Elumelu To WIMBIZ: Africa’s Greatest Asset Is Its Women

Billionaire and philanthropist, Mr. Tony O. Elumelu, CFR, has said that Africa’s greatest asset is not its minerals or land, but its human capital — particularly its women.

Elumelu, the Group Chair of Heirs Holdings and Founder of The Tony Elumelu Foundation, stated this during his keynote address at the WIMBIZ Annual Conference on Friday, November 6, at Eko Hotel & Suites, Victoria Island, Lagos.

Speaking on the theme, ‘The Geography of Opportunity: Why The World Needs What Africa Has’, Elumelu told the gathering marking 25 conferences of WIMBIZ that Africa possesses the human and natural resources required to become one of the world’s most prosperous economic regions, but must address critical structural challenges preventing it from translating its enormous potential into shared prosperity.

He identified electricity, value creation and capital mobilisation as three major priorities requiring urgent attention, adding that African countries must also strengthen trade among themselves to build a competitive continental economy.

According to him, Africa’s rapidly expanding working-age population, mineral resources, agricultural potential, renewable energy capacity and growing consumer market represent one of the greatest commercial opportunities of the century.

Elumelu said by 2050, Africa’s working-age population will grow by hundreds of millions. The continent holds the minerals that will power the energy transition, has 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,” he said.

But potential, he warned, 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,” he said, citing Singapore and South Korea as countries that transformed themselves despite limited resources or devastation by war.

Speaking further on the conference theme, ‘Rooted, Rising, Ready: Born in Africa, Built for the World’, Elumelu said the theme described his own life and the women he was about to celebrate.

“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,” he said.

Elumelu said he did not start with capital, but with a mother who ran a small restaurant and worked harder than anyone he had ever known.

“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,” he said.

“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.”

He recalled that at 34, he 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,” Elumelu said.

“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.”

He identified three things standing between Africa and realising its potential: power, value and capital — plus a fourth, intra-African trade.

“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,” Elumelu said.

“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,” he added.

Aid budgets collapsed in 2025 and fell again this year, Elumelu said. Aid at its best kept people alive, but rarely made them owners. The future, he said, is investment and trade, not aid.

“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,” he said.

He pointed to Seplat, the London and Lagos-listed oil company, whose share price moved from £3 to £9 since Heirs Holdings’ investment, with a current market cap of $7bn, and to Aliko Dangote’s mobilisation of retail African investors for the Refinery IPO, as signs of a new dawn.

“Our Foundation’s over $130m disbursements is an investment in entrepreneurs, in the next generation, in Africa’s future,” he said.

“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.”

Elumelu said it is easier today to ship goods from Lagos to Liverpool than from Lagos to Luanda. Less than a fifth of Africa’s trade is with itself.

“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,” he said.

He listed what is needed: roads, railways, ports, payment systems, efficient customs procedures and predictable regulations.