The Tony Elumelu Foundation has announced the launching of the world’s largest digital platform for African entrepreneurs and the African entrepreneurship ecosystem named TEFConnect.
TEFConnect, according to the leading entrepreneurship focused philanthropy in Africa, would be unveiled at the 2018 TEF Forum, taking place on October 25, 2018 in Lagos, Nigeria.
The foundation described TEFConnect as a platform that will provide bespoke tools and content to catalyse business development for millions across the continent, through technology and directly applicable content.
“The Tony Elumelu Foundation is simply about empowering African entrepreneurs. First, we launched the TEF Entrepreneurship Programme, to provide 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 form engagement and deliberate discussions to change the narrative of Africa,” said Parminder Vir OBE, the foundation’s CEO while speaking on the launch of TEFConnect.
“Now, we are scaling our impact by connecting African entrepreneurship ecosystem on a single platform,” he added.
Positioned as the “Facebook for African Entrepreneurs”, the TEFConnect platform is a contemporary, intuitive, informative and user-friendly go-to entrepreneurship space, that provides five specific benefits to its users.
The platform is expected to provide a 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.
It will create the space to allow African entrepreneurs to transact across countries and regions in Africa’s largest digital marketplace, with traffic reaching millions of consumers.
It will also provide access to free business tools such as financial planning calculators, business plan generators and marketing templates, as well as create access to the Foundation’s Entrepreneurship Programme Application Form, Enterprise Toolkit and business mentoring by global business leaders.
Among others, the platform is poised to enable entrepreneurs to promote their businesses to potential investors and other entrepreneurs for cross-border collaboration.
Tony O. Elumelu, TEF founder, in his remarks, 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 policymakers 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.
The organizers disclosed that this year’s forum 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.
The foundation which has so far attracted over 300,000 African entrepreneurs as applicants and trained and funded 4,460 to date has called on interested attendees for the forum to click www.tonyelumelufoundation.org/
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