Tony Elumelu, a successful Nigerian businessman, has started a foundation and invested $5 million with colleagues in 1997 to buy a weak Nigerian bank and then merge it with another group to become the most significant bank in West Africa. His approach is to encourage African businesses to promote economic growth and thereby to alleviate poverty. He calls this promoting of entrepreneurship "Africacapitalism". The effort combines supporting entrepreneurship, advocating government policies friendly to new enterprises, and providing capital to business with social purposes. (see "The Giveaway," by Caroline Preston, http://www.philanthropy.com/, May 30, 2012)
This African-led approach is spreading throughout the continent through the Tony Elumelu Foundation, the Mo Ibrahim Foundation (originating in the Sudan, but headquartered in London), and other African-led efforts. For more on African self-reliance approaches, see http://www.tonyelumelufoundation.org/.
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