The Tony Elumelu Foundation announces a partnership with the German Agency for International Cooperation, GIZ.
Lagos, Nigeria, 25 September 2018: Tony O. Elumelu, CON, Promoter of the Tony Elumelu Foundation and President of Heirs Holdings and United Bank for Africa, joined world leaders at UN Headquarters to launch the Youth program 2030: The United Nations Youth Strategy, at the 73rd session of the United Nations General Assembly.
Elumelu has been invited to join UNICEF’s Generation Unlimited Partnership Council, a global partnership to provide every young person with access to quality education, training or employment by 2030. Youth Initiative is launched to respond to the global crisis of education and training of millions of young people. Elumelu’s philanthropic foundation is the largest provider of funding for African entrepreneurs, providing start-up capital, mentoring and commercial tools to more than 4,400 young Africans in the first four years of life and catalyzing a African entrepreneurship ecosystem that reaches more than 300,000 African entrepreneurs.
Elumelu expressed optimism about the initiative’s rigorous strategy and roadmap for advancing youth empowerment globally. He called on other world leaders to serve his success. He said: “In Africa, we know that we have a crucial window of opportunity to build better futures. The stakes could not be higher. That’s why I strongly encourage my peers to play an active and comprehensive role in supporting the Generation Unlimited initiative. ”
Elumelu also announced the partnership between the Tony Elumelu Foundation (TEF) and Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, the German agency for international cooperation, to finance and train 210 young African entrepreneurs from East Africa and West, building on TEF’s unique African entrepreneurship platform.
In just four years, TEF’s Entrepreneurship Program provided 4,470 people with $ 25 million in start-up capital, world-class mentoring and training, evidence of Mr. Elumelu’s confidence in the power of African youth. The Foundation will launch the TEFConnect, a youth-oriented digital platform, to unify and empower African entrepreneurs and to serve as a bridge to the entrepreneurial community in Africa at the TEF Entrepreneurship Forum in October 2018.
Other members of the Generation Unlimited Council include Ms. Shamma bint Suhail bin Faris Al Mazrui, Minister of Youth of the United Arab Emirates; Ms. Harriett Baldwin, Minister of State in the Department of International Cooperation in the United Kingdom; Mr. Michael Froman, Vice President and President of Strategic Growth at Mastercard; Ms. Kristalina Georgieva, Managing Director of the World Bank; Sri Mulyani Indrawati, Minister of Finance of the Republic of Indonesia; Ms. Sigrid Kaag, Minister of Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation of the Netherlands; Mrs Federica Mogherini, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy.
