The Tony Elumelu Entrepreneurship Programme recently hosted a two-day camp in Nigeria, from July 10-12, that drew some 1,000 aspiring entrepreneurs from 51 African countries. Christabel Ligami spoke with the programme’s founder about its expected impact on the continent.

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Each of the 1,000 aspiring business people attending the 2015 TEEP, a flagship programme of the Tony Elumelu Foundation, received some $5,000 for their start-ups. Where is this money to be invested?

Ideally, each entrepreneur should get $10,000. The first tranche of $5,000, which we gave the aspiring entrepreneurs immediately after the boot camp, is risk capital to allow them to work on their business plans.

The start-ups that will progress their business plans sufficiently will qualify for the second stage seed capital investment of $5,000, which will be given as equity.

The entrepreneurs will go through mentorship training with different experts across the globe. We are hopeful that these businesses will remain sustainable and, are, therefore taking the risk and preparing them for big investors in future.

Where are you getting the funding to support this programme?

The $100 million entrepreneurship programme is fully funded by the Tony Elumelu Foundation. We only seek partnerships in the area of mentoring. Currently, we have 400 mentors across the world.

However, we realise that it is expensive getting people from across Africa to travel to the boot camp; so from next year, we hope to partner with airlines to subsidise tickets for the entrepreneurs to travel. We could also partner with a telecommunications company to provide bandwidth for connectivity.

What was your criterion for selecting the 1,000 entrepreneurs?

The foundation appointed an independent review consultant to evaluate each application based on the criteria approved by the TEEP Selection Committee. The two main areas that were considered were the business idea and its viability in the targeted environment.

Also of importance was the impact. For example, if there was a proposal for a solar project, the entrepreneur had to prove that it would help improve power supply in the country and to what extent. 

The TEEP Selection Committee approved the final list of winners. While the grant was open to all sectors, agriculture took the largest share of 30 per cent, followed by education.

What was the motivation behind this initiative? Why Africa and not Nigeria?

I was born in Africa, I worked in Africa and I have created some wealth in Nigeria and several countries on the continent. So, I thought I should institutionalise the luck and ability I have had and create opportunities for my fellow Africans who would in turn help others.

I am simply linking their success to the doctrine of Africapitalism where the private sector has a role to play on the continent by investing in key sectors and helping to stabilise the society. The fastest way for Africa to progress is when the private sector starts to fully participate in empowering people by creating the right environment.

What is the time frame for this programme and how will you measure its success?

The programme tenure is 10 years in the first instance. But we shall come up with certain defined yardsticks for assessing the success rate. First, we said 1,000 people per year for 10 years.

We believe that in 10 years we shall have created significant revenue for businesses. This will in turn create significant employment opportunities on the continent and we are quite ambitious about that.

Say an entrepreneur starts with $10,000 and 10 years down the line, he or she may have helped to employ 100 people, and not gone bankrupt. That is success.

We also want to see a future say “United Bank for Africa” come out of this initiative, or a transnational corporation. In essence, we expect to have our own Bill Gates or Steve Jobs come out of this initiative.

So, success is going to be broadly defined by us and we hope that in five to 10 years’ time we shall all look back and be proud of it.

What is your advice to upcoming entrepreneurs on the continent?
In Africa, it is said that over 95 per cent of businesses die within the first year. We, however, cannot stop aspiring to become entrepreneurs because the operating environment is difficult.

As the private sector, we need to push our governments to create the right environment that will enable entrepreneurs to succeed. We have become accustomed to people helping us and giving us conditional grants.

We have to start operating as one because poverty in one country is a threat to everyone on the continent and the fewer poor people we have around us, the better for us all — our communities, families and businesses. Prosperity should be inclusive of all.