The Tony Elumelu Foundation has announced the opening of its 2025 Entrepreneurship Programmes applications.
This was contained in a statement made available to The PUNCH on Monday.
The Tony Elumelu Foundation is a leading philanthropy that empowers a new generation of African entrepreneurs, drives poverty eradication, catalyzes job creation across all 54 African countries, and increases women’s economic empowerment. Its flagship TEF Entrepreneurship Programme is a platform for entrepreneurs across Africa with innovative business ideas or existing businesses not older than five years.
The statement revealed that applications for the entrepreneurship programmes are to be submitted through TEF’s proprietary digital hub, TEFConnect, between January 1, 2025, and March 1, 2025. The programmes are open to African entrepreneurs with scalable business ideas or existing businesses not older than five years. Applicants must be at least 18 years old.
Successful participants would receive world-class training, expert mentoring, and non-refundable seed capital funding to scale their businesses.
The programmes that aspiring and existing entrepreneurs can apply for include the Tony Elumelu Foundation Entrepreneurship Programme, which has a special emphasis on businesses leveraging artificial intelligence and green initiatives this year, and the IYBA-WE4A Entrepreneurship Programme, which was launched by TEF in partnership with the European Union and Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit.
IYBA-WE4A stands for Investing in Young Businesses in Africa—Women Entrepreneurship for Africa and is exclusively for women entrepreneurs with green business ideas or existing green businesses in Senegal, Tanzania, Uganda, Cameroon, Kenya, Mozambique, Malawi, and Togo. Applicants must be at least 18 years old, with businesses not exceeding five years in operation.
The third programme open for entries is the Aguka Ideation Programme, a partnership between the Tony Elumelu Foundation, UNDP Rwanda, and the Rwandan Ministry of Youths and Arts to support young Rwandan entrepreneurs between ages 18-30 with business ideas and a seed capital of $3000, aimed at nurturing and developing innovative concepts into viable enterprises.
The Tony Elumelu Foundation, founded in 2010, has provided up to 2.5 million young Africans with access to training on its digital hub, TEFConnect, and disbursed over $100m in direct funding to over 21,000 African men and women, who have collectively created over 800,000 direct and indirect jobs and generated over $4.2bn in revenue.
