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.
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