By Babajide Okeowo
The Tony Elumelu Foundation (TEF) has stated that with the opening of the application portal for its entrepreneurship programme on January 1, 2021, the foundation is more committed to empowering young entrepreneurs in the continent so that they can contribute to the recovery of economies in the continent that had been ravaged by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Chief Executive Officer, TEF, Ifeyinwa Ugochukwu, made this known while giving a scorecard of the Foundation’s impact during a virtual media briefing at the weekend.
Ifeyinwa disclosed that so far, the Foundation has trained, mentored, and funded over 9,000 African entrepreneurs.
“Most Small Medium Enterprises, SMEs do not have the shock absorber that the bigger organisations have. And that is why it has never been more urgent than now, to deepen and expand the work that the TEF does in empowering African entrepreneurs. That is why for us, opening the application portal January 1, 2021, marked a new beginning.
It marked the renaissance and the beginning of recovery, and the beginning of Africa taking its place in the global stage,” she disclosed.
According to her, the world understands that Africa is critical to the recovery of the global economy from the pandemic.
“We are also excited to say that PwC in conjunction with our Foundation has just completed an impact assessment report which would be released in the first quarter, to mark our 10-year anniversary. So, there is a lot happening in our Foundation,” Ugochukwu said.
She explained that shortly after the application portal for 2020 closed, the COVID-19 lockdown took place across Africa and the entire world.
“We knew that we could not continue with the programme at that time because most people were under strict lockdown and there were no movements in their country.
Most of our entrepreneurs oftentimes needed to go to schools, business centres, or offices to have access to the internet to take the programme. So, we decided to postpone the programme to 2021.
Now, we all know that Africa had to bear the brunt of the health impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. But for the economic impact, some people have said that Africa is the epicenter of the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the SMEs, which are the heartbeat and lifeblood of economies in Africa, is on the frontline” she added.
