TEF Announces Fourth Edition of 10-Year $100m Entrepreneurship Programme

One of Africa’s largest philanthropy supporting entrepreneurship – The Tony Elumelu Foundation (TEF) has announced that it would begin begin accepting applications for the fourth cycle of its entrepreneurship development programme, from outstanding African entrepreneurs who have start-up or business ideas with high growth potential, from January 1, 2018.

The application portal opens midnight 1st January 2018.
The Programme is the founder’s $100 million commitment to identify, train, mentor and fund 10,000 African entrepreneurs in 10 years; creating 1,000,000 jobs and $10 billion in social and economic wealth.

According to a statement, after three cycles, the programme – the only African-funded business development initiative of its kind – has: received 158,000 applications from African entrepreneurs in 107 countries, including every nation of Africa; empowered nearly 3,000 businesses with 12-weeks of online training; world-class mentoring; access to TEF’s network of start-ups; and seed capital of $5,000.

In addition, it revealed that a total of  $14,235,000 had been invested in the initiative, including $4,270,500 in agriculture;$1,285,000 in ICT, $1,245,000 in education and training; and$7,400,000 more in start-ups across 19 other sectors.The programme is open to citizens and legal residents of all African countries with businesses based in Africa, less than three years old, including new startups.