As we celebrate another year of independence, it is time to reflect, to look in the mirror, for our nation and ourselves.

We know Nigeria, we love Nigeria, Nigeria is one of Africa’s most diverse and dynamic countries.  We are a nation that excites, beguiles, and dreams.  Yet, amidst our diversity and that potential that we all feel, we have faced so many challenges.  These challenges ask us to answer a fundamental question:  What is our collective responsibility in nation-building?

The destiny of Nigeria lies firmly in the hands of its people – you and me.  I am an optimist and I believe strongly in the potential of our nation.  We must work together to create the progress we so desire through innovation, and with unity in diversity.

In August, I spoke to the Nigerian Bar Association Annual General Conference in Abuja.  At the time of a new administration – and without doubt some of our toughest times economically, I spoke about our collective responsibility as Nigerians, and what we must do to foster nation-building.

My prescription, my advice, my philosophy is simple:

1. Unity

We must set our differences aside and be united with one ambition, and one duty – nation-building.  Whatever our backgrounds, geographies, religions, and experiences let us ensure that our country experiences a true renaissance.

• Celebrate our Global Success

We know the potential of Nigeria.

We know the resources, human and natural, that Nigeria has at her disposal. We must learn to champion the successes of Nigerians globally – in international leadership positions at the WTO, at the UN, at the African Development Bank, at the Afreximbank, in technology, in music and entertainment, in business, in arts and in media, in film, in sports.

We see these replicated at home – what we need to do is unleash our potential, create that enabling environment in Nigeria.

• Business Excellence

The Nigerian private sector is showing globally our capability, our ingenuity, our institutionalisation. We have global businesses with Nigerian origins. For instance – UBA, the United Bank for Africa, the only African Bank that operates in the USA, as a deposit-taking bank. We are now in Dubai, Paris, and London – and just as importantly 20 other countries in Africa. Who would have thought 20 years ago, that Nigeria would be home to Africa’s global bank!

The private sector must continue to surpass its own achievements and continue to put Nigeria on the map.

• Shared Responsibility

Nation-building is a call to arms – a vital task – a necessity.

At its core, nation-building is the intricate process of forging a cohesive, harmonious, and united society, out of diverse individuals, cultures, and ideologies.  It is the art of constructing a shared identity.

Transforming Nigeria is a journey that demands our collective dedication, building across political affiliations, ethnic differences, and socioeconomic differences.

One that is not the responsibility of our government alone. Great nations start with great people, not just great leaders.

• A Shared Ambition Across Our Society

Our private sector, our philanthropies, our civil society, all citizens must be brought together and be empowered – as real, valued and executing partners for this national renewal, this nation building.

• Love For Country

Let Nigeria be at the centre of our hearts. Let us invest in the brand Nigeria.

We have no other place, no other motherland than Nigeria. We must begin to show and share a sense of pride in Nigeria.  We must begin to rekindle our hope and have confidence in Nigeria and in our leaders. Let us be proud of Nigeria.

The responsibility of nation-building falls upon each and every one of us.  To truly build a strong and prosperous nation, we must be more conscious and dedicated in our efforts.

Let us be inspired by the lessons of history, motivated by the sacrifices of our forefathers, guided by the wisdom of our elders, and energised by the aspirations of our youth.

Together, we can build a nation we can all be proud of.

Celebrate 63!

#TOEWay

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Background

The Tony Elumelu Foundation (TEF) is the leading philanthropy empowering a new generation of African entrepreneurs, driving poverty eradication, catalyzing job creation across all 54 African countries, and increasing women economic empowerment. Since the launch of the TEF Entrepreneurship Programme in 2015, the Foundation has trained over 1.5 million young Africans on its digital hub, TEFConnect, and disbursed nearly USD$100 million in direct funding to 18,000 African women and men, who have collectively created over 400,000 direct and indirect jobs. The Foundation’s mission is rooted in Africapitalism, which positions the private sector, and most importantly entrepreneurs, as the catalyst for the social and economic development of the African continent.

The Foundations aims to:

• Promote entrepreneurship development in Africa with a focus on startups and existing MSMEs (Micro Small and Medium Enterprises).
• Provide entrepreneurship skills training to startups and emerging African entrepreneurs.
• Deliver Business Development Services (BDS) necessary for startups and existing MSMEs across Africa for growth and diversification.
• Promote innovation, mentoring, technology development, networks, and market linkages among African Entrepreneurs.
• Undertake initiatives that promote access to affordable credit, working capital, guarantees, and other financial services suitable for startups and small businesses in Africa.
• Advance policy advocacy by facilitating partnerships with state and non-state actors to improve the operating business environment for local enterprises’ development in Africa.
• Setting up systematic monitoring and evaluation of the impact on African Entrepreneurs.
• Engage private sector leaders, corporations, and businesses to support the development of African entrepreneurs.

The TEF Entrepreneurship Programme directly addresses some of the most endemic challenges to African start-ups through a 4-step process:

• An online toolkit– The TEF Entrepreneurship Programme provides access to TEF’s proprietary online Start-up Toolkit training, which is comprehensive, practical training that equips entrepreneurs with resources on financial planning, market analysis, product marketing, business management skills, and many more. Over a period of 8 weeks, the entrepreneurs are assigned training modules with assignments that are completed with dedicated mentors. A weekly webinar is held by TEF to facilitate a deeper understanding of the principles covered and respond to questions. Interpretation in French, Portuguese and Arabic are available for non-English speaking entrepreneurs to follow the training as well.
• Mentoring– The TEF Entrepreneurship Programme matches mentors selected from all over the world with entrepreneurs to coach and guide them through the training window. The mentorship leverages online tools such as the TEFconnect platform, emails, social media, etc. Mentor selection and matching is carefully conducted to ensure alignment with the entrepreneurs’ goals and objective
• Business plan preparation and review– The TEF Entrepreneurship Programme further supports entrepreneurs that have been through the training to develop a business plan using a simplified template provided. After this, a business plan certification competitive process occurs to review, provide feedback, and refine the document to ensure feasibility.
• Seed capital investment– Upon certification of the business plan, the TEF Entrepreneurship Programme and its funding partner will provide a non- refundable seed capital investment of up to USD2,000 or its equivalent in local currency in a corporate bank account in the business name of the entrepreneur. A due diligence exercise is conducted in which the entrepreneur is required to fulfill certain compliance criteria before being eligible for the funding.

SCOPE of Work

1. Undertake a review of 396 submitted business plans from participants from 7 focus states of Lagos, FCT, Kano, Kaduna, Nasarawa, Niger, and Plateau to
   1. Establish the extent through which the entrepreneur has imbibed/utilized the key learnings from the TEF Business Management Training to advance their ideas/businesses.
   1. Determine the level of readiness (or otherwise) of the business with respect to receiving the non-returnable seed capital investment.
   1. Categorize all TEF EP entrepreneurs/businesses based on the degree of effort required by the entrepreneur for her business to be considered ready for the seed capital and select the top 220. [It is worthy to note that exceptional consideration will be given to 69 uniqueparticipants; the selected vendor will be informed of whom they are and why].

REVIEW CRITERIA

The criteria below should be used as the metric for review:

Methodology

• The provider will use the methodology/criteria listed above for the business plan reviews.
  • Recommendations should have a clear audience and be specific, accessible, and actionable.
  • Appendices should include a list of evaluators, evaluator(s) brief biography, and measured indicator metrics.

Ethical Considerations

It is expected that this business plan review will be ethically conducted. Proposals submitted should adhere to inclusion principles (i.e fair representation across all states for selected participants.) in the review.

In addition, the vendor is required to respect the following Ethical Principles1:

• Comprehensive and systematic inquiry: The consultant should make the most of the existing information and the full range of stakeholders available at the time of the review. He or she should communicate his or her methods and approaches accurately and in sufficient detail to allow others to understand, interpret and critique his or her work. He or she should make clear the limitations of the review and its results.
• Competence: The consultant should possess the abilities, skills, and experience appropriate to undertake the tasks proposed and should practice within the limits of his or her professional training and competence.
• Honesty and integrity: The consultant should be transparent with any conflict of interest, any change made in the negotiated project plan and the reasons why those changes were made, any risk that certain procedures or activities produce misleading review information.
• Respect for people: the firm respects the security, dignity, and self-worth of respondents and program participants. The consultant has the responsibility to be sensitive to and respect differences amongst participants in culture, religion, gender, disability, age, and ethnicity.

Quality Assurance and Management

All proposals will be reviewed and approved by TEF Team prior to acceptance and selection of the final vendor. The proposal detailing the proposed method and work plan is also to be approved by the TEF team.

Timeline

2 weeks (commencing on October 1, 2023)

Minimum Organizational Requirements

• Sound general organizational capacity and demonstrated ability to provide sound business plan review services.
• Have suitably qualified key experts for the provision of the services including experts in Business Strategy, Finance/Accounting experience, and Market Research.
• Experience in similar work with top tier organizations on similar programme or projects.

Criteria for Selection

Upon the advertisement of the RFP, a qualified Consultancy Firm is expected to submit the proposal with an inclusive commercial:

• Having received the highest score out of a pre-determined set of weighted technical and financial criteria specific to the solicitation. In this regard, the respective weight of the proposals are:

STANDARD TECHNICAL PROPOSAL EVALUATION CRITERIA

Confidentiality and PROPRIETARY Interests

The consultants shall not either during the term or after the termination of the assignment, disclose any proprietary or confidential information related to the project without prior written consent. Proprietary interests in all materials and documents prepared by the consultants under the assignment shall become and remain properties of the Tony Elumelu Foundation.

Annex

Annex I. Vendor Deliverables and timeline

Send your proposals to Tender@tonyelumelufoundation.org

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The hall was filled with students and alumni of the Business School who were excited to hear Mr. Elumelu share his thoughts on entrepreneurship, youth empowerment and the role of the private and public sectors in fostering development.

“For you all, in the African diaspora, I’d like for everyone to be successful in what they do. Because the development of Africa is not just material, it goes as far as even in terms of characterisation, mindset, and perception.

Perception has brand equity. If people see that a continent is good, has industrious people, people who are succeeding; the propensity to invest in that kind of environment will be high.”

Also in attendance was a 2015 Alumni of the Tony Elumelu Foundation Entrepreneurship Programme; Ayoade Oyedotun.

Ayo was one of the first cohort of beneficiaries of the Foundation’s US$100million programme, and he was excited to share the impact of the TEF Entrepreneurship Programme on his startup called Afrimash.

“I run an Agri-tech company for farmers. We run an e-commerce site like Amazon. Our products are agricultural products like planters, harvesters, and pesticides and chemicals. We deliver them to farmers across all of Nigeria.

I can proudly say that the US $ 5,000 that the Tony Elumelu Foundation gave to us in 2015, is less than our monthly salary today. We’ve just been multiplying what was given to us by the Tony Elumelu Foundation over 5 years ago.

Right now, we have and pay about 50 staff, and we serve tens of thousands of farmers across Nigeria. I am just really very grateful to you and the Foundation. Thank you very much for your support. I am very excited to see you”

Ayoade’s story is just one from thousands of Africans who can testify about the transformative impact of the Foundation in their lives, and Mr. Elumelu was happy to share tips on the best approach for African entrepreneurs to expand their brand from the domestic market to the global stage.

“Start small, make mistakes, apply the expertise, and move on. It takes time to make effective and lasting change”

Watch the full session here!

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I am honoured to be here this afternoon to share a few thoughts with all of us. I was saying to people earlier today that the time we have now is dwindling for us to do good in life. It’s not time for talk but more time for action.

I come from Africa – proudly born and bred in Africa and I have achieved some level of comfort on the continent, but I am not alone; there are so many others who have achieved this level of comfort on the continent. Africa has a lot of opportunities, but we also have our challenges. We have poverty on our continent, access to electricity is very poor on our continent, women are excluded from mainstream economic activities and youth unemployment is huge. In fact, I say that youth unemployment is a tragic waste of human talent and a betrayal of a generation, and we all must do something about it and this is the time to do something. That is why I like this topic, social entrepreneurship.

For someone who has been in business and grown to the level where we’ve put in place the Tony Elumelu Foundation, to help eradicate poverty, create employment for our young people and most importantly to help give economic growth and opportunity to our people. I don’t want us to be fixated on any particular kind of entrepreneurship.  We should promote entrepreneurship on the continent. We need entrepreneurs to grow employment. We need entrepreneurship to give hope to our people. We need entrepreneurship to stop our people from crossing the Mediterranean in very harsh conditions. We need entrepreneurship to stop extremism on our continent. We need entrepreneurship to provide security and assure prosperity for everyone.

For this, its just about embracing it and doing what we need to do collectively as Africans and as friends of Africa to power our people through entrepreneurship and prosperity. As I said before, the time to act is now. We think we know what we need in Africa, what we do at the Tony Elumelu Foundation has demonstrated and proven to us that this time-tested path of empowering our young ones – young females and young males is clearly the way to developing our continent.

So, as we gather for #UNGA77 in the centre of world affluence and prosperity, I want all of us to join hands in making this 21^st century, Africa’s year of youth empowerment, that is the future. We must realise and embrace the fact that our future totally belongs to this young Africans.

What we do at the Tony Elumelu Foundation is we want to team up with others, to do more. Let us democratise luck. I am where I am today because I am a product of luck not because I am the most intelligent in my set. It’s just being at the right place at the right time, being ready and when luck came, I took advantage of it. But I don’t want to be the only African that should benefit from this luck. Over 60% of our people are under the age of 30. We must create a hope and future for them, so that all of us can live a secured future and a secure life. So, my charge to all of us today is – let us collaborate, let us join hands, let us partner to make the future a better one for our young Africans.

The post Keynote Address delivered by Our Founder, Mr. Tony Elumelu at the United Nations General Assembly appeared first on The Tony Elumelu Foundation.

On Friday, September 23, 2022, TEF Founder, Mr. Tony O. Elumelu, C.O.N, CEO, Ifeyinwa Ugochukwu and TEF Director of Partnerships, Somachi Chris-Asoluka, held a series of bilateral meetings to further drive the importance and urgency of global investment in Africa for jobs creation, economic opportunities, climate responsibility, environmental sustainability, and poverty eradication.

The team met with Damilola Ogunbiyi, CEO and Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Sustainable Energy for All and Co-Chair of UN-Energy, for conversations around climate change and the current global focus on green and renewable energy. Africa’s focus is and should remain, providing energy from both traditional and green sources for its citizens, including energy sustainability and clean cooking for women. It was determined that Africa’s full transition green and renewable energy sources will require considerable investment, and this cannot be at the expense of the drive to urgently address the current energy deficit. Green energy transition must allow room for Africa to power its development and sustain its economic growth. Anything else will be potentially detrimental to all across the continent.

The team also met with Benedikt Sobotka CEO of Eurasian Resource Group (ERG) – The 2nd largest producer of cobalt in the world operating in 8 African countries, as well as Bogolo J. Kenewendo, Africa Director, UN High Level Climate Champion to discuss the increasing need for African voices on climate change, ahead of COP27 in Egypt.

“Africa must go to Cop 27 with one voice highlighting the importance and need for capital to fund the energy transition”, Mr. Elumelu said. “African governments must provide the enabling environment to promote climate change and incentivise the private sector to own these initiatives and begin implementation in their various organisations.”

The bi-lat meetings closed with a high-level session with President Adama Barrow of Gambia, where the party discussed ways in which the country’s government can work with the Foundation to empower even more young Gambians. The President expressed his deepest appreciation to the Tony Elumelu Foundation for empowering entrepreneurs in The Gambia and across Africa.

So far the Foundation has mentored, trained and disbursed nearly US $200,000 directly in seed capital to hundreds of Gambian entrepreneurs.

“We look forward to exploring investment opportunities in the Gambian financial sector with UBA, and hospitality sector with Transcorp Hotels PLC”
– Mr. Elumelu

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“We should promote entrepreneurship on the continent. We need entrepreneurs to grow employment. We need entrepreneurship to give hope to our people. We need entrepreneurship to stop our people from crossing the Mediterranean in very harsh conditions. We need entrepreneurship to stop extremism on our continent. We need entrepreneurship to provide security and assure prosperity for everyone.”

On Thursday, September 22, 2022, TEF Founder, Mr. Tony O. Elumelu, headlined the Nigeria International Economic Partnership Forum with investors, alongside H.E. President Mohammad Buhari and other Nigerian public and private leaders.

The conversation centred around improving policies and international partnerships to boost Nigeria’s global investment potential, and Mr. Elumelu highlighted @UBAGroup and @Heirs_Holdings’ track record of success in Nigeria as an example to others.

Then, in his capacity as a member of the board, he attended the United Nations Generation Unlimited Leadership Council board meeting where the TEF Director of Partnerships Tony Elumelu Foundation, Somachi Chris-Asoluka moderated sessions with the global leaders in attendance to discussed a first-of-its-kind partnership to support green entrepreneurs across Africa.

Mr. Elumelu also delivered headline remarks at the Forbes Philanthropy Summit with President of #UNGA77; Abdulla Shahid.

Our founder’s message was simple:

“Youth unemployment is an erosion of talent and a betrayal of a generation. We must prioritize our young ones- the government needs to create an enabling environment with access to stable infrastructure for young entrepreneurs to thrive.

Collectively, leaders in the private and public sectors must work together to ensure that our young global citizens are economically empowered for shared prosperity.”

At the United Nations’ side event, he delivered the keynote and ended the night by attending the inaugural Global Business African Initiative on the margins of #UNGA, hosted by the United Nations Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres.

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