Prioritising Entrepreneurship in Driving Africa’s Renaissance
is impossible because you are a Nigerian, if your idea is the right one and you succeed you will be such a role model that you would convince a lot of people in the region and Mark Zuckerberg or any other leader coming from silicon valley would not be a star here, you would be a star.”
Elumelu, the founder of the Foundation, who moderated the session, had earlier this year been one of the global leaders invited to Paris to discuss the relevance of technology in shaping and improving humanity in the 21st century.
There, Elumelu had thanked President Macron for the opportunity to speak on behalf of young African entrepreneurs, who he sees as “the life blood of Africa’s transformation.”
“That is indeed the dream of TEF, which has embarked on supporting young Africans with $100million over a period of 10 years to create 10,000 African entrepreneurs.
“We have done 4000, with 6,000 more to go and we believe and we speak to our friends that it takes two things, these young Africans are ready to succeed and they realise that their success is not just for themselves but for the entire continent,” he said during the introduction of President Macron.
He continued: “It would be nice for our political leaders here in Africa to understand the potent powers and importance of people we have in this room and those that are not in this room because our demographic structure we have 60 per cent of our people who are under the age of 30.
“We also like France and the rest of the world to know that Africa in the 21st century, there is a lot more about Africa than the Africa they used to know.” For the young entrepreneurs, resource persons for the actualization of their dreams don’t come bigger than that.
Africa for Africa Macron launched straight into the new African challenge, which he described as his first message, without much protocol: “Africa is the one to decide for Africa; to explain about Africa; and to create its own model of entrepreneurship and its own culture; and to explain it to the rest of the world and not just to be part of the globalization where adjustments were always made despite of people in a certain way.
“So this new narrative is to be built now and I do believe it’s your responsibility, that its good for Africa and it is good for France because if Africa doesn’t succeed France and Europe will never succeed on the long run.”
The second message was that entrepreneurship and innovation are part of the answer to the African challenge and it is because that is best way for young people to access responsibility and to change everything.
He sounded philosophical about innovation: “Smart people when they are in charge are obsessed by innovation because they want to reinvent themselves. New players, young people should be obsessed about innovation, because this is the only way when you are not a player or an insider to enter into the game and to succeed to disrupt the insider to be part of the game.”
“Innovation is just about how to invent or reinvent something in which you can succeed and make your life, your family and the life of people around you better and there is no gap for innovation except the one that you have in your mind.
“Innovation is precisely about how to create and is the symptom to destroy past activities that don’t make sense.”
Drawing on his phenomenal success, he said just because he wanted to change a lot of things, he decided to innovate and take risks in political life.
This, he said, he never asked for permission to do because when he asked for advice from insiders to achieve his dream, he was told to bid his time.
Ruling out that option, he urged the young entrepreneurs believe in innovation and take the risk to forge ahead.
“You have massive young people and part of their future would be through this innovation and that’s why we decided to launch this digital Africa initiative, which means to create a sort of African platform for digital and not to lecture people what they should do, I’m not the one to have the best possible idea for Nigeria or Lagos. I have seen some entrepreneurs and have seen the craziest ideas now become reality.
“But you are the ones to have the right decision and idea for your country, for what is good for your people, which kind of innovation would succeed, which kind of innovation could find its market.”
He said answers to that could be found with Digital Africa, where Elumelu is on the advisory board for Africa.
“It is a bag of ideas and money. And what we want to do is to connect people and to allow people with ideas and innovation to scale them because a lot of things are a question of scale, how to accelerate, get access to market, get access to finance, being connected to all the people with the same kind of ideas improve your ideas and innovation, thanks to that.
“It’s a good showcase and precisely to work with large companies with business angles and I want to thank the large companies in this room coming from Nigeria and France.
The questions and answers session of the interaction was as insightful as it was interesting because of Macron’s ability to handle a large variety of issues.
Peter is a Lagos-based journalist