{"id":12098,"date":"2026-11-07T21:15:53","date_gmt":"2026-11-07T21:15:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/2026\/11\/07\/wimbiz-elumelu-harps-on-power-value-capital-as-engines-for-africas-growth-businessday-ng\/"},"modified":"2026-11-07T21:15:53","modified_gmt":"2026-11-07T21:15:53","slug":"wimbiz-elumelu-harps-on-power-value-capital-as-engines-for-africas-growth-businessday-ng","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/2026\/11\/07\/wimbiz-elumelu-harps-on-power-value-capital-as-engines-for-africas-growth-businessday-ng\/","title":{"rendered":"WIMBIZ: Elumelu harps on power, value, capital as engines for Africa’s growth – Businessday NG"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2026Says Tony Elumelu Foundation\u2019s 24,633 young entrepreneurs created 1.5m jobs, $4.2b revenue<\/strong><\/em>\n<\/p>\n

The hall was full of women who had refused to wait; at the Eko Hotel & Suites, Victoria Island, Lagos, on Friday, November 6, 2026, the Women in Management, Business and Public Service (WIMBIZ) marked 25 years of existence, a quarter of a century of refusing to accept that talent should be wasted because of where it was born, or to whom it was born.\n<\/p>\n

The theme was fitting: \u2018Rooted, Rising, Ready: Born in Africa, Built for the World.\u2019\n<\/p>\n

And the man chosen to deliver the keynote address, Tony O. Elumelu, Group Chair of Heirs Holdings, Transcorp, and Founder of the Tony Elumelu Foundation, did not come to give a motivational speech. He came with numbers, names, and a challenge. \u201cI look at this room and I do not see an audience. I see capital. Human capital, the most under-deployed asset on this continent,\u201d he told the gathering.\n<\/p>\n

For the next one hour, Elumelu laid out what he called the geography of opportunity, why the world needs what Africa has, and why the most valuable thing Africa has was sitting in that room.<\/p>\n

Elumelu did not start with capital. He started with a mother who ran a small restaurant and worked harder than anyone he has ever known. \u201cI watched her turn very little into a living, and a living into a future for her children. That was my first business school. My first lesson in risk, in cash flow, in customers, in getting up the next morning when the day before had gone badly, came from a woman.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, when people ask me whether women can lead African business, I find the question strange. In my experience, they already do. We have simply not given them the capital, the title or the credit,\u201d he said.\n<\/p>\n

Later, at 34, Elumelu led a small group of young Nigerians to buy a struggling bank that almost nobody else wanted. It became the foundation of everything that followed. \u201cI was not a better businessman the day someone believed in me. I simply got the chance to prove it. I call this democratising luck. Opportunity in Africa is still distributed by accident of birth, of geography, of gender. My life\u2019s work is to make it distributed by merit instead.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

That, he said, is what Africapitalism means to him: the private sector creating economic prosperity and social wealth at the same time, and doing it for everyone, not for a fortunate few.\n<\/p>\n

The world needs what Africa has<\/strong><\/p>\n

He said that by 2050, Africa\u2019s working-age population will grow by hundreds of millions. The continent holds the minerals that will power the energy transition. It has the land, the sun, the rivers and the youngest population on earth. Everyone else is ageing. Africa is not. \u201cThat is not a problem to be managed. This is the single greatest commercial opportunity of this century, and it is ours,\u201d he said.\n<\/p>\n

But potential, he warned, is not guaranteed. Possession of resources has never been a guarantee of prosperity. Absence of resources has never been a permanent barrier to it.\n<\/p>\n

He gave two examples: Singapore, a small country with limited natural resources that became one of the world\u2019s most prosperous economies. And South Korea, a country devastated by war that transformed itself into a global industrial and technological powerhouse. \u201cNow consider Africa. A continent blessed with extraordinary mineral wealth, immense agricultural potential, a young population, enormous cultural influence and a rapidly expanding consumer market. Yet too many of our people remain trapped in poverty. Too many of our young people see emigration as their most credible economic strategy. Too many of our entrepreneurs spend more energy navigating obstacles than building businesses.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

Three things standing between Africa and prosperity: Power, value, capital<\/strong>\n<\/p>\n

Elumelu identified three things standing between Africa and realising its potential.<\/p>\n

He said the first is power. \u201cWe cannot talk about industrialisation without fixing electricity. Factories cannot run without it. Hospitals and schools cannot function without it. And the AI economy everyone is talking about has two basic ingredients: power and connectivity. Africa has the young, creative minds. What they lack is the grid. Fix electricity, and Africa will take off.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

The second, he pointed out, is value. \u201cFor a hundred years, the question asked of Africa has been: how much can be extracted? I want to change the question. How much value can be created here? If the power is reliable and the environment is right, why ship raw lithium, raw cocoa, raw crude out of this continent? Refine it. Process it. Brand it. Then sell it to the world. That is how a continent moves from supplier to participant.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

And the third is capital. He said Aid budgets collapsed in 2025 and fell again this year. Aid at its best kept people alive. It rarely made them owners. The future is investment and trade, not aid. \u201cAnd that capital needs to be African. Investment can only flourish with capital formation, which comes with savings. Savings can only grow with a beneficial environment, consistent policy, trusted financial institutions. With savings growth, at national and continental level, Africa will not just offer solutions, but finance those solutions.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

He pointed to living proof: Seplat, the London and Lagos listed oil company, where his investment has catalysed value in Africa for Africans, with share price moving from \u00a33 to \u00a39 this year, and current market cap of $7 billion. And Alhaji Aliko Dangote mobilising retail African investors in innovative ways for the Refinery IPO.\n<\/p>\n

\u2018We are witnessing a new dawn\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

He added a fourth: trade with each other. It is easier today to ship goods from Lagos to Liverpool than from Lagos to Luanda. Less than a fifth of Africa\u2019s trade is with each other. \u201cThe African Continental Free Trade Area remains the largest in the world by number of countries, and it will remain a document until businesses, your businesses, use it.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cWe must build the physical, financial and institutional infrastructure that makes continental trade commercially viable. Roads, railways, ports, payment systems, efficient customs procedures, predictable regulations. We cannot build a continental market merely by signing documents,\u201d he said.\n<\/p>\n

When he built UBA into twenty African countries, people told him Africans would not bank across borders. They were wrong. \u201cSo, when the world asks me where the opportunity is, I say: it is here, it is visible, and it is cheaper to enter today than it will ever be again. The question is not whether Africa will be the growth story of this century. It is who will own it. And it will be Africans \u2013 and African women!\u201d\n<\/p>\n

The numbers that shook the hall: 24,633 entrepreneurs, 1.5 million jobs<\/strong>\n<\/p>\n

Then Elumelu gave the numbers \u2013 because, as he said, he was a banker and he likes numbers. \u201cOver fifteen years, my wife Awele and I, through the Tony Elumelu Foundation, have put more than $120 million of seed capital into 24,633 young entrepreneurs, in all 54 African countries. Forty-eight per cent of them are women. Not because of a quota. Because our selection process is objective and we judge on the quality of the business plan alone.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThose entrepreneurs have created more than 1.5 million jobs and generated more than $4.2 billion in revenue. Harvard Business School now teaches how we did it.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

And, he added, the women entrepreneurs succeed, re-invest and re-hire at rates male entrepreneurs should envy. He gave three names that brought the hall to life:\n<\/p>\n

Princess Adeyinka Tekenah received $5,000 in 2015. She built Happy Coffee, seed to cup, in a country where 90 per cent of coffee is imported, buying her beans from women farmers in Taraba State. More than 1,000 jobs. She organised the first Lagos Coffee Festival. She intends to be the first publicly listed Nigerian coffee brand.\n<\/p>\n

Olamide Ayeni-Babajide took $5,000 in 2016 and built a recycling company from tyre waste. Revenue up more than twenty-fold. 15,000 people trained, most of them women and girls.\n<\/p>\n

Nkem Okocha received $5,000 in 2015. She built Mama Moni, a Fintech Social Enterprise closing the credit gap for low-income female entrepreneurs in rural and urban slum communities through easy access to finance.<\/p>\n

\u201cThree women. Fifteen thousand dollars between them. Thousands of jobs. Now tell me the world does not need what Africa has,\u201d Elumelu said.\n<\/p>\n

But the story also revealed a painful gap. This year, 265,529 young Africans with groundbreaking business ideas applied to the programme. Only 3,200 could be funded \u2013 just one in every 83 applicants. \u201cThink about the more than 262,000 innovative ideas and businesses we could not support. That is not a shortage of entrepreneurial talent; it is a shortage of capital. That is the scale of the opportunity Africa must unlock, and the capital we must mobilise. Not from Abu Dhabi, Washington or Brussels alone, but from Lagos, Nairobi, Johannesburg and this very room.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

Women\u2019s leadership is not charity, it is competitiveness<\/strong>\n<\/p>\n

Elumelu was blunt: women\u2019s economic leadership is not a concession to fairness. It is a requirement for competitiveness. \u201cNo serious economy can afford to systematically underutilise half its talent. And no continent seeking to accelerate its development can continue to treat women\u2019s advancement as a peripheral social objective. Inclusive prosperity is not charity. A continent that ignores half its talent is competing with one hand tied behind its back.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cI built UBA, now on four continents, and now Heirs Holdings invests across Africa in multiple sectors. I would never leave half my balance sheet idle. Why should a continent?\u201d He asked.<\/p>\n

Judge me by what I have done<\/strong>\n<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is easy for a man to stand on a stage at a women\u2019s conference and say the right things. So let me be judged by what I have done,\u201d he said.\n<\/p>\n

He started at home. His wife, Dr. Awele Elumelu, is a medical doctor, co-founder of Heirs Holdings. She chairs Avon HMO, Avon Medical, Heirs Insurance Brokers, Transcorp Hotels PLC, and now chairs Heirs Energies, today the 6th biggest producer of oil in Nigeria, producing 70,000 barrels of oil per day. She co-founded the Tony Elumelu Foundation.\n<\/p>\n

In 2020, he asked the board of Transcorp Group PLC to appoint Owen Omogiafo as President and Group Chief Executive. She was the youngest chief executive on the Nigerian Stock Exchange and the first woman to run Transcorp in its history. Under Owen, Transcorp has become a power company, a hospitality company that competes with anyone on the continent, and an energy company.\n<\/p>\n

When Owen moved up, Transcorp Hotels is today chaired by Awele Elumelu and run by Uzo Oshogwe, who came from running Afriland Properties, after 30 years at UBA and Accenture. By the time Owen took the top job, women held 80 per cent of senior management positions at Transcorp.<\/p>\n

At the Tony Elumelu Foundation, the CEO is Somachi Chris-Asoluka, who joined the Group as a junior straight after her postgraduate degree at Yale and rose through the ranks.\n<\/p>\n

In total, Heirs Holdings Group has 8 female leaders as Chairperson\/CEOs, including Agatha Obiekwugo, Chairperson, Afriland Properties Plc; Owen Omogiafo, President\/GCEO, Transcorp; Uzo Oshogwe, MD\/CEO, Transcorp Hotels; Somachi Chris-Asoluka, CEO, Tony Elumelu Foundation; Catherine Nwosu, MD\/CEO, Africa Prudential Plc; Dr. Odiri Ogini, MD\/CEO, United Capital Asset Management; Adetola Fasuyi, MD, United Capital Wealth Management; and Esther Adeola Balogun, MD\/CEO, UCEE MFB.\n<\/p>\n

UBA Group has 8 female CEOs across Africa, including Sarata Kone, Chioma Mang, Rasmata Djibo, Mariam Yago, Eugenia Onyekwelu, Rokia Hacko, Dora Kyungu and Bola Atta.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cI am not telling you this to be congratulated. I am telling you because I want every chairman and every chief executive in Nigeria who hears about this speech to ask himself one question: if Tony Elumelu can do it in power, in hospitality, in banking, in insurance, in healthcare, and in oil and gas, what exactly is my excuse?\u201d\n<\/p>\n

Institutions: The hardest question<\/strong><\/p>\n

Elumelu said institutions are the hardest question, because it is the one business leaders least like to answer. \u201cI have sat across the table from investors on every continent. They all ask the same questions. Will the contract be honoured? Will the regulator be predictable? Will the courts work? Will the power stay on? Capital goes where it is safe, and it stays where it is respected.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

To policymakers, he said: you do not need to fly around the world asking investors to come. Create the right conditions, and they will come. Where institutions are credible, contracts are honoured and leaders are accountable, money follows.\n<\/p>\n

And to business leaders: institutions are not only built by governments. They are built by us. Every time you pay your taxes properly, publish your accounts, promote on merit, refuse the shortcut, you are building an institution.\n<\/p>\n

He closed where he began \u2013 the geography of opportunity.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cFor most of my life, the map of opportunity had Africa at the edge. That map is wrong, and it is being redrawn, and the people redrawing it are not in Davos or New York. They are here.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo one but us will develop Africa. Not the donors. Not the multilaterals. Not the partners, however welcome they are. Us. And \u2018us\u2019 means every woman in this room who has been told to wait her turn.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\u201cDo not wait. My mother did not wait. Princess did not wait. Olamide did not wait. Nkem did not wait. Awele did not wait. Owen did not wait. Uzo did not wait. Build the business. Take the board seat. Deploy the capital. Hire the girl from the village who reminds you of yourself.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

Straightly speaking to the youngest woman in the room, he said 25 years ago, when WIMBIZ held its first conference, the women on that stage could not have named a female chief executive of a listed Nigerian company. Today you can name several, and some of them work for him. In another 25 years, the women on that stage should be reading your name.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is what rooted, rising and ready means. Not a slogan. A call to action.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\u201cAdvocacy got women into the room. Capital will get them to the head of the table. We have funded 13,360 African female entrepreneurs; I look forward to funding many more.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBorn in Africa. Built for the world. The world needs what Africa has. And what Africa has, more than oil, more than lithium, more than land, is you.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

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Businessday NG<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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