Tony Elumelu of Nigeria, announced in December of 2014, the launch of a $100 Million Pan-African entrepreneurship initiative using his own money.
The Tony Elumelu Foundation Entrepreneurship Program, is a multi-year program designed to train, fund and mentor the next generation of African entrepreneurs. The program will identify and help grow an initial 10,000 start-ups and young businesses from across Africa over the next 10 years, targeting the creation of one million new jobs and $10 billion in annual revenues.
Tony Elumelu became one of the youngest CEOs in the Banking industry in Nigeria at the age of 34 during the 1990s.
After leading investors to acquire the distressed Crystal Bank and renaming it Standard Trust Bank (STB), Tony took the industry by storm in 2005 as he led Standard Trust Bank to acquire an older, more established United Bank for Africa (UBA), which at the time was Nigeria’s 3rd largest financial services institution. He was 42 at the time.
UBA then acquired Continental Trust Bank, Trade Bank, City Express Bank, Metropolitan Bank, and African Express Bank. It didn’t take long for UBA to become a pan-African institution with over one million customers, operations in 20 African countries, and offices in Paris, London, and New York and recently Dubai.
In other business ventures, through his Heirs Holdings, Tony Elumelu diversified into hospitality, power, energy, technology and healthcare.