Elumelu To WIMBIZ: Africa’s Greatest Asset Is Its Women

FUNSHO AROGUNDADE

Billionaire and philanthropist, Mr. Tony O. Elumelu, CFR, has said that Africa’s greatest asset is not its minerals or land, but its human capital — particularly its women.

Elumelu, the Group Chair of Heirs Holdings and Founder of The Tony Elumelu Foundation, stated this during his keynote address at the WIMBIZ Annual Conference on Friday, November 6, at Eko Hotel & Suites, Victoria Island, Lagos.

Speaking on the theme, ‘The Geography of Opportunity: Why The World Needs What Africa Has’, Elumelu told the gathering marking 25 conferences of WIMBIZ that Africa possesses the human and natural resources required to become one of the world’s most prosperous economic regions, but must address critical structural challenges preventing it from translating its enormous potential into shared prosperity.

He identified electricity, value creation and capital mobilisation as three major priorities requiring urgent attention, adding that African countries must also strengthen trade among themselves to build a competitive continental economy.

According to him, Africa’s rapidly expanding working-age population, mineral resources, agricultural potential, renewable energy capacity and growing consumer market represent one of the greatest commercial opportunities of the century.

Elumelu said by 2050, Africa’s working-age population will grow by hundreds of millions. The continent holds the minerals that will power the energy transition, has the land, the sun, the rivers and the youngest population on earth.

“Everyone else is ageing. We are not. That is not a problem to be managed. This is the single greatest commercial opportunity of this century, and it is ours,” he said.

But potential, he warned, is not guaranteed.

“The possession of resources has never been a guarantee of prosperity. And the absence of resources has never been a permanent barrier to it,” he said, citing Singapore and South Korea as countries that transformed themselves despite limited resources or devastation by war.

Speaking further on the conference theme, ‘Rooted, Rising, Ready: Born in Africa, Built for the World’, Elumelu said the theme described his own life and the women he was about to celebrate.

“I look at this room and I do not see an audience. I see capital. Human capital, the most under-deployed asset on this continent,” he said.

Elumelu said he did not start with capital, but with a mother who ran a small restaurant and worked harder than anyone he had ever known.

“That was my first business school. My first lesson in risk, in cash flow, in customers, in getting up the next morning when the day before had gone badly, came from a woman,” he said.

“So, when people ask me whether women can lead African business, I find the question strange. In my experience, they already do. We have simply not given them the capital, the title or the credit.”

He recalled that at 34, he led a small group of young Nigerians to buy a struggling bank that almost nobody else wanted. It became the foundation of everything that followed.

“I was not a better businessman the day someone believed in me. I simply got the chance to prove it. I call this democratising luck,” Elumelu said.

“Opportunity in Africa is still distributed by accident of birth, of geography, of gender. My life’s work is to make it distributed by merit instead. That is what Africapitalism means to me: the private sector creating economic prosperity and social wealth at the same time, and doing it for everyone, not for a fortunate few.”

He identified three things standing between Africa and realising its potential: power, value and capital — plus a fourth, intra-African trade.

“We cannot talk about industrialisation without fixing electricity. Factories cannot run without it. Hospitals and schools cannot function without it. And the AI economy everyone is talking about has two basic ingredients: power and connectivity. Africa has the young, creative minds. What they lack is the grid. Fix electricity, and Africa will take off,” Elumelu said.

“For a hundred years, the question asked of Africa has been: how much can be extracted? I want to change the question. How much value can be created here? If the power is reliable and the environment is right, why ship raw lithium, raw cocoa, raw crude out of this continent? Refine it. Process it. Brand it. Then sell it to the world,” he added.

Aid budgets collapsed in 2025 and fell again this year, Elumelu said. Aid at its best kept people alive, but rarely made them owners. The future, he said, is investment and trade, not aid.

“And that capital needs to be African. Investment can only flourish with capital formation, which comes with savings. Savings can only grow with a beneficial environment, consistent policy, trusted financial institutions,” he said.

He pointed to Seplat, the London and Lagos-listed oil company, whose share price moved from £3 to £9 since Heirs Holdings’ investment, with a current market cap of $7bn, and to Aliko Dangote’s mobilisation of retail African investors for the Refinery IPO, as signs of a new dawn.

“Our Foundation’s over $130m disbursements is an investment in entrepreneurs, in the next generation, in Africa’s future,” he said.

“The most important thing Africa needs to build in the next decade is African capital that invests in Africa. Our pension funds, our insurers, our banks, our family offices. We must demonstrate that African capital can build African businesses that compete anywhere in the world.”

Elumelu said it is easier today to ship goods from Lagos to Liverpool than from Lagos to Luanda. Less than a fifth of Africa’s trade is with itself.

“The African Continental Free Trade Area is the largest free trade area in the world by number of countries, and it will remain a document until businesses, your businesses, use it,” he said.

He listed what is needed: roads, railways, ports, payment systems, efficient customs procedures and predictable regulations.

“We cannot build a continental market merely by signing documents. We must build the physical, financial and institutional infrastructure that makes continental trade commercially viable.”

“When I built UBA into twenty African countries, people told me Africans would not bank across borders. They were wrong.”

“So, when the world asks me where the opportunity is, I say: it is here, it is visible, and it is cheaper to enter today than it will ever be again. The question is not whether Africa will be the growth story of this century. It is who will own it. And it will be Africans — and African women!”

On women’s participation in economic leadership, Elumelu gave numbers.

Over 15 years, he and his wife Awele, through the Tony Elumelu Foundation, have put more than $120 million of seed capital into 24,633 young entrepreneurs in all 54 African countries. 48% of them are women — not because of a quota, but because the selection process judges on the quality of the business plan alone.

Those entrepreneurs have created more than 1.5 million jobs and generated more than $4.2 billion in revenue.

“Harvard Business School now teaches how we did it. And I will tell you something the case study does not: our women entrepreneurs succeed, re-invest and re-hire at rates our male entrepreneurs should envy,” he said.

He named three beneficiaries:

Princess Adeyinka Tekenah received $5,000 in 2015 and built Happy Coffee, seed to cup, buying beans from women farmers in Taraba State. More than 1,000 jobs. She organized the first Lagos Coffee Festival and intends to be the first publicly listed Nigerian coffee brand.

Olamide Ayeni-Babajide took $5,000 in 2016 and built a recycling company from tyre waste. Revenue up more than twenty-fold. 15,000 people trained, most of them women and girls.

Nkem Okocha received $5,000 in 2015 and built Mama Moni, a fintech social enterprise closing the credit gap for low-income female entrepreneurs in rural and urban slum communities through easy access to finance.

“Three women. Fifteen thousand dollars between them. Thousands of jobs. Now tell me the world does not need what Africa has,” Elumelu said.

This year, 265,529 young Africans applied to the programme. Only 3,200 could be funded — one in every 83 applicants.

“Think about the more than 262,000 innovative ideas and businesses we could not support. That is not a shortage of entrepreneurial talent; it is a shortage of capital,” he said.

“Women’s economic leadership is not a concession to fairness. It is a requirement for competitiveness. No serious economy can afford to systematically underutilise half its talent.”

“Inclusive prosperity is not charity. A continent that ignores half its talent is competing with one hand tied behind its back.”

Elumelu said it is easy for a man to stand on a stage at a women’s conference and say the right things, so he asked to be judged by what he has done.

He cited his wife, Dr Awele Elumelu, a medical doctor who co-founded Heirs Holdings, chairs Avon HMO, Avon Medical, Heirs Insurance Brokers and Transcorp Hotels PLC, co-founded the Tony Elumelu Foundation, and now chairs Heirs Energies, today the 6th biggest producer of oil in Nigeria, producing 70,000 barrels per day.

In 2020, he said, he asked the board of Transcorp Group PLC to appoint Owen Omogiafo as President and Group Chief Executive — the youngest chief executive on the Nigerian Stock Exchange and the first woman to run Transcorp in its history.

“Under Owen, Transcorp has become a power company, a hospitality company that competes with anyone on this continent, and an energy company,” he said.

When Omogiafo moved up, Transcorp Hotels came to be chaired by Awele Elumelu and run by Uzo Oshogwe. By the time Omogiafo took the top job, women held 80 per cent of senior management positions at Transcorp.

At the Tony Elumelu Foundation, the chief executive is Somachi Chris-Asoluka, who joined the Group as a junior straight after her postgraduate degree at Yale and rose through the ranks.

In total, Elumelu listed eight female leaders as Chairperson/CEOs in the Heirs Holdings Group, including Agatha Obiekwugo, Owen Omogiafo, Uzo Oshogwe, Somachi Chris-Asoluka, Catherine Nwosu, Dr Odiri Ogini, Adetola Fasuyi and Esther Adeola Balogun. He also listed 8 female CEOs across UBA Group in Africa and the Foundation.

“I am not telling you this to be congratulated. I am telling you because I want every chairman — or chairwoman — and every chief executive in Nigeria who hears about this speech to ask himself — or herself — one question: if Tony Elumelu can do it in power, in hospitality, in banking, in insurance, in healthcare, and in oil and gas, what exactly is my excuse?”

“To the men in this room: the women you promote will not thank you with loyalty alone. They will thank you with results.”

On institutions, Elumelu said investors on every continent ask the same questions: Will the contract be honoured? Will the regulator be predictable? Will the courts work? Will the power stay on?

“Capital goes where it is safe, and it stays where it is respected,” he said.

To policymakers, he said: “You do not need to fly around the world asking investors to come. Create the right conditions, and they will come. Where institutions are credible, contracts are honoured and leaders are accountable, money follows.”

To business leaders, he said institutions are not only built by governments.

“We cannot demand good governance from public officials while tolerating poor governance in our own organisations. Every time you pay your taxes properly, publish your accounts, promote on merit, refuse the shortcut, you are building an institution.”

Elumelu closed by returning to the geography of opportunity.

“For most of my life, the map of opportunity had Africa at the edge. That map is wrong, and it is being redrawn, and the people redrawing it are not in Davos or New York. They are here,” he said.

“The geography of opportunity must become the geography of prosperity. No one but us will develop Africa. Not the donors. Not the multilaterals. Not the partners, however welcome they are. Us. And ‘us’ means every woman in this room who has been told to wait her turn.

“Do not wait. My mother did not wait. Princess did not wait. Olamide did not wait. Nkem did not wait. Awele did not wait. Owen did not wait. Uzo did not wait. Build the business. Take the board seat. Deploy the capital. Hire the girl from the village who reminds you of yourself.”

Speaking to the youngest woman in the room, he said: “Twenty-five years ago, when WIMBIZ held its first conference, the women on that stage could not have named a female chief executive of a listed Nigerian company. Today you can name several, and some of them work for me. In another twenty-five years, the women on this stage should be reading your name.

“And I want to say to WIMBIZ itself: the next twenty-five years must be bigger than the last. Advocacy got women into the room. Capital will get them to the head of the table. We have funded 13,360 African female entrepreneurs; I look forward to funding many more.

“Born in Africa. Built for the world. The world needs what Africa has. And what Africa has, more than oil, more than lithium, more than land, is you.”