TEF to drive 3000 entrepreneurs in 2021, targets 50% female participation
In a bid to provide access to capital to entrepreneurs, the Tony Elumelu Foundation (TEF) has said its intervention is targeting about 3000 Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) with a special focus on female entrepreneurs. This is even as the foundation disclosed that over 1,000 entrepreneurs from the 2020 cohort would be empowered through the Foundation’s entrepreneurship programme this year.
Its Chief Executive Officer, Ifeyinwa Ugochukwu, stated this during the unveiling of the TEF 2021 Programme/Application portal in Lagos at the weekend. Ugochukwu noted that shortly after the close of the 2020 application portal, the foundation could not continue with the programme due to restrictions in various economies owing to the COVID-19 pandemic and decided to postpone it to 2021. She said the African continent is critical to global recovery and this is why TEF is partnering with the European Union (EU) to fund and train 2,400 women entrepreneurs across Africa through increased finance and venture capital investment worth €20 million. “Now is the time to scale and empower African entrepreneurs with funding and this is because we do not want to lose the gains of the previous years.
