NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Monday, January 6, 2014

Global development leaders can’t seem to get enough of Tony Elumelu, the soft-spoken Nigerian banker and philanthropist who last year made headlines when he announced a $2.5 billion investment in U.S. President Barack Obama’s Power Africa initiative.

Elumelu isn’t just out to corner his country’s newly privatized energy market. He wants to change the way business and development are done in Africa and beyond.

To spread the message of “Africapitalism,” the Tony Elumelu Foundation plans to open an Africapitalism institute. To address Africa’s “management gap,” it is preparing a new “iconic, world-class business school” in Lagos. Within five years, the foundation wants to have worked in an impactful way with at least 500 entrepreneurs across Africa — the ultimate goal, says Wiebe Boer, the foundation’s inaugural CEO, is to help 1,000 emerging African entrepreneurs build pan-African companies like Heirs Holdings, the one Elumelu built.

Within 10 years, Elumelu and his partners want to impact the lives of 10 million people through capacity building and the advocacy of business-friendly policies.