By Goddie Ofose
…..It was not just a keynote. It was a charge.
Speaking at the 25th Annual Conference of Women in Business Management and Public Service (WIMBIZ) at Eko Hotel & Suites, Victoria Island, Lagos, on Friday, November 6, 2026, Group Chair of Heirs Holdings, Transcorp, and Founder of The Tony Elumelu Foundation, Mr. Tony O. Elumelu, CFR, delivered one of the most powerful speeches of his career.
Theme: The Geography of Opportunity: Why The World Needs What Africa Has.
And for nearly an hour, Elumelu redrew the map.
”For most of my life, the map of opportunity had Africa at the edge. That map is wrong, and people not in Davos or New York are redrawing it. They are here,” he told the packed hall.
”I Did Not Start with Capital”
Elumelu began, not with his billions, but with his mother.
”I did not start with capital. I started with a mother who ran a small restaurant and worked harder than anyone I have ever known. That was my first business school. My first lesson in risk, in cash flow, in customers, in getting up the next morning when the day before had gone badly, came from a woman.”
”So, when people ask me whether women can lead African business, I find the question strange. In my experience, they already do. We have not given them the capital, the title or the credit.”
At 34, he led a small group of young Nigerians to buy a struggling bank that almost nobody else wanted. That bank became UBA.”I was not a better businessman the day someone believed in me. I simply got the chance to prove it. I call this democratising luck.”
”Opportunity in Africa is still distributed by accident of birth, of geography, of gender. My life’s work is to make it distributed by merit instead.”
That, he said, is what Africapitalism means: the private sector creating economic prosperity and social wealth at the same time, for everyone, not for a fortunate few.
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Power, Value, Capital — And Trade
Elumelu told the audience what he had told the Council on Foreign Relations in New York six weeks earlier: By 2050, Africa’s working-age population will grow by hundreds of millions. Africa holds the minerals that will power the energy transition. It has the land, the sun, the rivers, and the youngest population on earth.
”Everyone else is ageing. We are not. That is not a problem to be managed. This is the single greatest commercial opportunity of this century, and it is ours.”
But potential, he warned, is not guaranteed.
”Consider Singapore. A small country with limited natural resources became one of the world’s most prosperous economies. Consider South Korea. A country devastated by war transformed itself into a global industrial and technological powerhouse.”
”Now consider Africa. A continent blessed with extraordinary mineral wealth, immense agricultural potential, a young population, enormous cultural influence, and a rapidly expanding consumer market. Yet too many of our people remain trapped in poverty.”
Three things stand between Africa and its potential, he said: Power, Value, and Capital.
”We cannot talk about industrialisation without fixing electricity. Factories cannot run without it. Hospitals and schools cannot function without it. And the AI economy everyone is talking about has two basic ingredients: power and connectivity.”
On value, he was blunt: “For a hundred years, the question asked of Africa has been: how much can be extracted? I want to change the question. How much value can be created here? If the power is reliable, why ship raw lithium, raw cocoa, raw crude out of this continent? Refine it. Process it. Brand it. Then sell it to the world.”
On capital, he declared the era of aid over: “Aid budgets collapsed in 2025 and fell again this year. Aid at its best kept people alive. It rarely made them owners. The future is investment and trade, not aid.”
He pointed to Seplat — whose share price has moved from £3 to £9 since Heirs’ investment, now with a market cap of $7bn — and to Aliko Dangote’s mobilisation of retail African investors for the Refinery IPO, as proof of a new dawn.
”The most important thing Africa needs to build in the next decade is African capital that invests in Africa. Our pension funds, our insurers, our banks, our family offices.”
And he added a fourth: Trade with each other.
It is easier today to ship goods from Lagos to Liverpool than from Lagos to Luanda. Less than a fifth of our trade is with each other. The African Continental Free Trade Area is the largest free trade area in the world by number of countries, and it will remain a document until businesses, your businesses, use it.”
The Numbers That Silenced the Hall
Then Elumelu gave numbers, because, as he said, “I was a banker and I like numbers!”
Over fifteen years, he and his wife, Dr. Awele Elumelu, through The Tony Elumelu Foundation, have put more than $120 million of seed capital into 24,633 young entrepreneurs in all 54 African countries.
48% of them are women. Not because of a quota, he stressed, but because selection is objective and judged on the quality of the business plan alone.
Those entrepreneurs have created more than 1.5 million jobs and generated more than $4.2 billion in revenue. Harvard Business School now teaches how they did it.
”Our women entrepreneurs succeed, re-invest and re-hire at rates our male entrepreneurs should envy,” he said.
He named three:
Princess Adeyinka Tekenah, who received $5,000 in 2015 and built Happy Coffee, seed-to-cup, buying beans from women farmers in Taraba State. More than 1,000 jobs. She organized the first Lagos Coffee Festival and intends to be the first publicly listed Nigerian coffee brand.
Olamide Ayeni-Babajide, who took $5,000 in 2016 and built a recycling company from tyre waste. Revenue up more than twenty-fold. 15,000 people trained, most of them women and girls.
Nkem Okocha, who received $5,000 in 2015 and built Mama Moni, a Fintech Social Enterprise closing the credit gap for low-income female entrepreneurs through easy access to finance.
”Three women. Fifteen thousand dollars between them. Thousands of jobs. Now tell me the world does not need what Africa has.”
This year, 265,529 young Africans applied to the Foundation’s programme. Only 3,200 could be funded — just one in every 83 applicants.
”That is not a shortage of entrepreneurial talent; it is a shortage of capital.”
”Judge Me By What I Have Done”
Elumelu said it is easy for a man to stand on a stage at a women’s conference and say the right things. So he asked to be judged by what he has done.
He started at home. Dr. Awele Elumelu, co-founder of Heirs Holdings, chairs Avon HMO, Avon Medical, Heirs Insurance Brokers, Transcorp Hotels Plc, and now chairs Heirs Energies — today the 6th biggest producer of oil in Nigeria, producing 70,000 barrels per day.
In 2020, he asked the board of Transcorp Group Plc to appoint Owen Omogiafo as President and Group CEO — the youngest chief executive on the Nigerian Stock Exchange and the first woman to run Transcorp in its history.
”There were people who told me the market would not understand. The market understood perfectly.”
Today, Transcorp Hotels is chaired by Awele Elumelu and run by Uzo Oshogwe. By the time Owen took the top job, women held 80% of senior management positions at Transcorp.
At The Tony Elumelu Foundation, the CEO is Somachi Chris-Asoluka.
In total, Heirs Holdings Group has 8 female leaders as Chairperson/CEOs, and UBA Group has 8 female CEOs across Africa.
”I am not telling you this to be congratulated. I am telling you because I want every chairman and every chief executive in Nigeria who hears about this speech to ask himself one question: if Tony Elumelu can do it in power, in hospitality, in banking, in insurance, in healthcare, and in oil and gas, what exactly is my excuse?”
”To the men in this room: the women you promote will not thank you with loyalty alone. They will thank you with results.”
Institutions: The Hardest Question
Elumelu did not spare policymakers or business leaders on institutions.
”Capital goes where it is safe, and it stays where it is respected. You do not need to fly around the world asking investors to come. Create the right conditions, and they will come.”
”Institutions are not only built by governments. They are built by us. Every time you pay your taxes properly, publish your accounts, promote on merit, refuse the shortcut, you are building an institution.”
“Do Not Wait”
He closed with a direct challenge to the youngest woman in the room.
”Twenty-five years ago, when WIMBIZ held its first conference, the women on that stage could not have named a female chief executive of a listed Nigerian company. Today you can name several, and some of them work for me. In another twenty-five years, the women on this stage should be reading your name.”
”Do not wait. My mother did not wait. Princess did not wait. Olamide did not wait. Nkem did not wait. Awele did not wait. Owen did not wait. Uzo did not wait. Build the business. Take the board seat. Deploy the capital. Hire the girl from the village who reminds you of yourself.”
”Advocacy got women into the room. Capital will get them to the head of the table. We have funded 13,360 African female entrepreneurs; I look forward to funding many more.”
”Born in Africa. Built for the world. The world needs what Africa has. And what Africa has, more than oil, more than lithium, more than land, is you.”
Caption for Photo: Tony O. Elumelu, CFR, Group Chair, Heirs Holdings | Transcorp | Founder, The Tony Elumelu Foundation, delivering the Keynote Address at the WIMBIZ Annual Conference 2026, Eko Hotel & Suites, Lagos
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