Tony Elumelu Foundation Releases the List of 2022 Tony Elumelu Entrepreneurs

The Tony Elumelu Foundation, Africa’s leading and largest entrepreneurship foundation and business catalyst, today released the list of entrepreneurs and cohorts onboarded for the 2022 year.

According to the list a total of 1,463 Entrepreneurs from across the African Continent were onboarded as Tony Elumelu Entrepreneurs to bring change, dynamism and growth in their respective countries through seed funding, training and mentoring from the Tony Elumelu Foundation. They join the list of well over 18,000 entrepreneurs that the foundation has onboarded to date.

For the first time ever in the history of the foundation, the cohorts selection announcement was made outside Nigeria, in Kinshasa, DRC.

According to the CEO of the Foundation, Ifeyinwa Ugochukwu, The Tony Elumelu Foundation’s mission is based on the economic theory of Africapitalism, which holds that the private sector, and particularly entrepreneurs, are the key to the social and economic development of the continent. We continue to push for international assistance so that we can scale our impact-driven intervention throughout the continent. Only through African businesses will we be able to accomplish the Sustainable Development Goals on the ground”, She said.

TEF is based on the concept of Africapitalism, which it explains as meaning that the business of the development of the African continent cannot be left alone up to “governments, donor countries, and philanthropic organizations alone. The private sector must be involved in the business of development”.

The breakdown of the 2022 cohorts shows that of the 1,463 beneficiaries, Females out number males as a total of 815 (55.7%) of the cohorts are females while 648 (44.3%) cohorts are males.

The sectors the cohorts represent include: ICT (94), Healthcare (90), Agriculture (561), Commercial/Retail (45), Oil and Gas (7), Media and Entertainment (40), Education and Training (76), Fashion (113), FMCG (43), Professional Services (57), Construction (23), Energy and Power Generation (33), Waste management (61), Consulting (11), Transportation (20), Manufacturing (142), Food and Beverages (6), Event Planning (1), Tourism and Hospitality (30), Haulage and Logistics (7), financial Services (11), Aviation (1), Beauty and Wellness (2) and Telecommunications (3).

The top five sectors are Agriculture, Manufacturing, Fashion, ICT and Healthcare. With 561 cohorts, agriculture has the largest share with 38.3% of the beneficiaries. This is closely followed by Manufacturing 142 (9.7%), Fashion 113 (7.72%), ICT 94 (6.43%) and Healthcare 90 (6.15%). You can view the full list here.