L-r… Women in Management, Business and Public Service (WIMBIZ) Executive Director, Omowunmi Akingbohungbe: (WIMBIZ) Board Chairman, Ebisan Akisanya: Special guest & Speaker, Chairman of Heirs Holdings, Mr. Tony Elumelu: member of Ogun State Government Executive Council, WIMBIZ, Mrs Ronke Onadeko: Chairperson,(WIMBIZ) Bennedikter China Molokwu:, during the 25th annual Conference of Impacting women held at Eko hotel in Lagos on 5/11/2026…Photo: Chinyere Ikeanyi.
Chinyere Ikeanyi
Tony Elumelu has declared that Africa’s biggest development challenge is not a lack of entrepreneurial talent but a severe shortage of capital, insisting the continent must prioritise investment and trade over aid to unlock its economic potential.
Speaking on Friday at the 25th annual Women in Management, Business and Public Service (WIMBIZ) conference in Lagos, the founder of the Tony Elumelu Foundation revealed that the organisation received 265,529 applications from young Africans with business ideas in 2026 but could fund only 3,200. More than 262,000 applicants were left without support.
“This, therefore, is not a shortage of entrepreneurial talent in Africa. It is a shortage of capital,” Elumelu said. “The future is investment and trade, not aid.”
He argued that African countries must build the capacity to finance their own development rather than depend heavily on external assistance. Pension funds, banks, insurance companies and family offices should channel more capital into businesses instead of concentrating investments in government securities or keeping funds abroad.
“The most important thing Africa needs to build in the next decade is African capital that invests in Africa,” he stated.
Elumelu identified electricity, value addition, access to capital and weak intra-African trade as major barriers. He said industrialisation and the growth of artificial intelligence would remain difficult without reliable power, noting that factories, hospitals and schools cannot function properly without it.
On value creation, he questioned why the continent continues to export raw materials. “If the power is reliable, if the environment is right and enabling, 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 also highlighted the low level of intra-African trade, saying it remains easier to ship goods from Lagos to Liverpool than from Lagos to Luanda, with less than one-fifth of the continent’s trade occurring among African countries despite the African Continental Free Trade Area.
Addressing women’s participation, Elumelu said women’s economic leadership is not a concession to fairness but a requirement for competitiveness. Through the Tony Elumelu Foundation, he and his wife Awele have provided more than $100 million in seed capital to 24,633 young entrepreneurs across all 54 African countries over 15 years. The businesses have created more than 1.5 million jobs and generated over $4.2 billion in revenue.
He noted that women entrepreneurs supported by the foundation reinvest and employ workers at rates their male counterparts should emulate, adding that women already lead African business in practice but have often been denied the capital, titles and recognition they deserve.
Elumelu, who spoke on the theme “The Geography of Opportunity: Why the World Needs What Africa Has,” stressed that opportunity in Africa is currently distributed by accident of birth, geography or gender. His life’s work, he said, is to make it distributed by merit.
The WIMBIZ conference, themed “Rooted, Rising, Ready: Born in Africa, Built for the World,” ran from Thursday to Friday at Eko Hotels and Suites, Victoria Island, Lagos.
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