(Business in Cameroon) - The Tony Elumelu Foundation (TEF) recently announced that it has successfully concluded the training of over 200,000 young entrepreneurs from the 54 African countries, in the framework of its 2021 TEF Entrepreneurship Programme.

“The entrepreneurs received business management training usually assimilated with an MBA program. Over 5,864 Cameroonian entrepreneurs were successfully trained. (…) The training was conducted exclusively on  TEFConnect, the Foundation’s proprietary digital platform that provides capacity-building support, advisory, and market linkages to over 1 million Africans and counting,” the foundation wrote.

Officially, after the training, the business plans of each of the participating entrepreneurs will be reviewed. After that process, “the top-performing entrepreneurs subsequently participate in the pitching phase of the program after which successful entrepreneurs receive a non-refundable seed capital of US$5,000 [XAF3 million],” the foundation added.

This is a real opportunity for young entrepreneurs in Africa, where it is usually hard for SMEs to access financing. According to experts, the difficulties SME’s face in getting funding is higher during their starting phase.

BRM