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“Perception is strong and sight weak. In strategy it is important to see distant things as if they were close.”
—Miyamoto Musashi
By Enyeribe Ejiogu
When the retirement of the Group Chairman, United Bank for Africa (UBA), Mr Anthony Onyemaechi Elumelu, known generally as Tony Elumelu, was announced, a million minds began to reminisce about him and the impact he has made.
His retirement, which takes effect from August 21, 2026, will mark the end of a sterling career in banking that started at the AllStates Trust Bank.
From that day, he would most probably become fully focused on inspiring and empowering a generation of young, enterprising men and women, who will build Africa’s second generation of unicorns.
A deep sense of commitment to Africa’s economic growth is a passion that has been driving Elumelu to assist the continent’s successor generation of entrepreneurs to plant a firm foothold on the global business stage.
The diligent pursuit of that goal comes from a heart that never forgot that he became the manager of the Port Harcourt branch of the then AllStates Trust Bank at 27. When Elumelu talks to young audiences, to motivate them, he retells the story of the “opportunity of a lifetime” he got to manage a bank branch when very few believed in him. So, he wants to pay that trust forward so that other young Africans can access the same confidence and platform.
“My journey didn’t begin with capital. It began with trust. That’s why today, I am passionate about giving young people the same chance I was given — because I know what’s possible when someone believes in you early.”
Again, as his personal website, HYPERLINK “http://www.tonyelumelu.com” \t “_blank” www.tonyelumelu.com notes, Elumelu’s passion for empowering African youth is rooted in the belief that the continent’s economic transformation and sustainable future depend entirely on the next generation of business leaders and innovators. His primary motivations centre on recreating the early trust he received in his career, democratising prosperity, and shifting Africa’s narrative from aid-dependency to self-reliance.
“Everywhere you hear me speak about young African entrepreneurs, I always say that the future of Africa is truly in their hands. Africa’s young people are talented, entrepreneurial, and ambitious. What they need is access to opportunity, capital, mentorship, and markets. This potential without opportunity is a promise broken. To me, joblessness is the betrayal of a generation,” he says, highlighting the potentials of Africa, firmly believing that the most enterprising asset the continent possesses is its youth.
He argues that lasting prosperity will not be achieved by foreign aid agencies or governments alone, but by empowering local talent to build businesses and solve community problems, caused by a moral failure of leadership.
The compelling need to change the narrative and place the hands of entrepreneurial young people on the wheel, to drive and steer Africa’s economic rapid development has been the reason motivating the Tony Elumelu Foundation, which he set up to execute his mission to fund and train thousands of entrepreneurs across all 54 African countries.
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As he once said, “young entrepreneurs and those they inspire are the lifeblood of Africa’s rise.” Through the foundation, he has been providing them the skills training and funding they need to build innovative enterprises that add value, create wealth and jobs, which altogether contribute to the quest to drastically reduce poverty in the continent and in the process transform Africa’s global narrative.
To start the process, his Foundation began holding the Entrepreneurship Programme through which it has disbursed over $100 million as seed capital grants to more than 24,000 young entrepreneurs in 54 African countries.
The TEF Entrepreneurship Programme is a comprehensive initiative designed to turn innovative ideas into viable businesses. Selected entrepreneurs, which are early start-ups, receive US$5,000 seed grant, each, to launch or scale their business. Beneficiaries undergo 12 weeks of intensive online business training, equipping them with essential soft and technical skills to run successful enterprises. The young entrepreneurs are paired with experienced business leaders to guide them through the early stages of their ventures.
To support the 2026 cohort, TEF disbursed US$16 million to fund 3,200 young African entrepreneurs. It is notable that 51 per cent of the 2026 cohort were female-led enterprises. Heartwarming is the revelation that past beneficiaries have collectively generated $4.2 billion in revenue and created over 1.5 million direct and indirect jobs across the continent.
International keynote speaker, author and expert on AI strategy and strategy execution, Jeroen De Flander, in a post on his Linkedin page titled, 33 Awesome Strategy Quotes, mentioned the seminal statement made by the legendary Japanese swordsman, Miyamoto Musashi, who said: “Perception is strong and sight weak. In strategy, it is important to see distant things as if they were close and to take a distanced view of close things.”
Flander in a sense aptly captured the essence of the journey that took Elumelu from being the 27-year-old bank branch manager to the pinnacle of Banking & Finance in Nigeria through the United Bank of Africa Plc and then set it on a firm road to spreading across Africa.
Elumelu’s journey took off from the AllStates Trust Bank in the late 1980s, where he held positions of increasing responsibility, from Financial Analyst, Head, Energy/Export Unit, Head, Multinational Unit, Head Office to becoming Manager, Port Harcourt Branch Manager in 1990; Port Harcourt Area Manager in 1992, rising to Head, Corporate Banking at the head office.
Then he resigned in 1995 and made lateral movement to become Executive Director at Linkage Assurance, and later Executive Director/CEO at Merchant Bank of Commerce. With his eyes focused on the future, he took the courageous step of leading a team of investors to take over Crystal Bank Limited, which was in trouble and on the verge of being liquidated by the Central Bank.
Following the acquisition, it was renamed Standard Trust Bank (STB), which extensively leveraged information technology to make a quantum leap to the leading edge of Nigeria’s Banking & Finance Industry.
In the animal kingdom, the lion is the most courageous animal, never afraid to take one other animal much bigger than itself. Courage is imprinted in the DNA of the lion. In the course of fundamentally re-structuring the old Crystal Bank, Elumelu and his team embedded investment in technology and speed of service delivery into the DNA of the bank, thereby making the two key features the core components of its unique proposition.
This was at a time when the existing legacy banks were depending on analogue methods. As one of the “new generation” banks, STB adopted a tech-driven business model built around speed, accessibility, and customer convenience rather than the traditional “big-corporate” banking approach. The aggressive retail banking model focused on the mass market and SMEs. The decentralised but networked operations enabled its customers to seamlessly operate their accounts (deposit and cash withdrawal) from any of the urban branches across Nigeria.
Before long, the hunting itch in every lion drove Elumelu and his team to fix their gaze on UBA, which was acquired by STB in 2005, and then repackaged to become the platform for STB’s expansion across the African continent, and thereby giving true expression to the name: United Bank for Africa.
Quite a good number of Nigerians will recall the UBA television commercial in the 2000s that featured a dapper, well-built male Nigerian/African customer and business executive arriving at the UBA branch in London in a chauffeur-driven luxury car and being ushered into the banking hall with a flourish by the doorman while the voice-over describes him as a king of the urban jungle.
The commercial was about bold, ambitious, young Nigerians who were striving hard, taking risks, and building something in a tough, competitive environment. That commercial is a fitting reflection of Tony Elumelu’s image. This is the image he has inspired in the millions of young entrepreneurs across Africa who look up to him.
