Tony Elumelu, chairman of United Bank for Africa (UBA) and founder of Heirs Holdings leaps with energy, innovation and ideas. He gets his energy and creativity in a quiet place. And usually, when he geos somewhere alone, he finds that new ideas just begin to flow and gets so much connected with himself.
Personal connections generate new thoughts and ideas for him, as he travels the world and works hard to make great things happen. He gets so tired of being in specific places, so moving around gives him fresher energy. It displaces old ideas.
So he keeps dreaming about great things, about a great nation, about a greater , prosperous Africa, about a peaceful world, about how the African youth can survive and flourish in a new world order of Industry 4.0, about how do we design international institutions for a world in which the liberal dream of growing harmony is in flood.
“My successes – and yes failures – have always driven me to create opportunities for young people. I believe that our young have the talent and the zeal to transform our world.” Said Elumelu.
This enigmatic global business leader clocks 60 this month. And what does Tony mean to business people, the youth in Nigeria and Africa generally? Role model, enabler, a man of great vision who helps so turn their lives around.
Elumelu went through banking career at Standard Trust Bank where after growing in leadership he found himself to be the youngest managing director of a bank, nationally , at that time And a very creative one, for that matter. Tony became a bank chief executive at the age of 34, one of the youngest in the industry at that time, by a dint of hardwork and luck. He was the CEO of the defunct Standard Trust Bank (STB) at the time before a business combination with UBA saw him become the chief executive of the new larger entity.
“I owed my accelerated career and successes to two things: hard work and luck, and I know firsthand how these factors are inextricable in success,” Elumelu said in a Facebook post recently.
Mr Elumelu currently chairs Heirs Holdings, a family-owned investment holding company, and also Transnational Corporation of Nigeria, where he holds a 2.1 per cent stake. He has a 7 per cent interest in UBA also.
His philanthropic initiative Tony Elumelu Foundation empowers young entrepreneurs in Africa and has active presence in 54 African countries.
Elumelu noted that the time he took the helm at Standard Bank coincided with a period of fast-paced transformation in banking when “reform-minded policymakers had opened up paths for consolidation and strengthening our sector”.
He added that even though competition was stiff within the industry, being young posed no barrier. Hence his commitments to putting the youth on sound footing in terms of leadership and entrepreneurship. The idea came to him when he was still in the banking sector.
While working in bank, in UBA as managing director, Tony was stunned by the problem of poverty in Africa. Even though he grew up to know there was poverty in Africa, it was really his banking career and travelling round Africa that helped him to uncover the real magnitude of poverty in Africa, and its impact on the continent. He was intrigued and in the end, felt like this is the path he needed to take. Something that would change lives in Africa.
He felt what concerned him at the moment was really trying to figure out how he could create the biggest impact in the continent. And he saw many avenues to do that. One is working alongside young people and being an encouragement to them in any way he could through making them creatively productive. But also to engage differently in society just to see areas that he could help to make improvements in people’s lives.
More important to him , of course, is working with youth on entrepreneurship through his philosophy of Afrocapitalism. And as they learn leadership and entrepreneurship, he also ensures they are so versatile with technology, so comfortable with it. He painted different scenarios about these and the future of Africa.
He thought and thought, and eventually decided to launch a war on poverty. To do this he must create a sort of liberal new order among African youth to smash apart the triple rocks of poverty, unemployment and productivity turmoil. Tony’s priority then became how to make as many people as possible productive, prosperous, truly independent and not rely on others.
Some years later, he floated the Tony Elumelu Foundation to solve the problems of poverty and unemployment through leadership training and entrepreneurship for African youth.
To him, the wealth that our parents accumulated or built is not ours to brag about.
We have no idea how long it took or what situations they went through to build themselves up.
We must build our own from sweat and guts, only then we will know the formulae.
This formulae he knows so much. And he is initiating many African youth into its secret through his philanthropic initiative the Tony Elumelu Foundation. In 2010, he created The Tony Elumelu Foundation (TEF), the pan-African philanthropy empowering a new generation of African entrepreneurs, catalysing economic growth, driving poverty eradication and ensuring job creation across all 54 African countries.
With this Foundation, encouraging the youth into innovation and productivity became easier, so they can be the change they want to be for their generation. To him, there is no need to fear for the youth, now that we are in the advent of the fourth industrial revolution, because they are born at a time like this to handle the challenges of the day like this. Not to fear but to guide them to make a difference. That is his task now across Africa, more than anybody in the continent.
Since inception, the Foundation has funded over 20,000 entrepreneurs and created a digital ecosystem of over one million Africans as part of its ten year, US$100m commitment through its flagship Entrepreneurship Programme. Self-funded, the Foundation is increasingly sharing its unique ability to identify, train, mentor and fund young entrepreneurs across Africa, with institutions such as the United Nations Development Programme, the International Committee of the Red Cross and other global development agencies. His businesses and Foundation are inspired by Tony’s economic philosophy of Africapitalism, which positions the private sector, and most importantly entrepreneurs, as the catalyst for the social and economic development of the African continent. Tony sits on a number of public and social sector boards including the World Economic Forum Community of Chairmen and the Global Board of UNICEF’s Generation Unlimited. He was named in the 2020 Time100 Most Influential People in the World, recognised for his business leadership and economic e
The Foundation empowers young entrepreneurs in Africa and has active presence in 54 African countries. It is the leading champion of entrepreneurship in Africa, with purpose being to empower women and men across the continent, catalysing economic growth, driving poverty eradication and ensuring job creation. We believe the private sector’s role is critical for Africa’s development and that the private sector must create both social and economic wealth.
The great thing about the foundation is that people are always at the heart of all the strategy of its activities. When it comes to young people, the strategy is clear: TEF is focused on ensuring that tomorrow is always better than today for young people, through their own empowerment and the betterment of the communities where they live and develop.
For Tony, he believes that youths are fundamental to build a better shared future. For that reason, he developed programs to aid young people in entering the labor market. For example, BoothCamp training which seeks to promote the entrepreneurship of the youth, it has already reached more than 500 young people throughout the African continent to date, and Tony hopes to continue increasing the offer of training and participant quotas in the coming years. All programs are free and 100% online, aimed at young people who reside anywhere in Arica.
This has already impacted more than 39,000 young people in African communities spread throughout the 54 countries in the continent. Of the total number of beneficiaries, more than 80,000 entered the labor market.
In addition, he seeks to boost their talents through quality opportunities and inclusive education. I’m proud to say that we employ 240,000 youths of the region. We know we cannot do it alone, so we work on these efforts with many allies across Africa. We will keep working on providing better and more opportunities to boost their talent and help them achieve their dreams.
At a recent forum, Elumelu urged successful leaders to champion young people who are focused, hardworking and committed to making a difference in their communities, because their drive and determination make things happen.
“More than ever, all of us who have attained success must become role models for the younger generation, so that the next generation can learn from our mistakes and achieve even more than we have,” he said.
“I believe that prioritising our youth – supporting their dreams and aspirations – is how we can create a sustainable future for the world.The greatest success in leadership is leaving a legacy and pathway for the next generation.”
Part from this, Elumelu believes that leaders must focus on long-term goals and succession planning to build a lasting legacy and ensure long-term success.
Elumelu is one of Africa’s leading investors and philanthropists. The Chairman of Heirs Holdings, his family owned investment company committed to improving lives and transforming Africa, through long-term investments in strategic sectors of the African economy including financial services, hospitality, power, energy, technology and healthcare. Tony is the Chairman of pan-African financial services group, the United Bank for Africa (UBA), which operates in 20 countries in Africa, the United Kingdom France, and is the only African bank with a commercial deposit taking presence in the United States. UBA provides corporate, commercial, SME and consumer banking services to more than 21 million customers globally. He also chairs Nigeria’s largest quoted conglomerate, Transcorp Plc whose subsidiaries include Transcorp Power, one of the largest generators of electricity in Nigeria and Transcorp Hotels Plc, Nigeria’s foremost hospitality brand. He is the Founder and Chairman of Trans-Niger Oil & Gas Limited (TNOG), an upstream oil and gas company which owns and operates Nigeria’s OML17, (with 2P reserves of 1.3 billion barrels of oil equivalent) and committed to creating resource based added value on the African continent. Tony is the most prominent champion of entrepreneurship in Africa. And he is one of the most impactful role models for the African youth right now, more than any African at present.
At 60, Tony is helping to put Africa on a sound footing beyond being just exporter of crude resources. He is a most visible protagonist of productivity and philanthrophy in Africa. his desire is to bail out the continent from the clutches of underdevelopment in a world of “global discord” that desperately needs a John Maynard Keynes or a Milton Friedman who can range over a variety of disciplines like a master, but also translate them into gripping English.
Tony is helping to put Africa on a sound footing beyond being just exporter of crude resources in a world of “global discord” desperately needs a John Maynard Keynes or a Milton Friedman who can range over a variety of disciplines like a master, but also translate them into gripping English.
Now at 60, Elumelu wrestles with the chaos and confusion assailing Africa, amidst a raging global disorder, trying to help put some order.
And as Adrian Wooldridge has written in Bloomberg early January, 2023 “the overall impression is one of extraordinary flux and confusion: Europeans are trying to come to terms with the US’ growing nationalism; companies are flexing their supply chains for an unstable world; emerging powers are shifting their alliances; economic globalization, and national and regional politics are pulling in different directions at once; global organizations are losing their legitimacy; and the academics who are supposed to make sense of these things are so immersed in their subdisciplines that they either cannot see the bigger picture or, if they can see it, they cannot explain it to lesser mortals. The world of disorder remains a world of confusion as well.”
In some decades from now, historians would at least be able to bring the benefit of African children the significant contributions of Tony Elumelu to the socio-political and economic liberation of Africa.
This is the world of the Lion king, “ the African child” who has been able to help Africa maintain some order and stability when global chaos rages.
As individuals, we too need to make great things happen. As individuals, we need to set goals and work towards our dreams. Let us not be spectators in life. We need to be working hard.
We need to be putting our heads down. We need to be able to dream again. If anyone has put his own dream in the coffin, it’s time to remove it from there. You have to see your dreams become a reality. This is the lesson in Elumelu’s activities across Africa as his ideas and mentorship become pivotal to African youth prosperity.
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