The Chairman of Heirs Holdings and Founder of the Tony Elumelu Foundation, Tony Elumelu, has recounted how his journey into business was inspired by his mother, who ran a small restaurant and taught him some of the most important lessons that later shaped his entrepreneurial success.
Speaking at the 25th WIMBIZ Annual Conference in Lagos on Friday, November 6, 2026, Elumelu said he did not begin life with wealth or privilege but with the determination and work ethic he witnessed while growing up.
Addressing participants during his keynote speech titled “The Geography of Opportunity: Why the World Needs What Africa Has,” the billionaire businessman said his mother became his first business teacher by demonstrating resilience, discipline and resourcefulness.
Elumelu: “I did not start with capital. I started with a mother who ran a small restaurant and worked harder than anyone I have ever known. I watched her turn very little into a living, and a living into a future for her children.
“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.”
Elumelu said his experience explains why he has never doubted the capacity of women to lead successful businesses.
“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 said.
The businessman also reflected on another defining moment in his career when, at the age of 34, he led a group of young Nigerians to acquire a struggling bank that few investors wanted.
He described the opportunity as a turning point that transformed his career.
Elumelu added: “Later, people who did not have to open doors for me, opened them anyway.
“At 34, I 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.”
Elumelu said creating opportunities for talented Africans regardless of their background has remained the driving force behind his philosophy of Africapitalism.
“I call this democratising luck. Opportunity in Africa is still distributed by accident of birth, geography and gender. My life’s work is to make it distributed by merit instead,” Elumelu said.
Elumelu added that Africapitalism advocates private sector investments that simultaneously create economic prosperity and social wealth.
The philanthropist commended WIMBIZ for its 25-year commitment to empowering women and promoting leadership, saying the organisation’s work aligns with his lifelong mission of ensuring talent is not wasted because of circumstances of birth.
Elumelu described human capital as Africa’s greatest untapped asset and urged greater investment in people, particularly women and young entrepreneurs.