l-r: Session Moderator and Professor at European Business School (ESCP Europe), Frédéric Ferrer; andChairman Heirs Holdings, Tony O. Elumelu CON; President & Managing Director ASEAN Business Advisory Council, Oudet Souvannavong; and   President of Proctor & Gamble Europe, Gary Combe,  at the Grand Opening of the 19th MEDEF Summer University, held in Paris, France on Tuesday.
At the recent MEDEF Summer University Forum in Paris, the annual meeting of French business and political leaders, Tony Elumelu, Chairman, Heirs Holdings and UBA Plc and Founder of the Tony Elumelu Foundation, stressed the opportunities Africa offers and urged stronger business relationships between France and Africa; calling for a deepening of commercial relationships based on mutual respect and interest.


The Forum is one of France’s leading gatherings, bringing together over 7,500 business and opinion leaders, including Heads of State, government officials, political and business leaders, academics and over 450 French and international journalists. Elumelu was one of the select representatives from Africa, where he contributed to the opening panel debate, ‘The World is Watching Us’.  Moderated by Frédéric Ferrer, journalist, consultant and professor at ESCP Europe, other participants were the President of MEDEF, Pierre Gattaz; Gary Coombe, President of Proctor & Gamble Europe; and Oudet Souvannavong, Executive Vice-President of the Lao National Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and President of Lao Hotel & Restaurant Association.

As a leading advocate for the African private sector and champion of African entrepreneurship, Elumelu began his speech by thanking France for the cordial business relationship between France and Africa. “When we as Africans look at France, we see a long standing friend of Africa. Looking forward, France and Africa must continue to partner in a manner that brings about positive change.”

Mr. Elumelu is known as the proponent of Africapitalism, the philosophy that Africa’s private sector can and should drive economic change on the continent. Fundamental to this is the role of entrepreneurship, which creates wealth and jobs on the scale needed in Africa. Mr. Elumelu pursued this theme, stating that the solutions to issues of social exclusion are enterprise and entrepreneurship. 

He urged France to look beyond its traditional relationships with Francophone countries, important as they are, and to embrace Anglophone and Lusophone Africa. He called on small and large businesses in France and in Africa to seek ways of collaborating in order to deepen economic ties.  “France has very strong links with Francophone Africa, and we would like to see you engage more commercially with the Anglophone countries; creating a new form of economic and commercial partnership between France and the whole of Africa,” he said.

Mr. Elumelu has long been an advocate of Africa on the rise and seized the opportunity to encourage businesses to invest on the continent, which has so much to offer in returns. He highlighted the role of Africans themselves investing on the continent, while making a call to the French public and private sector to do the same, stating that there is nowhere else that can give as much return on investment as in Africa.