Tony Onyemaechi Elumelu; Chairman of Heirs Holdings, the United Bank for Africa, Transcorp and founder of The Tony Elumelu Foundation status as a global business personality received further endorsement recently when the United States Secretary of Commerce, Penny Pritzker labeled him as an incredible entrepreneur.
“Tony is an incredible entrepreneur and pivotal to U.S-Africa business relations. He is a great friend of the U.S.” she said
His stellar performance at the recently concluded US – Africa Business Forum(USABF) which was organised by Bloomberg and the United States Department of Commerce which held alongside the United General Assembly, (UNGA) is a further testament of his entrepreneurial acumen.
Prior to that, he was given the award of the ‘Person of the Year’ at the Africa Investor CEO Institutional Investment Summit.
The accolades and awards are not a surprise to those who knew him. Born in Jos, Nigeria, on the 22nd of March, 1963, he has two degrees in economics from Nigerian universities, a bachelor’s degree from Ambrose Alli University and a Master of Science degree from the University of Lagos. He is also an alumnus of Harvard Business School’s Advanced Management Programme.
Earlier in his career, Elumelu acquired and turned Standard Trust Bank into a top-five player in Nigeria. What will cement is corporate reputation as an African business leader took place in 2005 when he led the largest merger in the banking sector in Sub-Saharan Africa to acquire United Bank for Africa (UBA). In five years, he transformed it from a single-country bank to a pan-African institution with over seven million customers in nineteen African countries.
Following his retirement from UBA in 2010, Elumelu founded Heirs Holdings, which invests in the financial services, energy, real estate and hospitality, agribusiness, and healthcare sectors. In the same year, he established the Tony Elumelu Foundation, an Africa-based and African-funded philanthropic organisation dedicated to the promotion of excellence in business leadership and entrepreneurship and to enhancing the competitiveness of the private sector across Africa.
In 2011, Heirs Holdings acquired a controlling interest in the Transnational Corporation of Nigeria Plc (Transcorp), a publicly quoted conglomerate that has business interests in the agribusiness, energy, and hospitality sectors. Elumelu was subsequently appointed chairman of the corporation.
Elumelu serves as an advisor to the USAID’s Private Capital Group for Africa (PCGA) Partners Forum. He sits on the Nigerian President’s Agricultural Transformation Implementation Council (ATIC). He is also vice-chairman of the National Competitiveness Council of Nigeria (NCCN) whose formation he was a key driver in, and serves as Co-Chair of the Aspen Institute Dialogue Series on Global Food Security. He additionally chairs the Ministerial Committee to establish world-class hospitals and diagnostic centres across Nigeria, at the invitation of the Federal Government and the Presidential Jobs Board, engineered to create 3 million jobs in one year. He also serves as a member of the Global Advisory Board of the United Nations Sustainable Energy for All Initiative (SE4ALL) and USAID’s Private Capital Group for Africa Partners Forum.
His presence on the Bretton Woods Committee, which brings together senior leaders in the global banking industry, is recognition of his work on African development. He is also a Fellow of the Nigeria Leadership Initiative (NLI).
He is involved, through his foundation, with the Tony Blair Africa Governance Initiative (AGI) in a partnership to strengthen the private sector’s role in the economic transformation of select African countries. The result is the Blair-Elumelu Fellowship Programme.
He is co-chair of the Africa Energy Leaders’ Group (AELG). He was one of the co-chairs of the 26th World Economic Forum on Africa in Kigali, Rwanda from 11–13 May 2016.
