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AfDB, Tony Elumelu Foundation Partner to Support Youth Entrepreneurs in Africa

The African Development Bank and the Tony Elumelu Foundation have signed a Letter of Intent to accelerate youth entrepreneurship across Africa.
The partnership will bring about future collaboration focused on strengthening small to medium sized enterprises, talent and skills development and optimisation initiatives for Africa’s youth.
A total of 3,050, young entrepreneurs across 54 African countries over the next year will receive support under this partnership. The Bank’s participation will enable an additional 1,000 entrepreneurs to benefit from the Tony Elumelu Entrepreneurship Program (TEEP), which provides much needed opportunities to help stem the rising tide of unemployment and inequality facing the continent’s youngest citizens.
The agreement was signed in Abuja, Nigeria on 22 March 2019. Parminder Vir, the outgoing CEO of the Tony Elumelu Foundation signed on behalf of the foundation, while Mrs. Oley Dibba-Wadda, the Bank’s Director of Human Capital, Youth and Skills Development represented the development finance institution.
“Youth are not Africa’s future, but our present. When youth have the chance to succeed, economies across Africa will grow, job opportunities will increase and the quality of life for the people of Africa will improve,” said Dibba-Wadda.
Each year, more than 12 million youth enter the labor market, yet only 3 million jobs are created, leaving vast number of youth unemployed. Consequently, the poverty rate among youth in sub-Saharan Africa is 70%, and expected to rise if urgent action is not taken. The bank is committed to reversing this trend, working with public and private sector partners to help young people secure meaningful employment.
This year, the Tony Elumelu Foundation received a total of 215,000 entries from African entrepreneurs, up from 151,000 applications last year, with female representation from 62,000 in 2008 to 90,000 in 2019.
“These rising figures demonstrate the burning desire of the African entrepreneur to develop our continent; and we must urgently convert this passion into viable businesses to develop our continent” said Ifeyinwa Ugochukwu, the Foundation’s incoming CEO.
This is a good signal for African youth, and a testimonial to the fact that strategic alliances between African institutions can achieve great impact for the benefit of Africa’s young men and women.
The partnership is aligned to the Bank’s mission to leverage the expertise of African institutions, optimizing proven solutions that empower African youth at scale, while ensuring their active contribution to the socio-economic growth of the continent.
In 2018, the Bank secured $40 million for the Youth Entrepreneurship and Innovation Multi-Donor Trust Fund, in partnership with the Governments of Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Italy and the Netherlands. The fund is a grant vehicle managed by the Bank to support the African entrepreneurship ecosystem. Its interventions will equip Africa’s youth with the requisite tools to establish start-ups and micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs).
Launched in 2016, the Jobs for Youth in Africa initiative aims to create 25 million jobs and equip 50 million youth with the right skills to succeed in the digital economy. Through this initiative, the Bank has invested over $19 billion in 374 projects focused on job creation, youth entrepreneurship and equipping young people with the skills needed for a rapidly changing workplace.
News
FG Unveils AI Public Services Platform

Federal government has launched GovGuideNigeria, an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered digital platform designed to streamline access to public service information through WhatsApp and the web.

The platform consolidates information from more than 35 federal ministries and over 60 government agencies, marking a significant step in Nigeria’s drive to expand AI-enabled public infrastructure and digital government services.
According to Bosun Tijani, Nigeria’s minister of communications, innovation and digital economy, the initiative aims to simplify interactions with government services, particularly for underserved communities that often face challenges navigating complex public-sector systems.
Developed in collaboration with the National Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Meta, and Publica AI, GovGuideNigeria uses conversational AI to provide real-time responses via WhatsApp and a web interface in English, Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba.
Sade Dada, head of public policy at Meta, said the multilingual rollout highlights the growing use of natural language processing within African public institutions to improve digital inclusion and broaden access to services.
Ignatius Willie, chief executive of Publica AI, said the platform demonstrates how Africa’s next generation of digital public infrastructure can be developed locally using African languages.
GovGuideNigeria is intended to address longstanding challenges in Nigeria’s public information system, where citizens often struggle to access reliable guidance because of fragmented government websites, poor communication channels and the expense of travelling to physical offices.
Through AI-driven automation, users can obtain information on immigration procedures, documentation requirements, public programmes and agency-specific services through chat-based interactions.
The launch also reflects Nigeria’s broader ambition to integrate AI into digital governance, while strengthening partnerships between government agencies, global technology companies and local AI startups to modernise public service delivery.
News
Elon Musk to Become First World’s Trillionaire with SpaceX Historic IPO

Elon Musk is poised to become the world’s first trillionaire after SpaceX, his company, confirmed plans to go public.

Elon Musk
Because Musk owns the majority of the shares, it could push his net worth over the trillion dollar mark.
The entrepreneur is known for his leadership of Tesla, SpaceX, X, and xAI.
Musk has been the wealthiest person in the world since 2025; as of May 2026, Forbes estimates his net worth to be $788 billion.
SpaceX has filed for a blockbuster public listing in the United States, paving the way for what could become the largest stock market debut in Wall Street history.
The company, formally known as Space Exploration Technologies, announced plans to begin trading under the ticker symbol “SPCX” as early as next month.
The listing values SpaceX at about $1.25 trillion, with Musk’s majority ownership potentially worth more than $600 billion alone.
Combined with his existing holdings in companies including Tesla, the IPO could push Musk’s personal wealth above the $1 trillion mark.
The long-awaited filing also offered investors a rare look into SpaceX’s finances.
The company reported $18.6 billion in revenue last year but recorded a net loss of $4.9 billion. In the first quarter of this year, SpaceX generated $4.7 billion in sales while posting a $4.3 billion net loss.
Financial disclosures showed the company holds $102 billion in assets, including rockets, launch infrastructure and satellite systems, while carrying debts totalling $60.5 billion.
Despite the losses, analysts suggested investors were unlikely to be deterred given SpaceX’s dominance in commercial space launches and satellite internet services.
Ruth Foxe-Blader, managing partner at Citrine Venture Partners, described the planned flotation as “extremely exciting.”
“SpaceX is just an absolutely sprawling, enormous project with so many different selling points, and so many points that really point to the future,” she said.
SpaceX operates the Starlink satellite internet network and also owns Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI.
The IPO filing revealed that xAI recently reached a major commercial agreement with rival AI company Anthropic, maker of the Claude chatbot.
Under the arrangement, Anthropic will reportedly pay $15 billion annually to access data centre infrastructure linked to xAI operations in the American South.
The filing also disclosed that SpaceX expects to incur more than half a billion dollars in legal costs from multiple ongoing lawsuits and regulatory disputes.
Among the cases listed were claims alleging that xAI’s chatbot Grok had been used to create sexualised deepfakes of women and girls, alongside patent infringement disputes, music copyright claims, data breach allegations and investigations into compliance with European Union content moderation rules.
Musk has previously said he plans to dissolve xAI as a standalone company and pursue his AI ambitions directly under SpaceX.
The filing came shortly after Musk lost a high-profile legal battle against OpenAI and its chief executive Sam Altman.
Musk had accused OpenAI of abandoning its non-profit mission after shifting towards a commercial model, but a jury dismissed the lawsuit, ruling that he had waited too long to bring the claims.
News
Moniepoint Boosts UK Payments Security

African financial services platform Moniepoint has partnered with open banking software-as-a-service provider tell.money to deploy a transaction security system in the UK market.

The companies said the partnership will allow Moniepoint to implement Confirmation of Payee, an account name-checking service designed to verify recipient details before payments are processed.
The integration will be rolled out through Monieworld, Moniepoint’s UK remittance subsidiary, as part of the company’s broader European expansion strategy.
Tell.money will provide the underlying verification technology, which the companies said is intended to reduce misdirected payments and help protect users against cross-border fraud.
Ravi Jakhodia, CEO of Monieworld, said: “Our goal with Monieworld is to build financial services for Africans in the diaspora.”
He added that tell.money was selected because it manages compliance and accreditation requirements, allowing the fintech company to focus on customer service.
Moniepoint is entering a competitive UK-to-Africa remittance market that includes established providers such as Wise, WorldRemit and Remitly, as well as African fintech firms including Flutterwave’s Send App.
According to data from the World Bank’s KNOMAD programme, remittance flows to low- and middle-income countries are estimated at about $620 billion annually, with digital -first platforms capturing increasing market share through open banking integrations and automated compliance systems.
The rollout reflects a broader trend of African fintech firms expanding into developed markets by adopting local regulatory and open banking standards.
Industry analysts expect diaspora-focused platforms to evolve beyond money transfers into services such as multi-currency banking, credit and investment products.
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