The United Bank for Africa Group Chairman, UBA, Plc, Tony Elumelu, has called on African leaders to focus on creating the enabling environment for Small and Medium Enterprises, SMEs, to thrive and survive.
Elumelu, who made this call while hosting more than 100 African journalists in Lagos who are to cover Tony Elumelu Foundation, TEF, Entrepreneurship Forum 2017 over the weekend, said entrepreneurship is the cornerstone to African development and the key to local value creation in Africa.
He added: “Entrepreneurship cannot thrive without the enabling environment. So, our leaders should continue to create the right business environment for private sector players to sustain and grow their businesses.
“The likes of Bill Gate, the founder of Microsoft; Steve Job, the founder of Apple; Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook and the rest were successful because they have access to right and enabling business environment. If our African leaders can create enabling environment for SMEs, they will be amazed by the result it will yield at the end.”
He said that young people need a helping hand, the kind that will make them self- reliant and self-confident so that they can add their quota to the development of the Africa continent.
He explained that entrepreneurs need more eco-systems to succeed in their business operations, which will enable them to contribute to the development of the economy.
“I see great entrepreneurship potential in many of the over 93,000 applicants that applied for this year TEF Programme alone. But the level of training, mentoring and networking that we offer means that we can only select over 1,000 this year. I call on everyone here to support those who missed the cut. This is a clear path to sustaining African economic growth.”