From the Archives
What has been the highlight of your day because I know you’ve been in a lot of meetings today?
UNGA 2022 has been very exciting in so many ways, for us as a group, the Tony Elumelu Foundation, we’ve been able to consummate two significant partnerships. We live in Africa, we see poverty, we see how our people are suffering, we see the energy of our youths (our young ones), we see their ambition, we see their aspirations to make a difference; but access to capital is always a problem for these young ones, and for us at the Tony Elumelu Foundation, we are trying to catalyze luck, we are trying to catalyze entrepreneurship across the continent. But we understand that we can’t do it alone.
Personally, I’m an exemplar of success in Africa. I come from a modest background, I’ve built multi-national businesses, but I realize that we need more Tony Elumelu’s in Africa, and for this to happen, we need to increase our capacity to empower young ones. The Tony Elumelu Foundation alone cannot do this, so we have tried to reach out to like-minded development agencies, governments, individuals, institutions, to partner with us so that we can scale what we know how to do, what we know works through what we have done at the Tony Elumelu Foundation; and happily, at this UNGA 22, we found two partnerships; one with the American Foundation for Africa development, and two, with the UN Agency for capital. So, we’ve signed partnerships with UNCDF, and USADF to scale what we do at the Tony Elumelu Foundation. So, to me, it’s a wonderful time for us as a Foundation because the success of young Africans is our preoccupation. So, we’re happy that we can now do more in partnership with this and existing partners we already have.
Let’s look at job creation in Africa and youth entrepreneurship because I know that it’s one of your fortes, how do you feel about it? How can governments create jobs for the youth? And encourage the youth to engage in entrepreneurship?
I have often said that youth unemployment is a tragic waste of our talent. It’s a betrayal of a generation, and I know that one sure way of creating employment for our people is by encouraging entrepreneurship amongst our young ones. I live in Africa, I see the harsh impact of youth unemployment, and I know that as an African leader, we must do something about it. The time is ticking so fast.
I know from my experience with in interacting with these young Africans, they feel highly betrayed, and we as African leaders, friends of Africa, political leaders in Africa, and the world at large must do something quickly so that all of us will have peace. To me, it has become an existential issue. It’s something we must do for our own enlightened self-interest. These guys, very energetic, we either channel their energy positively, or they use their energy in a negative way; and that will be disastrous, and that will be difficult for us to contain.
We can do less now than what we can do in the future if we fail to do what we can do right now. So I believe that entrepreneurship presents the way forward and that is why the Tony Elumelu Foundation will do it. We have trained over 1.2 million young Africans, we’ve provided seed capital of non-refundable $5000 dollars each to more than 16,000 young Africans. Through their works, we’ve created about 400,000 jobs on the continent.
This is what we need to scale up. And this space, we don’t want to be in this space alone, we want others to come to this space, and that is why when I told you before, I was happy with UNCDF and USADF who have signed the partnership that we have signed. Plus the existing ones with the European Union and the UNDP, International Red Cross, you know these are great partnerships helping to catalyze more entrepreneurship on our continent so that collectively, we can deal with this issue of unemployment, and also Google has come into the space too.
But what about governments across Africa?
I believe that governments in Africa can do more. I think our governments pay a lot of lip service to the issue and importance and relevance and the future of our continent as it relates to our young ones. The future of Africa truly belongs to the young ones. Their success is our success, and we must see success, modifying success, through that prism, that the success of the young ones, if they succeed, we know that Africa is succeeding and we succeed further. Our government must create an enabling environment.
At the Tony Elumelu Foundation, I told you before, we funded over 16,000 young African entrepreneurs, but what is important is creating the enabling environment that will allow and support these young Africans with the seed capital we’ve given them, with the mentorship we’ve provided them, with the business education and training we’ve given them to succeed.
If you’re an entrepreneur, a small-scale entrepreneur and you don’t have access to electricity, please tell me, what can you do with $5000? So government must do something, and government must put in place policies that support our young ones.
You know for me, I feel so bad about this and truly so because it seems to me that we miss the point most times, how do we move out of poverty if we cannot empower the young ones; and empowering them like I said is not about the capital we provide, it’s about creating the ecosystem, the enabling environment that will enable them to succeed.
So I look forward to all of us embracing this and I think that this should be the preoccupation of one of the things the AU should focus on.
Youth empowerment, security issues; those two to a large extent will help us, and knowing that for youths to be economically empowered and to succeed, the infrastructure that we need, access to electricity and power is so critical. Stifling policies must be removed, tax reforms that support the young entrepreneurs must be put in place, incentive system to shape the right behaviour must be put in place; and for those of us in the private sector who have succeeded, we must realize that our success is nothing if we go alone.
We need to carry others along so they become even more successful than us, so that collectively, we create a commonwealth system that makes it difficult for anyone that wants to destroy because we are all stakeholders. People want to destroy when they feel that it’s true that they are marginalized and so we would need to go together on this journey.
Tony Elumelu’s interview with Voice of America
on November 18,2022(abridged).your
