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Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | The Time Magazine named Tony O. Elumelu, one of Africa’s leading investors and philanthropists, in the 2020 TIME100, the annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world. The list, now in its seventeenth year, recognises the activism, innovation, and achievement of the world’s most influential individuals. Mr. Elumelu, who is one of only four Africans on the 2020 list, is recognised for his track record of business turnaround and value creation, and economic empowerment of young Africans.
Tony Elumelu is the Chairman of United Bank for Africa, a top Pan-African financial services group, operating in Uganda and 19 additional countries in Africa, the United Kingdom, France, and is the only African bank with a commercial deposit taking licence in the United States. The bank provides corporate, commercial, SME and consumer banking services to more than 21 million customers globally. United bank for Africa has been offering financial services in Uganda for the past 12 years.
Mr. Tony Elumelu is the most prominent champion of entrepreneurship in Africa. In 2010, he created The Tony Elumelu Foundation (TEF), the philanthropy empowering a new generation of African entrepreneurs, catalyzing economic growth, driving poverty eradication and ensuring job creation across all 54 African countries. Since inception, the Foundation has funded just under 10,000 entrepreneurs and created a digital ecosystem of over one million as part of its ten year, US$100m commitment through the TEF Entrepreneurship programme. Over 600 Ugandan entrepreneurs have benefited from this Foundation.
Self-funded, the Foundation is increasingly sharing its unique ability to identify, train, mentor and fund young entrepreneurs across Africa with institutions such as the UNDP, the ICRC and leading European development agencies.
The Tony Elumelu Foundation will celebrate 10 years of impact in November and its mission continues to be inspired by Mr. Elumelu’s economic philosophy of Africapitalism, which positions the private sector, and most importantly entrepreneurs, as the catalyst for the social and economic development of the continent.
Other Africans that made to the list are: Gambian prosecutor-turned-politician Abubacarr Tambadou and Congolese microbiologist Jean-Jacques Muyembe Tamfum.
