President Bola Tinubu has challenged Africans, including its political and business leaders, to look inwards instead of undue reliance on international donor funds.
He made the call at the Tony Elumelu Foundation (TEF) and United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), Generation Unlimited (GENU) breakfast roundtable meeting, a side event at the ongoing 78th United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), in New York on Tuesday.
The event also served as a forum for the launch of the Tony Elumelu Foundation (TEF), Impact Report titled: “The Tony Elumelu Foundation Entrepreneurship
Programme: A Decade of Impact.”
The president, who was represented by the Minister for Trade and Industry, Doris Uzoka-Anite, also stressed the need for local solutions to economic growth and unemployment, while offering incentives to willing investors.
He said: “I don’t think we are doing enough as Africans for Africa. We need to do a lot more. Tony Elumelu has been the major person driving investments in supporting the youths and start-ups.
“We need to challenge ourselves a bit more further. Africa has some of the richest people on the planet. We have a resource-rich continent with huge population of young people”.
Tinubu said, “We need to take up the challenge upon ourselves as Africans to support one another. It is about time we stopped looking for international organisations for donor funding. We need to go out of that mentality.”
He said, “We will rather have donor funds coming in to support what we have on the ground already and not them coming to give us a seed or showing us the way. We actually know how to do things. In Africa, we have a rich culture; and if we go back to our tradition, there is a whole lot we can learn from each other.”
On the importance of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs), he said they were the engines of Nigerian and African economic growth, adding that they contributed almost half of national Gross Domestic Product, GDP, and more than 80 per cent of employment.
He said, “We must invest in SMEs. Governments and the private sector have important roles to play in this regard. Our investing must be coordinated, targeted, and generous. This is where the example of the Tony Elumelu Foundation is a worthy role model for all.”
In his speech, Founder TEF, Tony Elumelu said this highlights the significant contribution of the TEF’s flagship 100 million dollars Entrepreneurship Programme in advancing Africa’s socio-economic development.
