REMARKS BY:
Tony O. Elumelu, CON
Chairman, United Bank for Africa (UBA) Group & Founder, The Tony Elumelu Foundation & Board Member, Global Leadership Council, UNICEF Generation
Unlimited (GenU) during the virtual launch of GenU.
▪ Good Afternoon All;
▪ Our young hosts, the “TOE Girl’’, Tamara Oge Elumelu, and Debola Williams, we are very proud of you
▪ At the Tony Elumelu Foundation, the leading philanthropy
empowering thousands of young Africans from all 54 African
countries, are immensely pleased to be co-implementors and
grassroots galvanisers for this critical Gen-U Sahel Programme.
▪ Through our TEFConnect.com platform, we have trained 1.5million
young Africans across the continent.
▪ Through our annual TEF Entrepreneurship Programme which provides $5000 non-refundable seed capital, business management
training and mentorship for young entrepreneurs to scale their
enterprises, we have funded 10,898 entrepreneurs across Africa
▪ These young African entrepreneurs have gone on to create over
400,000 direct and indirect jobs across Africa.
▪ In 2019, we partnered with the United Nations Development
Programme (UNDP) to identify, train, mentor and fund 2100 young
entrepreneurs in the Sahel region – Northern Nigeria, Burkina Faso,
Mali, Niger, Chad, Cameroon, and Mauritania.
▪ Again in 2020, we partnered with UNDP to fund and train 1860
young Malians who face the triple threat of conflict, insecurity, and
poverty, as well as loss of livelihoods from climate change
▪ Through our intervention, we were able to create small businesses,
and generate economic hope in the youth, channeling their
creativity and skills to transform the Sahel region.
▪ More than 2 million people in this region have been forced to flee
their homes, with millions more losing their sources of livelihoods
▪ Resources are scarce, and opportunities are limited, leading to even
more tensions and conflict between communities in the Sahel
▪ A collective effort is needed to find a lasting solution to this
intractable crisis
▪ Empowering and investing in our people – especially our young ones
in the Sahel – to give them economic hope and opportunity is THE
only solution.
▪ As I have always said, poverty anywhere is a threat to us all
everywhere
▪ Thank you, ladies and gentlemen
▪ I look forward to an impactful partnership.
