Tony Elumelu joins President of the Republic of Estonia at the ‘EU Africa the Post Crisis Journey’
– December 10, 2020
Founder of the Tony Elumelu Foundation, Tony Elumelu, today joined the President of the Republic of Estonia, Kersti Kaijulaid, during an opening discussion at the online cross-continental hackathon, themed‘’EU Africa the Post Crisis Journey’.
The conference sought to find innovative solutions to socio-economic problems that have been further escalated by the outburst of the COVID-19 pandemic and was organised by Estonia and the African Union, with the support of Finland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Poland and the European Investment Bank.
During the conference, Tony Elumelu spoke on the importance of bridging the digital divide made prominent by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The challenge in most developing countries is the issue of infrastructure: the digital infrastructure, the connectivity issue, the data availability – so what we all need to do in the developing world, realising today the interconnectedness of the world, is to put resources together, let’s create the bandwidth, the internet access that we need, and usher in the new revolution,” he said.
President of Estonia Kersti Kaijulaid also corroborated this point while stating that “Common understanding of public and private sector is crucial – you have to give your country a digital core, in Estonia the X-road. My advice is to build a single simple system to guarantee the digital ID.”
He also highlighted the impact of the Tony Elumelu Foundation in addressing the digital gap:
“At the Tony Elumelu Foundation, we have created an ecosystem and a digital platform for African entrepreneurs called TEFConnect. TEFConnect brings young African entrepreneurs together. It is over a million people on the platform today and growing because we realise that this is one of the things we need to provide to young African entrepreneurs to enable them to realise their full potential.”
The young entrepreneurs we interact with through the Tony Elumelu Foundation, hold a lot of promise for the world.” he continued.
The Tony Elumelu Foundation begins accepting applications for the 2021 edition of the Tony Elumelu Foundation Entrepreneurship Programme on January 1, 2020.
