Man of the Year: Mr Tony Elumelu, Chairman Heirs Holdings and UBA Plc
Tony Elumelu is a Nigerian entrepreneur and investor. He came into the limelight in 1997 when he led a small group of investors to take over a small, floundering commercial bank in Lagos. He turned it profitable within a few years and in 2005 he merged it with the United Bank for Africa. That banking group now has subsidiaries in 20 African countries and in the U.S and U.K. UBA provides corporate, commercial, SME and consumer banking services to more than 21 million customers globally.
He also chairs Nigeria’s largest quoted conglomerate, Transcorp Plc whose subsidiaries include Transcorp Power, one of the largest generators of electricity in Nigeria and Transcorp Hotels Plc, Nigeria’s foremost hospitality brand. He is the Founder and Chairman of Trans-Niger Oil & Gas Limited (TNOG), an upstream oil and gas company which owns and operates Nigeria’s OML17, (with 2P reserves of 1.3 billion barrels of oil equivalent) and committed to creating resource based added value on the African continent.
Tony is the most prominent champion of entrepreneurship in Africa. In 2010, he created The Tony Elumelu Foundation (TEF), the pan-African philanthropy empowering a new generation of African entrepreneurs, catalysing 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 Africans as part of its ten year, US$100m commitment through its flagship Entrepreneurship Programme. 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 United Nations Development Programme, the International Committee of the Red Cross and other global development agencies. His businesses and Foundation are inspired by Tony’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 African continent. Tony sits on a number of public and social sector boards including the World Economic Forum Community of Chairmen and the Global Board of UNICEF’s Generation Unlimited. He was named in the 2020 Time100 Most Influential People in the World, recognised for his business leadership and economic empowerment of young Africans.
The selection of Tony O. Elumelu is in recognition of his purposeful leadership, empowerment of over 15,847 young African entrepreneurs, support of 1.2million Africans through the Tony Elumelu Foundation ( TEF) Connect, all inclusive-participatory governance and programmes as demonstrated in the running of the affairs of United Bank of Africa Group (UBA) during the year. The impact made by Elumelu in addressing unemployment challenges directly and indirectly made him the winner of NEWSDIRECT MAN OF THE YEAR at a time of high and rapidly rising youth unemployment in Nigeria, Africa and the Middle East deserves recognition.
