A Decade of Impact: From Vision to Reality
April 2024 marks ten years since I arrived in Lagos, Nigeria, to help institutionalise luck and democratise opportunity for African entrepreneurs. Imagination, hope, and possibilities of change through a $100 million 10-year commitment to invest in African entrepreneurs by the Nigerian businessman and philanthropist Tony Elumelu appealed to me to leave London and move to Lagos, Nigeria. This was an astonishing opportunity to bring my leadership and communications skills, international networks and business development, and a creative and entrepreneurial record of success to Africa to empower African entrepreneurs.
Working with a stellar team, I would go on to design the pan-African Tony Elumelu Foundation Entrepreneurship Programme, launch the programme in December 2014, and serve as CEO for the next five years before stepping down in 2019, although I continued as a Board Member until 2021.
My time at TEF and my journeys across 50 African countries have left an indelible mark on my life. Among the many legacies of my time at the Foundation, I am most proud of the 10,000 entrepreneurs from every corner of Africa who were trained, mentored, and funded. Their success stories stand as a testament to the transformative power of entrepreneurship, and I hold dear the title of “Mother of African Entrepreneurs” bestowed upon me.
As I reflect on a decade of impact and look ahead to the next, one thing remains clear: African entrepreneurship is vital not just to the continent’s economic growth but also to the global economy. The next ten years will require their engagement with the new geopolitics and help shape Africa’s place in the new multipolar world. The world is watching, and the role of African entrepreneurs in this new era is more crucial than ever.
The New Scramble for Africa: A Complex Landscape
Today, there is a new scramble for Africa, and Africa is poised to play a pivotal role in shaping the future of global geopolitics. Countries like Turkey, China, Qatar, UAE, the United States, Russia, and India are all vying for influence.
- Turkey has invested over $85 billion in Africa, receiving political support and finding ready buyers for drones and other defence equipment in return.
- China, through its Belt and Road Initiative, is a major alternative to the IMF and World Bank. It provides expertise and loans for infrastructure and social services in Africa in exchange for natural resources and political solidarity. Nearly half of Africa’s contracted construction projects are from China, and in 2022, China conducted over $282 billion in trade with Africa.
- Qatar, UAE and other Gulf States are establishing bilateral investment treaties with African countries, focusing on agribusiness to shore up against food insecurity, but also with investments in energy, air and sea ports, and telecommunications.
- Russia’s engagement in Africa is more political than economic. It involves a military mercenary presence, the trade in weapons, and the overall goal of weakening Western influence.
- Italy is looking to collaborate with countries in North Africa via the Mattei Plan, unveiled during the Italy-Africa Summit earlier this year. The plan calls for a $6 billion investment in African energy sources in exchange for crackdowns on illegal migration and repatriation deals.
- New India sees Africa as a growing export market for its goods and services, such as pharmaceuticals, agricultural products, IT solutions, and defence weapons — all the things African entrepreneurs can produce for the continent. India also speaks of cooperation, a shared colonial history, and partnership development.
They all say they want more trade, investment, collaboration, and capacity building in Africa. But what will the role of African entrepreneurs be in the New Scramble for Africa?
Africa’s Seat at the Global Table
The inclusion of the African Union as a permanent member of the G20 at the India G20 Presidency in September 2023 represents a historic milestone. The G20 member nations collectively represent 85% of the world’s GDP, 75% of international trade, and two-thirds of the global population. The expansion of BRICS from its initial formation of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa to include new member countries such as the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran, and Ethiopia in 2024 is a further significant development, signalling Africa’s growing prominence on the global stage. With the inclusion of these countries, BRICS have changed the balance of power and shown why Global South cooperation is critical to dismantling an unjust world. They are consolidating economic cooperation, enhancing technological collaboration, asserting geopolitical influence, and promoting regional integration to advance their member countries’ collective interests. They are calling for reforms to global financial institutions (such as the IMF and World Bank) to reflect emerging markets’ economic realities and interests, and challenging the dominance of the US dollar in international trade and finance.
For Africa to benefit, these new alliances must be on vastly better terms than previous engagements. The original scramble for Africa, which spanned the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth, saw European countries occupy and partition Africa into colonies and protectorates. These occupations were violent and extractive, created to meet the rising demand for minerals and industrial input from technological innovation and the commercial revolution. They left behind long-lasting socioeconomic destabilisation and arbitrary borders in their wake.
Towards Mutual Benefit: Rethinking Partnerships
The new scramble for Africa is a window of opportunity to correct these lopsided relationships and enable Africa to define good partnerships. Interested countries and regions must partner with African countries in a mutually beneficial way rather than the gimmick of aid and assistance, which has left Africa more underdeveloped.
The paradigm has shifted, and in the new scramble for Africa, Africa must seize the moment and set the agenda for the benefit of its young and aspiring population—to expand its bilateral engagements and open up trade and investment to support African startups and MSMEs.
Economic independence is a crucial milestone for the African continent to thrive and for its people to experience true independence and prosperity. This necessitates that supply chains and profits remain and circulate within Africa for reinvestment into Africa’s self-sustainability. The African Union and the 54 African nations must engage the world on their terms for trade, investment, technology transfer, rapid industrialisation, and sustainable development.
Leveraging Africa’s Potential: Opportunities and Challenges
Africa possesses many assets. It has abundant strategic resources that are crucial for various industries and necessary for the world to combat climate change. Although Africa contributes the least to climate change, it’s the most affected. The African continent holds 60% of the world’s renewable energy resources and more than 30% of the minerals key to renewable and low-carbon technologies. This strategic advantage is not to be underestimated.
Moreover, Africa’s rapidly growing and youthful population is the epicentre of the global ‘youthquake’. While wealthier nations grapple with an ageing population, Africa is as young and vibrant as ever, presenting a unique demographic dividend.
Africa is also home to the world’s largest free trade area and has an economically vibrant diaspora whose remittances contribute significantly to the continent’s economy—global remittances from the African diaspora are set to exceed $100bn a year, according to the World Bank. Mobile penetration continues to grow, reaching 43% by 2023, and its creative economy is supported by immense talent, from musicians to filmmakers to artisans.
African Entrepreneurs for the Economic, Cultural and Political Transformation of Africa
However, it is the African entrepreneurs who are its biggest asset. African entrepreneurs will accelerate business growth, foster innovation, and shape the continent’s role in the new global geopolitics. In my experience of working in Africa and providing young African entrepreneurs with skills, mentoring and funding across 54 African countries, I have witnessed remarkable talent reimagining Africa. These entrepreneurs turn adversity into strength, loss into resolve, and challenges into opportunity. Africa’s young people are sick and tired of watching outsiders take the continent’s resources for processing and profits elsewhere and want more industrial development to benefit them and their economies.
Africa’s entrepreneurs and working women in urban, semi-urban, and rural areas are the solutions that can shift millions of workers into more productive employment. Empowering women and youth entrepreneurs must go beyond the usual training, mentoring, and skills development programmes readily adopted by international development agencies in the past decade. African entrepreneurs need investment, not aid disguised as development programmes. They need government initiatives that promote “Make in Africa” and “Startup Africa” as important steps towards creating a more conducive environment for businesses to thrive. They need access to markets, capital, skilled labour, and a more streamlined and efficient business environment that works for African entrepreneurs, not just those in the scramble for Africa.
The next decade presents an opportunity to foster a more vibrant and innovative business ecosystem. Africa must expand its investment in African SMEs in health, education, agriculture, energy, information and communications technology (ICT), industrialisation, and capacity building to boost its global competitiveness and market access.
African entrepreneurs drive innovation and technological advancement across various sectors, including fintech, agritech, healthtech, and renewable energy. By leveraging digital technologies, entrepreneurs address local challenges, improve access to services, and create disruptive solutions tailored to the African context — see success stories such as Kenya’s widespread implementation of mobile money services, and Côte d’Ivoire’s ePhyto, an entirely virtual certification system for its cocoa exports. This innovation potential positions Africa as a hub for technology entrepreneurship and on the global innovation map.
How Africa harnesses technological innovation to transform its people and economies will help meet the twin challenges of jobs and access. Africa must use the ‘new scramble for Africa’ to catalyse technology, talent and visionary leadership to truly transform the continent because the future of work will be imagined on this continent – bringing technology and people together.
In the new multipolar world, African government leaders must use expanded bilateral engagements with different countries and regions to open up trade and investment opportunities for African entrepreneurs. The latest bilateral engagements must help African entrepreneurs grow faster, provide opportunities for the young population, and help startups and MSMEs export their products and services across the continent and the new multipolar world. African entrepreneurs are increasingly expanding their businesses beyond local markets and venturing into regional and international markets. With the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), entrepreneurs can access a larger market of over 1.4 billion people and capitalise on intra-African trade. This global competitiveness enhances African entrepreneurs’ position in the global economy and strengthens their role in international trade and commerce.
In the next decade, Africa’s relationships with the countries vying for influence must be characterised by mutual respect, solidarity and shared aspirations. It must be guided by the principle of win-win cooperation, based on the priorities and needs of African countries, and aimed at creating self-sustaining economies and promoting inclusive growth.
Legacy of Impact: Stories of Transformation
When I arrived in Lagos in 2014 and started a new journey that continues to the present, Africa was no longer viewed as a problem to solve but an opportunity to seize. As CEO of the Tony Elumelu Foundation and Advisory Board Member (2014-2021), I designed and implemented Africa’s most ambitious holistic entrepreneurship programme, impacting over 10,000 African entrepreneurs across 54 nations. In 2015, the 7 Pillars of the Pan-African Entrepreneurship Programme, composed of a meticulously crafted 12-week Start-up Enterprise Toolkit, Mentoring, a rich Resource Library, dynamic Meetups, an engaging Entrepreneurship Forum, Seed Capital investments, and a robust Alumni Network, laid the groundwork for unprecedented impact.
From 2015 to 2019, the programme’s impact reverberated across key metrics, with a surge in applications, a marked increase in female representation, and substantial direct investments seeding thousands of ventures. We convened the Entrepreneurship Forum, the largest-ever gathering of African entrepreneurs, alumni, mentors, policymakers, government leaders, donor agencies, financial institutions and media in Lagos, Nigeria. Across five remarkable editions (2015-2019), the Forum served as a nexus for dialogue, collaboration, and inspiration, galvanising a movement that transcended borders and ignited transformative change. I recall an entrepreneur from Egypt who thanked us for connecting him to his brothers and sisters from sub-Saharan Africa and how entrepreneurs from Francophone Africa pooled resources to drive from Mali to Nigeria to attend the Forum in 2016.
In 2016, from the stage at the Forum, the Head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) made a €1 million commitment to support selecting an additional 200 entrepreneurs in Northern Nigeria for the programme. This set a precedent for us to scale the Programme’s reach and efficacy through strategic partnerships with organisations like ICRC, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit GmbH (GIZ), African Development Bank (AfDB), and others by 2021 and advocating for the economic prowess of African entrepreneurship to a diverse audience of stakeholders.
We leveraged technology to connect Africa. In 2018, we built TEFConnect, a digital platform connecting entrepreneurs and the entrepreneurship ecosystems and providing market access, learning materials, business tools, programme alumni, investors and mentors. Our commitment to storytelling amplified these achievements with research reports, documentary films, and media campaigns that garnered global attention.
I recently attended the Skoll World Forum 2024 in Oxford. I was there as an advisory board member of HelpMum, an alumnus of the programme, to support its representative at the Skoll Forum. On a bus from the train station to my hotel, I struck up a conversation with two young Africans. To my amazement, I learnt that they received the training, mentoring, and seed capital from the Entrepreneurship Programme in 2017 and 2018 and are still running their businesses.
Initiatives like the Tony Elumelu Foundation Entrepreneurship Programme and other innovative programmes and partnerships have fostered entrepreneurship across the continent by recognising the potential of African entrepreneurs, SMEs, and startups to drive inclusive and sustainable growth. These efforts have empowered thousands of entrepreneurs, transformed lives, and reshaped perceptions of Africa on the global stage.
African entrepreneurs are and will be at the epicentre of innovation and industrialisation, acting as irreplaceable agents of change and sustainable growth. In the new scramble for Africa, African entrepreneurship is an opportunity to harness the entrepreneurial spirit of young Africa to build new strategic partnerships, collaborate to scale solutions, and share expertise for mutual economic transformation.
My commitment to championing entrepreneurship as the keystone for Africa’s social and economic advancement continues. As a Board Member of The Africa Fund (TAF), Africa’s first blockchain-enabled investment fund for African SMEs, we are a community that strongly believes in the potential of the African continent to serve as a global hub for economic growth and entrepreneurial excellence. I serve as an advisory board member of two social enterprises, Mamamoni Limited and HelpMum, in Nigeria. I also contribute as a narrative advisor at Mustard Venture Agency, based in the UK. I am a director of Zikora Media and Arts, an inspirational cultural institution for Africa, supporting a film about Boko Haram in Nigeria.
To mark my decade of engagement with African entrepreneurship, I will launch a series of posts and knowledge-sharing exercises focussed on three key pillars: Lessons from the Past, Realities of the Present and Opportunities of the Future. The idea of doing these posts is to provide unfiltered insights to African entrepreneurs and those passionate about the African growth story. The content from these posts will include contributions from stakeholders, remarkable entrepreneurs, and entrepreneurship support organisations I have encountered on the continent, as well as contributions from the incredible people I have worked with during this transformative journey.
About Parminder Vir OBE
Over a 40-year distinguished career, Parminder Vir OBE has passionately devoted her life to amplifying untold narratives and resourcing the skills and imagination of underserved communities. At the core of her mission lies an unshakable faith in the transformative potential of ideas and stories to ignite profound change. Her diverse expertise spans African entrepreneurship, an impressive portfolio as an award-winning film and television producer, and unwavering advocacy for the arts and culture.
In her prior role as CEO of the Tony Elumelu Foundation and Advisory Board Member, she masterminded and executed a comprehensive entrepreneurship programme, impacting over 10,000 African entrepreneurs across 54 African nations from 2014 to 2021. Her tireless commitment to championing entrepreneurship as the keystone for Africa’s social and economic advancement continues to be a resounding call to action.
