Rwandan, Senegalese presidents to join 5,000 African entrepreneurs as TEF hosts 5th forum

President Paul Kagame, of Rwanda, and Macky Sall, President of Senegal, will be joining  Tony O. Elumelu, Founder and Chairman of Heirs Holdings and the United Bank for Africa (UBA), in an intimate open house discussion as the Tony Elumelu Foundation holds its fifth annual entreprenuership programme in July this year.  Both presidents would be featuring as keynote speakers at the forum.

This comes as the Tony Elumelu Foundation (TEF), Africa’s foremost champion of entrepreneurship, hosts its 5th annual forum, the largest annual gathering of African entrepreneurs, from July 26 – 27, 2019. The two-day event will take place at the Transcorp Hilton Hotel, Abuja. The forum is the culmination of the annual TEF Entrepreneurship Programme, which this year mentored, trained and seeded over 3,000 young Africans selected from over 216,000 applicants.  The event provides a unique opportunity for young women and men from all 54 African countries to meet, learn and network with the broader African and global entrepreneurship ecosystem. It is also a critical opportunity for political leaders and policymakers to meet, face to face, a new generation of African business leaders, who are transforming Africa’s economic trajectory. 

The forum’s agenda include masterclasses and panel discussions with leading speakers and sector experts from Africa and globally, who will engage attendees in specialised training sessions to share insights, deepen their knowledge and refine their skills. The forum will also feature a pitching event where select entrepreneurs will deliver exciting presentations on the goods and services they provide to a distinguished judging panel. 

This is the first time the forum will be hosted in Abuja, the Federal Capital of Nigeria, and will bring together leading policymakers, business leaders, development agencies and the entire entrepreneurship ecosystem including alumni of the foundation’s entrepreneurship programme.

“The TEF Entrepreneurship Forum will not just convene the most important stakeholders in the African entrepreneurship ecosystem, it provides an opportunity for everyone to make a commitment to advance entrepreneurship and scale the impact of our entrepreneurs if we are to accelerate the development of the continent,” TEF CEO, Ifeyinwa Ugochukwu, said.