Director of Partnerships and Communications at the Tony Elumelu Foundation, Somachi Chris-Asoluka has stated that, the foundation has been able to train 9,000 entrepreneurs across 54 African countries.
The beneficiaries, she announced cut across various sectors including agriculture which has 30% of entrepreneurs.
Chris-Asoluka revealed through a zoom conference that the goal of the foundation is to create one million jobs and contribute 10 billion dollars to the African economy through training young entrepreneurs.
The Tony Elumelu Foundation is the leading champion of entrepreneurship in Africa. Their objective is to empower women and men across the African continent, catalyzing economic growth, driving poverty eradication and ensuring job creation.
The foundation also believes the private sector’s role is critical for Africa’s development and that the private sector must create both social and economic wealth.
According to Chris-Asoluka, the applicants went through a series of training before finally receiving a seed fund of $5,000 dollars.
“We know that a lot of businesses wouldn’t need $5,000 dollars to grow, but what the $5,000 dollars does is to flesh up and be able to implement ideas and take it to a level that will be able to attract additional attention from sponsors and other stakeholders” she said.
According to Chris-Asoluka, they have been able to disburse $30,000,00 to some beneficiaries with 4,500 Nigerian beneficiaries.
She said Ghana comes fourth as the most vibrant country in the campaign after Nigeria, Uganda and Kenya respectively.
She stated that, the foundation’s programme has been designed such that, Covid-19 did not affect the beneficiaries.
“We have thousands of applicants, though we select 1000 every year, because of covid-19, we are tripling the figure” she noted.
