KEYNOTE ADDRESS by Tony O. Elumelu, CFR, at the 25th WIMBIZ Annual Conference 2026

 

KEYNOTE ADDRESS

by

Tony O. Elumelu, CFR

Group Chair, Heirs Holdings | Transcorp | Founder, The Tony Elumelu Foundation

at the

WIMBIZ Annual Conference

 

Theme:

 

The Geography of Opportunity: Why The World Needs What Africa Has

 

Eko Hotel & Suites

Victoria Island – Lagos

Friday, November 06, 2026

 

 

OPENING

 

• Good morning.

 

• Twenty-five conferences.

 

• A quarter of a century.

 

• What a track record.

 

• What a commitment – what resilience.

 

• Thank you, WIMBIZ, for doing something I have spent my own life trying to do: refusing to accept that talent should be wasted because of where it was born, or to whom it was born.

 

• Your theme this year is “Rooted, Rising, Ready: Born in Africa, Built for the World.” I could not have written a better description of my own life, or of the women I am about to tell you about.

 

• I look at this room and I do not see an audience.

 

• I see capital.

 

• Human capital, the most under-deployed asset on this continent.

 

• This morning, I want to talk about why the world needs what Africa has, and why the most valuable thing Africa has is sitting in this room.

 

• You asked me to speak on the geography of opportunity. Let me begin with my own geography.

 

WHERE I STARTED

 

• I did not start with capital.

 

• I started with a mother who ran a small restaurant and worked harder than anyone I have ever known. I watched her turn very little into a living, and a living into a future for her children.

 

• That was my first business school. My first lesson in risk, in cash flow, in customers, in getting up the next morning when the day before had gone badly, came from a woman.

 

• So, when people ask me whether women can lead African business, I find the question strange. In my experience, they already do. We have simply not given them the capital, the title or the credit.

 

• Later, people who did not have to open doors for me, opened them anyway. At 34, I led a small group of young Nigerians to buy a struggling bank that almost nobody else wanted. It became the foundation of everything that followed. I was not a better businessman the day someone believed in me. I simply got the chance to prove it.

 

• I call this democratising luck.

 

• Opportunity in Africa is still distributed by accident of birth, of geography, of gender.

 

• My life’s work is to make it distributed by merit instead. That is what Africapitalism means to me: the private sector creating economic prosperity and social wealth at the same time, and doing it for everyone, not for a fortunate few.

 

ONE: UNLOCKING AFRICA’S POTENTIAL

 

• You asked me first about unlocking Africa’s potential. Let me tell you what I told the Council on Foreign Relations in New York six weeks ago, because it is the same message I bring to Lagos.

 

• The world needs what Africa has.

 

• By 2050 our working-age population will grow by hundreds of millions. We hold the minerals that will power the energy transition. We have the land, the sun, the rivers and the youngest population on earth. Everyone else is ageing. We are not. That is not a problem to be managed.

 

• This is the single greatest commercial opportunity of this century, and it is ours.

 

• But potential is not guaranteed.

 

• The possession of resources has never been a guarantee of prosperity. And the absence of resources has never been a permanent barrier to it.

 

• Consider Singapore.

 

• A small country with limited natural resources became one of the world’s most prosperous economies.

 

• Consider South

 

 

• A country devastated by war transformed itself into a global industrial and technological powerhouse.

 

• Now consider Africa.

 

• A continent blessed with extraordinary mineral wealth, immense agricultural potential, a young population, enormous cultural influence and a rapidly expanding consumer market.

 

• Yet too many of our people remain trapped in poverty.

 

• Too many of our young people see emigration as their most credible economic strategy.

 

• Too many of our entrepreneurs spend more energy navigating obstacles than building businesses.

 

• And too many of our countries remain dependent on exporting what nature gave us and importing what human ingenuity has transformed.

 

• Three things stand between us and realising that potential.

 

The first is power.

 

• We cannot talk about industrialisation without fixing electricity. Factories cannot run without it. Hospitals and schools cannot function without it. And the AI economy everyone is talking about has two basic ingredients: power and connectivity. Africa has the young, creative minds. What they lack is the grid. Fix electricity, and Africa will take off.

 

The second is value.

 

• For a hundred years, the question asked of Africa has been: how much can be extracted? I want to change the question. How much value can be created here? If the power is reliable and the environment is right, why ship raw lithium, raw cocoa, raw crude out of this continent? Refine it. Process it. Brand it. Then sell it to the world. That is how a continent moves from supplier to participant.

 

 

The third is capital.

 

• Aid budgets collapsed in 2025 and fell again this year. Aid at its best kept people alive. It rarely made them owners. The future is investment and trade, not aid. And that future will be built by people who look like the people in this room.

 

• And that capital needs to be African. Investment can only flourish with capital formation, which comes with savings.

 

• Savings can only grow with a beneficial environment, consistent policy, trusted financial institutions.

 

• With savings growth, at national and continental level, Africa will not just offer solutions, but finance those solutions.

 

• And we are seeing it now in action. Our investment in Seplat, the London and Lagos listed oil company, has catalysed value in Africa for Africans, with this year the share price moving from £3 to £9, since our investment. And now with a current market cap of $7bn today. My brother Alhaji Aliko Dangote has mobilised retail African investors, in innovative ways for the Refinery IPO. We are witnessing a new dawn.

 

• And capital flows not just into stock markets. Our Foundation’s over $130m disbursements is an investment in entrepreneurs, in the next generation, in Africa’s future. We are spreading prosperity and opportunity by investing in our young ones.

 

• So, the most important thing Africa needs to build in the next decade is African capital that invests in Africa. Our pension funds, our insurers, our banks, our family offices. We must demonstrate that African capital can build African businesses that compete anywhere in the world. The narrative will not change because we talk about it. It will change by Africans taking control of their destiny.

 

• And let me add a fourth, because it is the one we can fix ourselves without asking anyone’s permission: we must trade with each other. It is easier today to ship goods from Lagos to Liverpool than from Lagos to Luanda. Less than a fifth of our trade is with each other. The African Continental Free Trade Area is the largest free trade area in the world by number of countries, and it will remain a document until businesses, your businesses, use it.

 

 

But we need:

 

• Roads

 

• Railways

 

• Ports

 

• Payment systems

 

• Efficient customs procedures

 

• Predictable regulations

 

• We cannot build a continental market merely by signing documents.

 

• We must build the physical, financial and institutional infrastructure that makes continental trade commercially viable.

 

• A continent that cannot trade efficiently with itself will struggle to negotiate effectively with the rest of the world.

 

• We need to think beyond national borders.

 

• We need African businesses that see the continent as their natural home market.

 

• African banks that finance cross-border expansion.

 

• African manufacturers that build regional supply chains.

 

• African technology companies that solve problems at continental scale.

 

• And African policymakers who recognise that regional integration is not a threat to national sovereignty, but a means of strengthening our collective economic capacity.

 

• When I built UBA into twenty African countries, people told me Africans would not bank across borders. They were wrong.

 

• So, when the world asks me where the opportunity is, I say: it is here, it is visible, and it is cheaper to enter today than it will ever be again.

 

• The question is not whether Africa will be the growth story of this century. It is who will own it. And it will be Africans – and African women!

 

TWO: INCLUSIVE PROSPERITY

 

• Your second question was about inclusive prosperity, and about women’s participation in economic leadership.

 

• Let me give you numbers, because I was a banker and I like numbers!

 

• Over fifteen years, my wife Awele and I, through the Tony Elumelu Foundation, have put more than 120 million dollars of seed capital into 24,633 young entrepreneurs, in all 54 African countries.

 

• Forty-eight per cent of them are women.

 

• Not because of a quota. Because our selection process is objective and we judge on the quality of the business plan alone.

 

• Those entrepreneurs have created more than 1.5 million jobs and generated more than 4.2 billion dollars in revenue. Harvard Business School now teaches how we did it. And I will tell you something the case study does not: our women entrepreneurs succeed, re-invest and re-hire at rates our male entrepreneurs should envy.

 

• Let me give you three names. Princess Adeyinka Tekenah received five thousand dollars from us in 2015. She built Happy Coffee, seed to cup, in a country where ninety per cent of coffee is imported, buying her beans from women farmers in Taraba State. More than a thousand jobs. She organized the first Lagos Coffee Festival. She intends to be the first publicly listed Nigerian coffee brand, and I would not bet against her.

 

• Olamide Ayeni-Babajide took five thousand dollars in 2016 and built a recycling company from tyre waste. Revenue up more than twenty-fold. Fifteen thousand people trained, most of them women and girls.

 

• Nkem Okocha received five thousand dollars from us in 2015. She built Mama Moni, a Fintech Social Enterprise that is closing the credit gap for low-income female entrepreneurs in rural and urban slum communities in Nigeria through easy access to finance. Mama Moni’s web platform enables socially conscious individuals to invest in low-income women by lending to them to fund their businesses.

 

• Three women. Fifteen thousand dollars between them. Thousands of jobs. Now tell me the world does not need what Africa has.

 

• This year, 265,529 young Africans with groundbreaking business ideas applied to our programme. We could only fund 3,200 — just one in every 83 applicants. Think about the more than 262,000 innovative ideas and businesses we could not support. That is not a shortage of entrepreneurial talent; it is a shortage of capital. That is the scale of the opportunity Africa must unlock, and the capital we must mobilise. Not from Abu Dhabi, Washington or Brussels alone, but from Lagos, Nairobi, Johannesburg and this very room.

 

• Women’s economic leadership is not a concession to fairness. It is a requirement for competitiveness.

 

• No serious economy can afford to systematically underutilise half its talent.

 

• And no continent seeking to accelerate its development can continue to treat women’s advancement as a peripheral social objective.

 

• Inclusive prosperity is not charity. A continent that ignores half its talent is competing with one hand tied behind its back.

 

• I built UBA, now on four continents, and now Heirs Holdings invests across Africa in multiple sectors. I would never leave half my balance sheet idle. Why should a continent?

 

THE EVIDENCE CLOSE TO HOME

 

• Now, it is easy for a man to stand on a stage at a women’s conference and say the right things.

 

• So let me be judged by what I have done.

 

 

• Let me start at home, because that is where it started. My wife, Dr Awele Elumelu, is a medical doctor. She trained at the University of Benin and practised at Lagos University Teaching Hospital and in England.

 

• She is the co-founder of Heirs Holdings. She chairs Avon HMO, one of Nigeria’s leading health insurers, and Avon Medical, because she decided that the healthcare she had delivered one patient at a time could be delivered to the many. She chairs Heirs Insurance Brokers. She chairs Transcorp Hotels PLC. And she co-founded the Tony Elumelu Foundation with me, which is why it has always been a foundation for women as much as for men. And now she chairs our family-owned oil producing company – Heirs Energies which is today the 6^th biggest producer of oil in Nigeria. They produce 70,000 barrels of oil per day.

 

• In 2020, I asked the board of Transcorp Group PLC, one of Nigeria’s largest listed conglomerates, to appoint Owen Omogiafo as President and Group Chief Executive. She was the youngest chief executive on the Nigerian stock exchange and the first woman to run Transcorp in its history. There were people who told me the market would not understand. The market understood perfectly. Under Owen, Transcorp has become a power company, a hospitality company that competes with anyone on this continent, and an energy company.

 

• Owen came to that job through Transcorp Hotels Plc, the company that owns the Transcorp Hilton in Abuja, often the first-place distinguished visitors see when they come to Nigeria. She ran it first, and she ran it well, and when the group needed a leader we did not go looking outside. That is what institutionalisation looks like.

 

• And when Owen moved up, we did not break the pattern. Transcorp Hotels today is chaired by Awele Elumelu and run by Uzo Oshogwe, who came to us from running Afriland Properties, after thirty years at UBA and Accenture. By the time Owen took the top job, women held eighty per cent of the senior management positions at Transcorp. I did not do it for a headline. I did it because they were the best people for the jobs.

 

 

 

• At the Tony Elumelu Foundation, the chief executive is Somachi Chris-Asoluka. The Foundation that has deployed more capital to African entrepreneurs than any other on this continent is run by a woman. And Somachi is a tribute to our nurturing of talent, joining our Group as a junior, straight after her post graduate degree at Yale and rising – as so many others have done.

 

• In total, the Heirs Holdings Group has 8 female leaders as Chairperson/CEOs;

 

1. Agatha Obiekwugo – Chairperson, Afriland Properties Plc
2. Owen Omogiafo, OON – President/GCEO, Transnational Corporation Plc
3. Uzo Oshogwe – MD/CEO, Transcorp Hotels Plc
4. Somachi Chris-Asoluka – CEO, The Tony Elumelu Foundation
5. Catherine Nwosu – MD/CEO, Africa Prudential Plc
6. Odiri Ogini – MD/CEO, United Capital Asset Management
7. Adetola Fasuyi – MD, United Capital Wealth Management
8. Esther Adeola Balogun – MD/CEO, UCEE MFB

 

• UBA Group has 8 female CEOs across Africa and the Foundation – and will have many more!

 

1. Sarata Kone – Regional CEO, UBA Africa 2
2. Chioma Mang – Directorate Head, Corporate Banking
3. Rasmata Djibo – MD/CEO, UBA Burkina Faso
4. Mariam Yago – MD/CEO, UBA Congo Brazzaville
5. Eugenia Onyekwelu – MD/CEO, UBA Gabon
6. Rokia Hacko – MD/CEO, UBA Mali
7. Dora Kyungu – MD/CEO, UBA Tanzania
8. Bola Atta – CEO, UBA Foundation

 

• I am not telling you this to be congratulated. I am telling you because I want every chairman – or chairwoman – and every chief executive in Nigeria who hears about this speech to ask himself – or herself – one question: if Tony Elumelu can do it in power, in hospitality, in banking, in insurance, in healthcare, and in oil and gas, what exactly is my excuse?

 

• To the men in this room, and I know there are some: the women you promote will not thank you with loyalty alone. They will thank you with results. That has been my experience, without exception, and it is why I will go on doing it.

 

THREE: STRONG INSTITUTIONS

 

• Your third question is the hardest, because it is the one business leaders least like to answer. Institutions.

 

• I have sat across the table from investors on every continent. They all ask the same questions. Will the contract be honoured? Will the regulator be predictable? Will the courts work? Will the power stay on? Capital goes where it is safe, and it stays where it is respected.

 

• So let me say to the policymakers across Africa, those who are here, and to those watching: you do not need to fly around the world asking investors to come. Create the right conditions, and they will come. Where institutions are credible, contracts are honoured and leaders are accountable, money follows. That is not theory. I have watched it happen in every market where we operate.

 

• And let me say something to the business leaders here. Institutions are not only built by governments. They are built by us. The private sector must also examine itself. We cannot demand good governance from public officials while tolerating poor governance in our own organisations. Every time you pay your taxes properly, publish your accounts, promote on merit, refuse the shortcut, you are building an institution. Every board you sit on that holds management to account is an institution. Every woman you mentor into a seat that was going to go to a less qualified man is institution-building.

 

CLOSE

 

• Let me end where I began. The geography of opportunity.

 

• For most of my life, the map of opportunity had Africa at the edge. That map is wrong, and it is being redrawn, and the people redrawing it are not in Davos or New York. They are here. Seplat and Dangote are showing the way.

 

• The geography of opportunity must become the geography of prosperity.

 

• No one but us will develop Africa. Not the donors. Not the multilaterals. Not the partners, however welcome they are. Us. And “us” means every woman in this room who has been told to wait her turn.

 

• Do not wait. My mother did not wait. Princess did not wait. Olamide did not wait. Nkem did not wait. Awele did not wait. Owen did not wait. Uzo did not wait. Build the business. Take the board seat. Deploy the capital. Hire the girl from the village who reminds you of yourself.

 

• I want to speak for a moment to the youngest woman in this room. You may be at the back. You may be wondering whether any of this applies to you. It applies to you most of all.

 

• Twenty-five years ago, when WIMBIZ held its first conference, the women on that stage could not have named a female chief executive of a listed Nigerian company. Today you can name several, and some of them work for me. In another twenty-five years, the women on this stage should be reading your name. That is what rooted, rising and ready means. Not a slogan. A call to action.

 

• And I want to say to WIMBIZ itself: the next twenty-five years must be bigger than the last.

 

• Advocacy got women into the room. Capital will get them to the head of the table. We have funded 13,360 African female entrepreneurs; I look forward to funding many more.

 

• Born in Africa. Built for the world. The world needs what Africa has. And what Africa has, more than oil, more than lithium, more than land, is you.

 

Thank you.

 

 

 

TOE