The Tony Elumelu Foundation has unveiled its 2026 cohort of entrepreneurs, selecting 3,200 business owners from a record-breaking pool of over 265,000 applicants across all 54 African nations. The announcement, made Sunday at the Transcorp Hilton in Abuja by founder Tony O. Elumelu, marks the 12th edition of the program and includes seven North African entrepreneurs from Morocco, Tunisia, and Egypt.
Among the North African honorees are three from Tunisia, two from Morocco, and two from Egypt, representing sectors ranging from technology and education to professional services and agribusiness. The selection was conducted independently by Ernst & Young.
In a historic milestone, women constitute 51% of the 2026 cohort—selected entirely on merit without the use of quotas. Each entrepreneur receives USD 5,000 in non-refundable seed capital, access to business management training via the TEFConnect platform, mentorship, and entry into a network of investors and peers.
In his annual letter to the new cohort, Elumelu framed the initiative as a deliberate act of economic engineering. “For a long time, I believed luck was something that simply happened to you,” he wrote. “Then I came to understand: luck can be engineered. Opportunity can be democratised. Hope is not just a feeling—it is a system we can build.”
Since its inception, the foundation has disbursed over USD 100 million in seed capital to more than 24,000 entrepreneurs, who have collectively generated USD 4.2 billion in revenue and created over 1.5 million jobs. The 2026 cohort is supported through partnerships with Heirs Holdings Group, the European Commission, DEG, the IKEA Foundation, and UNDP, among others.