The Chairman, Heirs Holdings, Mr. Tony Elumelu, has said that the Tony Elumelu Foundation will focus on promoting and celebrating excellence in business leadership and entrepreneurship across Africa.
In a statement on Friday, he said that the foundation would contribute to the economic transformation of the African continent by fostering and impacting Africa‘s business leaders and entrepreneurs at key stages in their development.
Elumelu said this during the inauguration of the foundation, while addressing a gathering of business and political leaders, including the former Ghanaian President Mr. John Kufuor.
He said, ”Leadership is central to both the challenges and opportunities that Africa offers. We need to have the right leadership, in the private and the public sectors, this foundation‘s objective is to catalyse that leadership”.
According to him, the establishment of the foundation was driven by his desire to give back to the society and the need to address the leadership questions in Africa.
He stressed that now is the time for Africans to take control of their destiny because nobody will develop Africa except Africans.
He added that there was need to harness the enormous resources that abound within the continent for its development and the private sector must show the way.
Elumelu said, ”We need to encourage entrepreneurship and by so doing begin to crystallise entrepreneurial development in the African continent. Africa is endowed with so many resources. Africa has come of age and it has the intellectual capacity to develop itself.”
The Chief Executive Officer of the Foundation, Dr. Wiebe Boer, outlined the execution of the founder‘s vision to include two main focuses, which include business leadership and entrepreneurship.
He explained that learning from the lessons of great historical foundations such as the Rockefeller Foundation and the Ford Foundation, the Tony Elumelu Foundation would be structured to represent the innovations of the 21st century philanthropy that would achieve the right balance of charity and sustainability, by appropriately combining grant making, with impact investment.
He said, ”The Tony Elumelu Foundation will be a pioneering global foundation where all aspects of the foundation from grants to impact investments to endowment investments, are focused on the social mission.”
Source:http://www.punchng.com/Articl.aspx?theartic=Art201011074335575
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