By Chioma Obinagwam
Africa’s leading entrepreneurship focused philanthropy, the Tony Elumelu Foundation (TEF) has said it will launch the world’s largest digital platform for African entrepreneurs and the African entrepreneurship ecosystem known as TEFConnect.
“TEFConnect will officially be unveiled at this year’s TEF Forum, taking place on October 25, 2018, at Federal Palace Hotel, Lagos, Nigeria,” the foundation disclosed in a statement.
TEFConnect, the statement further explained, is an open source platform, which will provide bespoke tools and content to catalyse business development for millions across the continent, through technology and directly applicable content.
“Harnessing and building on the success of Africa’s largest entrepreneurship catalyst, the Tony Elumelu Foundation Entrepreneurship Programme, which has attracted over 300,000 African entrepreneurs as applicants and trained and funded 4,460 to date, the Foundation is further democratising access to opportunity,” it revealed.
Features of the digital platform, the statement pointed, is that it is positioned as the ‘Facebook for African Entrepreneurs,’ hence the TEFConnect platform is a contemporary, intuitive, informative and user-friendly go-to entrepreneurship space, that provides five specific benefits to its users, among others.
A break down of the benefits, the statement indicated, show that it is the one-stop digital home for entrepreneurship ecosystem players, including entrepreneurs, incubators, investors, academia and the private sector, providing news, informative resources, entrepreneurship events and opportunities.
The statement also showed that it creates the space to allow African entrepreneurs to transact across countries and regions in Africa’s largest digital marketplace, with traffic reaching millions of consumers.
Again, TEF stated that users of the platform has access to free business tools such as financial planning calculators, business plan generators and marketing templates.
It added that users will have access to the Foundation’s Entrepreneurship Programme Application Form, Enterprise Toolkit and business mentoring by global business leaders as well as enable entrepreneurs to promote their businesses to potential investors and other entrepreneurs for cross-border collaboration.
Speaking on the launch of TEFConnect, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Foundation, Parminder Vir OBE said: “The Tony Elumelu Foundation is simply about empowering African entrepreneurs. First, we launched the TEF Entrepreneurship Programme, to provde 10,000 African entrepreneurs, over a period of 10 years with seed capital, mentorship and training. Next, we convened the full entrepreneurial ecosystem at the TEF Forum to forment engagement and deliberate discussions to change the narrative of Africa. Now, we are scaling our impact by connecting African entrepreneurship ecosystem on a single platform.”
The Founder of the Tony Elumelu Foundation, Tony Elumelu also said, “In the four years, since the launch of the TEF Entrepreneurship Programme, we have shown that entrepreneurship can change a continent – we have invested in people and processes. We have already helped create business successes and brought policy makers into the entrepreneurial dynamic. But in many ways, we are scratching the surface. This year we are broadening our scope, taking the conversation to where interaction is increasingly occurring – the digital realm. By connecting African entrepreneurs globally on TEFConnect, we are further unleashing the true potential of our entrepreneurs and transforming the continent.”
“The 4th TEF Forum will convene Africa’s entrepreneurial ecosystem, including the broad investor community, government and policymakers, leading developmental organisations, private sector representatives, the media and partners,” it stated.
This year’s Forum, the statement disclosed, will also feature an interactive dialogue between the President of Ghana, HE Nana Akufo-Addo and President of Kenya, HE Uhuru Kenyatta, moderated by TEF Founder, Tony Elumelu.
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