Every day for the next few days, we will share our interview with 30+ African women entrepreneurs whose ideas can change the world. These women are early stage entrepreneurs with businesses less than three years old who are beneficiaries of the Tony Elumelu Entrepreneurship Programme.
After the winners’ announcement on the 23rd of March 2015, and thanks to this official list, we were able to comb the internet (gotta love Google and social media), track down a few of the female finalists, and reach out to them for interviews.
We are sharing their experiences in hopes that their stories will inspire someone out there to take the leap and go after their dreams. Hope you enjoy their stories as much as we enjoyed putting them together. We’ll update this list below with all the interviews as they go live:
- Adiya Atuluku: How Muse Origins is Taking African Creativity to the World
- Precious Odimegwu: Inspiring the Best in Children
- Abisoye Habib: Unearthing Nigeria’s Agribusiness Potential
- Lorna Okeng: Digitally Preserving African Heritage
- Lerato Motshwarakgole: Impacting Communities with Performance Art
- Byenda Nkwanda: Creating World Class African Fashion
- Caroline Mtongolo: Promoting a Healthy Lifestyle With Mushrooms
- Kossiwa Anifrani: Catering to the Lifestyle Needs of Pregnant Women
- Ehizele Ijeoma Joseph-Ebare: Making Healthcare Accessible for All
- Tracy Owamagbe and Omowunmi Akande: Promoting a Healthy Lifestyle, One Smoothie at a Time
- Janine Roberts: Using Packaging Technology to Empower People
- Sharron McPherson: Saving the World, One Social Enterprise at a Time
- Farida Musa Halliru: Taking African Fashion Worldwide
- Eileen Ambasa: Developing Solutions to Combat Cyber Crime
- Oduwa Agboneni: Bringing Professionalism to Nigeria’s Auto Care Industry
- Tosin Lawson: Promoting African Designs in Everyday Lifestyle
- Eleojo Peters: On a Mission to Feed the World
- Tania Attiba: Producing Natural Fruit Juices for a Healthy Lifestyle
- Mavis Nduchwa: Empowering Communities with Agriculture
- Madonna Kendona-Sowah: Creating High quality clothing with Ghanaian Textiles
- Kofoworola Oyeleye: Teaching Children Native Nigerian Culture
Follow our daily stories using the hashtag #TEEPcofoundHER. Know any other women who made the list? Please send their details via email to cofoundher@gmail.com.
**This series is an independent project by cofoundHER. We were not commissioned or influenced by any organisation to do this.
About The Tony Elumelu Foundation Entrepreneurship Programme (TEEP)
In December 2014, the Tony Elumelu Foundation announced an initiative, the Tony Elumelu Entrepreneurship Programme (TEEP), with the ambitious goal is to create 10,000 businesses that can generate one million new jobs and contribute at least $10 billion in annual revenues to the Africa economy. Applications for the first batch of 1,000 beneficiaries ran from the 1st of January 2015 till the 1st of March and when applications closed, it was reported that over 20,000 entrepreneurs from 52 countries applied!
On the 23rd of March, after deliberations from a carefully chosen selection committee (consisting of seasoned entrepreneurs such as ) the winning 1,000 were announced. The programme has designed 7 pillars to address the essential needs to ensure success for an African entrepreneur: Mentoring, Startup Enterprise Toolkit, Resources, Bootcamp, Elumelu Entrepreneurship Forum, Seed Capital Funding and Alumni Network.
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