Tony Elumelu Foundation to Launch World’s Largest Digital Platform for African Entrepreneurs at TEF Forum 2018
Africa’s leading ‘entrepreneurship-focused’ philanthropic endeavour, The Tony Elumelu Foundation, is launching the world’s largest digital platform for African entrepreneurs and the African entrepreneurship ecosystem – TEFConnect.
TEFConnect will officially be unveiled at this year’s TEF Entrepreneurship Forum, taking place on October 25, 2018, at Federal Palace Hotel, Lagos, Nigeria.
Harnessing and building on the success of Africa’s largest entrepreneurship catalyst, the Tony Elumelu Foundation Entrepreneurship Programme, which has attracted over 300,000 African entrepreneurs as applicants and trained and funded 4,460 to date, the Foundation is further democratising access to opportunity. TEFConnect is an open source platform, which will provide bespoke tools and content to catalyse business development for millions across the continent, through technology and directly applicable content.
Positioned as the “Facebook for African Entrepreneurs”, the TEFConnect platform is a contemporary, intuitive, informative and user-friendly go-to entrepreneurship space, that provides five specific benefits to its users, among others:
- A one-stop digital home for entrepreneurship ecosystem players, including entrepreneurs, incubators, investors, academia and the private sector, providing news, informative resources, entrepreneurship events and opportunities.
- A space in which African entrepreneurs can transact across countries and regions in Africa’s largest digital marketplace.
- Access to free business tools such as financial planning calculators, business plan generators and marketing templates.
- Access to the Foundation’s Entrepreneurship Programme Application Form, Enterprise Toolkit, and business mentoring by global business leaders, thus enabling entrepreneurs to promote their businesses to potential investors and other entrepreneurs with a view to cross-border collaboration.
Speaking on the launch of TEFConnect, the CEO of the Foundation, Parminder Vir (OBE) said: “The Tony Elumelu Foundation is simply about empowering African entrepreneurs. First we launched the TEF Entrepreneurship Programme to provide 10,000 African entrepreneurs, over a period of 10 years, with seed capital, mentorship and training. Next we convened the full entrepreneurial ecosystem at the TEF Forum to foment engagement and deliberate discussions to change the narrative of Africa. Now we are scaling our impact by connecting the African entrepreneurship ecosystem on a single platform.”
The Founder of the Tony Elumelu Foundation, Tony O. Elumelu, CON also said: “In the four years, since the launch of the TEF Entrepreneurship Programme, we have shown that entrepreneurship can change a continent – we have invested in people and processes. We have already helped create business successes and brought policy makers into the entrepreneurial dynamic. But in many ways, we are scratching the surface. This year we are broadening our scope, taking the conversation to where interaction is increasingly occurring – the digital realm. By connecting African entrepreneurs globally on TEFConnect, we are further unleashing the true potential of our entrepreneurs and transforming the continent.”
The 4th TEF Forum will convene Africa’s entrepreneurial ecosystem, including the broad investor community, government and policymakers, leading developmental organisations, private sector representatives, the media and partners.
