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Barely a week after urging a gathering of high-net-worth individuals with global and far-reaching influence at the Legacy Builders Palm Beach Conference in Florida, USA, to join the mission of driving meaningful and sustainable impact across Africa, Tony Elumelu once again made a strong case for transformative investments on the continent during another of his unceasing campaign this time at the World Governments Summit.
“Every challenge in Africa—whether it’s infrastructure deficit, energy insufficiency, or transportation inadequacy—is an investment opportunity. The key is identifying these gaps and structuring your approach to mitigate the risks. That’s where the competitive edge lies,” said the founder of the Tony Elumelu Foundation, which has disbursed more than $100 million in direct funding to over 21,000 beneficiaries, granted about 2.5 million Africans access to training on its online portal—TEFConnect, created more than 1.5 million direct jobs, and generated $4.5 billion in revenue across the continent.
“As an investor with a diversified portfolio across four continents—from power to oil & gas, financial services, and healthcare—I can tell you one thing: nowhere else offers the kind of ROI that Africa does,” the philanthropist and one of Africa’s leading investors added.
Providing a verifiable example, he stated, “Take our Heirs Holdings Group, for example. We have the capacity to generate 2,000MW of electricity daily, and today, with an available capacity of circa 1,000MW, that’s transformative impact and significant value creation on a continent where energy access remains a key challenge.”
Heirs Holdings, which the prominent champion of entrepreneurship in Africa founded and chairs, is 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.
Emphasizing a major advantage of the continent as the prime destination for investment both now and in the future, the proponent of the economic principle of Africapitalism—which posits that the private sector, and most importantly, entrepreneurs, are the catalysts for the social and economic development of Africa—highlighted “Africa’s greatest asset? Its people. With a median age of 19 and 65% of our 1.5 billion population under 30, we have an unstoppable demographic advantage. This youthful energy is a goldmine for investment, innovation, and economic growth.”
Reiterating that “the returns are undeniable, the opportunities are limitless,” the Chairman of United Bank for Africa (UBA)—the global financial powerhouse with a presence in 20 African countries, four continents, and the only African bank regulated to take deposits in the United States of America (USA)—charged stakeholders at the World Governments Summit, “The future is ours to shape. Let’s build a prosperous, self-sustaining Africa together.”
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