There are so many non-profit organisations in Africa that are focused on empowerment, especially for the youth. These organizations and their owners tend to work towards one goal, which is empowering the African people to achieve speedy development in the continent.
One such organization is the Tony Elumelu Foundation, TEF. This Foundation was founded in 2010 by a Nigerian Philanthropist and Businessman, Tony Elumelu.
This week’s edition of African of the week will feature one of the Tony Elumelu Foundation beneficiaries, Chioma Ifeanyi-Eze.
From its inception in 2010 till date, the Tony Elumelu Foundation has empowered over eighteen thousand (18,000) African youth entrepreneurs across the 54 countries in the African continent.
Since the launch of the TEF Entrepreneurship Programme in 2015, the Foundation has trained over 1.5 million young Africans according to information on www.tefconnect.com, Africa’s largest digital entrepreneurship ecosystem, and disbursed nearly USD$100 million in direct funding to over 18,000 African women and men, who have collectively created over 400,000 direct and indirect jobs.
One of the beneficiaries of the foundation’s benevolence is TEF Alumnae, Chioma Ifeanyieze, who was one of the 2016 grant winners.
Chioma’s win came as a result of her contributions to raising entrepreneurs in Africa.
Chioma’s Career
Chioma Ifeanyi-Eze is an entrepreneur-accountant with a zest to increase the sustainable growth rate in SMEs within Africa. She has over 13 years of experience in bookkeeping, finance and business consulting from several banking and finance organisations.
Chioma has been solving a major challenge faced by Small and Medium Entrepreneurs in Africa, especially Nigeria.
As an Accountant, she majored in providing accessible accounting services to these SMEs.
It was in the process of identifying how to solve these problems that she launched her company called AccountingHub.
She has been providing accounting services for over 500 businesses and training well over 5000 business owners.
In her desire to own a profitable enterprise, Chioma gave her time in learning entrepreneurship. That was when she started teaching about business while she used the hashtags #chiomabusinessschool on her social media pages.
Her style of teaching drew the attention of many people, as they fell in love with her business sense. And later gained a premium status when Facebook verified her account.
Her business sense of being practical and relatable has blessed so many people.
Being a Chartered Accountant and a Chartered Tax practitioner, in 2015, she introduced a virtual and retail tech-accounting firm called the AccountingHub to address the market needs of SMEs on bookkeeping and auditing.
Since establishing her business, she has catered to over 500 SMEs in Nigeria by meeting their needs to stay up to date with their numbers, taxes and financials.
She made accounting and bookkeeping so easy that she handles over 100 firms’ data entry with the help of technology, unlike the old ways of accounting, one needs to be present in the firm to do bookkeeping or data entry work.
Before AccountingHub
Chioma was born on the 5th of Sept 1980. She graduated from the University of Jos. She got her first accounting training at Pricewaterhouse Coopers Nigeria and has trained well over 20,000 business owners. She is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria. She is called the Queen of simplified accounting.
Chioma is married with four lovely Children.
Chioma is one among the numerous beneficiaries of the Tony Elumelu Foundation and the foundation is not stopping anytime soon in helping young Africans achieve their entrepreneurial dreams.
Tony Elumelu believes that African youths are catalysts for the continent’s transformation, which is why his Foundation is focused mostly on youth empowerment.
The Foundation which is the leading philanthropy empowering a new generation of African entrepreneurs has become the hallmark of Africa’s sustainable development through job creation, poverty eradication and women’s economic empowerment.
In 2015, TEF consolidated its various programmes and Initiatives and made investing in Africa’s next generation of entrepreneurs and business leaders a priority.
The Tony Elumelu Foundation Entrepreneurship Program popularly known as TEF often gives out USD 5000 seed business funding to entrepreneurs or aspiring ones who emerge winners in the program.
The future of the Tony Elumelu Foundation centres on the provision of structured, robust, and multifaceted support to entrepreneurs around Africa through the Tony Elumelu Foundation Entrepreneurship Programme.
A 10-year USD100 million commitment has been made to identify, train, mentor and fund 10,000 young African entrepreneurs across 54 African countries.
Tony Elumelu Foundation Entrepreneurship Program’s operations and new commitments
