effectively boost the Nation’s GDP and so I thought it was the best time to apply my experience in the rice business and explore the local rice industry. My business is almost 2years old now. 

Q: What makes your business stand out from all other businesses within your niche industry? 

A: It’s very affordable. Others sell theirs at one thousand, five hundred naira (N1500) only and I sell mine for as low as one thousand naira (1000) per kilogram. I recently when carrying out a market survey and I found out that a kilogram sells for as much as six thousand naira (N6000) depending on the area. 

Q: When did you become a Tony Elumelu entrepreneur and how has it helped your business?  

A: I became a TEF entrepreneur earlier this year. I applied for the Tony Elumelu Foundation for financial assistance to procure some of these machines; De-stoner machine, De-husking machine, Rice polisher and some other machines that help to ease human efforts and boost production and returns. I have been able to get some of these machines so the grant has really helped me in great measures. 

Q: After training and mentorship from the TEF Entrepreneurship programme, how has your operational model changed? 

A: It has helped me to be a good networker that I don’t have to work so hard to get result, I only have to work SMART and by SMART, I mean Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely. I just need to know the customers who are ready to pay Immediately and zero my target on them instead of committing to all and then they disappoint and that’s being Specific. Talking about Measurable, it is the amount I can actualize on that venture no matter how small while incurring very little expenses so I can get back a good return. Believing I can do it and chanting my “Yes, I Can” Mantra makes it Attainable. I also became more Realistic and never got carried away with offers that could possibly run my business down and Timely; delivering promptly without giving excuses. 

Q: How many steps ahead would you say the TEF seed funding helped you get to? 

A: The seed funding took me 7 steps ahead. The rice business is a highly capital intensive one so I still need to keep going but honestly it has helped a lot and I feel privileged and honoured. 

Q: How do you market your business and which methods have been most successful since completing the TEF training and mentorship programme? 

A: I make use of social media platforms like Instagram, Twitter, WhatsApp, Google and Facebook. I also use Associations like NASSI; National Association of Small-Scale Industries, RIFAN; Rice Farmer Association of Nigeria, SMEDAN etc. I’m also getting NAFDAC registration and registering my Trademarks. I also belong to a community/network of Famers all-round the country so I make sales through referrals from them as well. I am currently working on my website. 

Q: What are some of the challenges you face as an entrepreneur in your operational environment? 

A: Well, there’s the fact that I am still new although I belong to a market. Right now, I have a target of growing a large amount because some of Us small-scale Farmers have been picked to be suppliers to larger Ofada Rice Farmers and they will be exporting Ofada in very large quantities to some parts of the world because they already have a demand and a Market. So we are really just focused on farming. 

Q: What are some of the solutions you might suggest to help solve these challenges? 

A: We just need to keep selling and building a large network of customers. By promoting African products, I believe The Ofada Rice is a special commodity unique to the African Continent. The Asians don’t have it so, when we sell products unique to only Nigerians, we are promoting the African economy with African goods thus raising our GDP. 

Q: As you know, the core of the TEF entrepreneurship programme is to promote Africapitalism, how has your business been able to make an impact in that light? 

A: By promoting African products, I believe The Ofada Rice is a special commodity unique to the African Continent. The Asians don’t have it so, when we sell products unique to only Nigerians, we are promoting the African economy with African goods thus raising our GDP.   

Q: If you had a chance to start your entrepreneurship journey all over again, what would you do differently? 

A: Well, I really don’t know what I would want to do differently because applying for the Tony Elumelu Foundation Grant has been a blessing to me and a huge step for my business. So, I don’t think I regret the things I did and don’t feel I would want to do it any differently from how I have already done it. The challenges and waiting process itself is a journey. 

Social media handles: Twitter, Instagram and Facebook: Aunty Kiks Ofada 

~ Author: Derek Nwankwo 

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Established in 2013, Iyin Creative is a Nigerian-based company that is aimed at promoting and preserving the African cultural heritage through engaging and educative animated content. The company employs creative animation and illustrations to develop fun learning experience of African languages for children.

Through her work, Kofoworola has reached over 7,000 children worldwide, giving them the opportunity to learn their native language in a fun and modern way, and trained over 50 Children in animation. Over the years, she has further advanced her vision of promiting Africa’s cultural heritage by taking Iyin Creative to a total of 15 public and private schools. She has also donated a total of 1,000 language learning resources to public schools.

Iyin Creative is the creator of the award-winning Anilingo Series cartoons. It is a cartoon DVD and activity book that teaches children native Nigerian languages through a fun and engaging learning experience. Also, Anilingo has been developed a mobile app that is suitable for home use and used as a teaching resource in certain schools. Over 5,000 families across the world use the Anilingo mobile app to teach their children, as it a brand that they trust.

On the Anilingo app, children have access to engaging learning videos and games, digital books based in African folktales, kids’ friendly music and virtual language classes for kids and adult with up to 20 African languages.

Kofoworola is also the organizer of Nigeria’s premier “Animation Summer-Camp”, an annual programme that kicked off in August 2014. The success of the Summer-Camps has seen children as young as 7 years old creating animated shorts of their own. Iyi n Creative is giving children hands-on experiences as they learn to creatively tell their stories through animation.

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Pad-Up Creations is a social company that produces washable and reusable sanitary pads in Africa. The business is motivated by a mission to give sustainable solutions to the menstrual problems faced by rural and low-income girls/women in Africa. The company prides itself in creating products that are 100% chemical free, body friendly, affordable, and durable.

Since its inception, Pad-Up Creations has developed a diverse line of menstrual management products such as Pad-Up sanitary pads, Pad-Up padded pants, panty liner, menstrual belt and iPadUp ovulation bracelet. Pad-Up Creation now employs 93 Nigerians, majority of whom are women.

It is estimated that more than 500 million women and young girls experience period poverty every month around the world. Over the years, Pad-Up Creations has distributed over 1million kits, making a significant reduction in the number of African girls that use unhygienic materials to care for their menstruation. The outstanding impact by Pad-Up means that more girls will remain in schools during their menstrual days while more women will be involved in meaningful economic activities in Africa.

Pad-Up has seen up to 68% improvement in menstrual hygiene practices in the locations where they currently operate. They have successfully trained over 400,000 girls and women on menstrual hygiene management and reproductive health. They have distribution of their washable and reusable menstrual kits across 13 African countries.

An increase in demand led to an expansion of the Pad-Up production unit to a 200 people capacity building, located in Minna, Niger state. Indeed, Pad-Up is well on its way to being among the top 5 leading organisations manufacturing women sanitary products in world – a vision that Olivia had from the start of her entrepreneurial journey.

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In 2013, Nkem established Mama Moni, a Fintech Social Enterprise that is closing the credit gap for low-income female entrepreneurs in rural and urban slum communities in Nigeria through easy access to finance. Mamamoni’s web platform enables socially conscious individuals to invest in low-income women by lending to them to fund their businesses.

As a result of the pandemic, things became significantly harder for women like Nkem’s mum. With the rising inflation, these women are left with no choice but to spend their savings to feed their families, with their businesses taking a major hit. To address this, Nkem and her team kicked off an initiative to encourage people to donate to such women looking to restart or expand their businesses. They also launched an Emergency Food Relief Program to assist low-income women in Lagos and Abuja who have been affected and were able to give food/hygiene bags to over 1,000 women across different rural and urban slum too communities.

Nkem’s story is one of immense passion. It is evident in the vast reach and impact she has attained through her social enterprise, Mama Moni. In only eight years, Mama Moni has trained over 7,000 women, indirectly impacted over 35,000 children, and visited 100 communities across Nigeria.

With Mama Moni, loan recipients get low-interest loans in return for signing up for a system designed to create impact on financial inclusion and children’s education. Nkem is addressing community transformation by empowering low income earning women to create and sustain their small businesses.

In 2019, Mama Moni established a Innovation Hub for low-income women and girls as part of its commitment to drive women empowerment, talent development, and financial inclusion, with the support of a financial institution. Through this hub, over 400 underprivileged beneficiaries will receive training in vocational skills such as hairdressing, makeup, fashion designing, coding, personal branding, financial literacy, mobile farming, and furniture making, annually.  

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This commendable feat will not only see to the creation of direct and indirect job opportunity through these new enterprises but will equally increase public awareness about recycling and environmental sustainability in the communities where these franchises are established. Each franchisee is provided with logistical, financial education, environmental education, business planning and management support by the Wecyclers team.

Taking into consideration, Bilikiss’s entrepreneurship journey, one thing continues to stand out – she is driven by a desire to positively impact individuals in low-income communities. This undeniable desire earned her the audience of the TEF’s founder, Mr. Tony Elumelu to pitch her idea directly. The Wecyclers team were part of the 20 businesses from the Co-Creation Incubation Hub who received funding from the foundation in 2012.

When Wecyclers was launched, Bilkiss and her team started operations in Lagos using low cost cargo bicycles called Wecyclers to provide convenient recycling services to households across Nigeria when only 40% of the city’s waste was collected and only a mere 13% was recycled. This company has since grown to incorporate motorized tricycles, vans, and trucks to expand their reach across the Lagos metropolis and enable them provide materials to manufacturers who turn the recyclable material into new items such as tissue paper, stuffing for bedding materials, sturdy plastic furniture, aluminium sheets, and nylon bags.

Bilikiss and her team have built a system that promotes socioeconomic development, and community health by providing convenient recycling services in densely populated urban neighborhoods, gives households a chance to generate value from their waste and provides a reliable supply of raw material to the local recycling industry.

The success of Wecyclers is largely reliant on the unique model in which the business is built – a rewards-for-recycling model that incentivizes people in low-income communities to capture value from recyclable waste.

Bilikiss has done a commendable job in not only converting recyclable waste to wealth but also empowering other young people to tow the same path.

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Launched in January 2016, AccountingHub brings together a collection of accountants and consultants to offer quality accounting services to Nigerian SMEs. It provides a marketplace for bookkeeping and allied accounting services, with its online shop allowing businesses to quickly arrange and pay for a variety of services.

Through this brilliant accounting solution, business owners can focus on their business while trusting that their accounting books are being managed, all without breaking the bank. They offer services ranging from Bookkeeping, tax services, payroll services, am0ongst others.

Chioma continues to remain sensitive to the accounting needs of SMEs in Nigeria and creates products that directly address these needs. She recently published ‘Petty cash policy’, a free e-book that seeks to manage and regulate how small cash expenses of the business are funded, made, and tracked, to ensure proper bookkeeping and cash management are attained.

With this resource, readers not only discover how to use a simple policy to define a petty cash amount and acceptable expense types but also learn to create a coding system that tracks all petty cash expenses, no matter how small, all in 5 minutes; the duration of time needed to read the e-book.

To further advance her mission to ease the accounting struggles of Nigerian SMEs, Chioma has very recently launched Çhioma Business School. This is an incorporated business school that that will offer business trainings for entrepreneurs looking to grow their business for just N1,000.

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Rosemary’s doggedness and ambition to positively impact the African continent earned her a well-deserved recognition as the ‘The Most Impactful African Entrepreneur 2019’, by the foundation three years after receiving the grant from its Entrepreneurship Programme in 2016.

Her impact journey started in the same year as she launched Africa’s first ever make-up reality show tagged ‘FX Africa’. This is yet another initiative by Rosemary that aims to unite the continent through makeup and to support upcoming makeup artists in the industry. This largely successful reality TV show saw contestants from across Africa.

To further advance in its mission, Rosemary has partnered with various makeup brands and will be taking the competition online in a bid to reach and impact more makeup artists on the continent.

What many saw simply as a challenge brought by the pandemic, she saw as opportunity to not just limit her impact to just creative women in rural areas but also women who might have lost their sources of income or simply need an extra source of income, through the ‘Empower 1000 women’ CSR initiative.

Rosemary’s story is inspiring because what started as a love for makeup during her university days has now grown to a platform that has greatly impacted 3,000 women across Africa.

All of these commendable and significant impact, have been achieved while Rosemary has successfully co-run Reneafric Designery, a handcraft shoe manufacturing company in Lagos, Nigeria.

For Rosemary, her satisfaction comes from being able to impact her immediate community and Africa at large. She is driven by the ability to give creatives a platform to dream which further drives her business mandates – Discover, Inspire and Develop. These three objectives form the bedrock off all initiaves launched through Reneafric Designery.

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Over the years, Nneile has had a very interesting and commendable entrepreneurship journey, and one can easily see that impact has been at the core of all her activities. She is a mechanical engineering graduate, who has pivoted to biotechnology and the design of innovative solutions for animal care.

In 2015, she served as the co-founder of iMed Tech, a medical prosthesis design and manufacturing company, that specializes in breast prosthesis using 3D design and additive manufacturing in the process chain.

Popularly known as the entrepreneur who uses technology for animal husbandry, this entrepreneurship adventure led her to the launch of her company, 3DIMO. What initially started as a company focused on sports tech and designed software to provide coaches with insight into players’ performance and allows them to predict risks of overload, has since grown to become a tech solution that automates the analysis of animal data and generates a universally traceable digital identification of each animal linked to a breeder following the effects of the pandemic on the sports industry.

Her excellent track record has led to her being recognised by various notable platforms since her participation in the 2016 Tony Elumelu Foundation Programme.

Nneile’s work in prosthesis fabrication using Additive Manufacturing has led her to being recognised as Africa’s top Female Innovator in 2016 and also South Africa youth of the year in 2017.  Following her recent successes, she launched 3dimo, focused on the detection of sports injuries, prevention, and rehabilitation. She creates digital models for athletes that are analyzed and observes what happens when athletes train to predict injuries.

3DIMO’s product, Thola, provides a globally accessible animal biometric identification, linking an animal to a farmer. Thola is a system that uses animal nose prints to create a biometric identity for each animal. Thola is then used to detect any health risks in livestock in real-time by leveraging infrared imagery and artificial intelligence. By detecting anomalies in livestock within a farm and nearby regions this system is able to alert local farmers should there be a breakout of disease. In-app notifications help farmers to prevent losses by seeking timely treatment or vaccination for their herd.

She credits the foundation for helping her to develop a sustainable business that has now impacted thousands across South Africa.

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What had initially started as an experiment with treating nearby lake water with an ultraviolet water purifier at the age of nineteen, has since grown to become a company that delivers cans of clean water by bicycle to hundreds of families in her community with a rapidly growing customer base.

Her business was borne when Yvette came face-to-face with the challenge of accessing clean water for home use when her family had just relocated from Kigali to Kayonza District.

Following her recognition as a Tony Elumelu Entrepreneur, she was bestowed with a Young Leaders Award in 2017 for her commendable efforts in providing innovative solutions for household water shortage in Rwanda.

Very recently, Yvette was announced as one of ten entrepreneurs – half of whom are female –selected from over 12,000 applicants across all 54 African nations and passed multiple stages of judging and evaluation.

In her home country Rwanda, only 57% of the entire population have access to safe drinking water within 30 minutes of their location. Her organization Iriba Water Group, offers water treatment systems to institutions and individuals to help them access safe drinking water.

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