Business
Tony Elumelu Spotlights Hardest Decisions In Leadership, Tells Solution
a lesson many leaders discover too late.
Leading investor Tony Elumelu has spotlighted what the hardest decisions in leadership are usually about.
“The hardest decisions are rarely about numbers. They’re about people,” one of Africa’s foremost investors and philanthropists shared on Monday, July 21, 2025.
The Chairman of United Bank for Africa (UBA)—the financial services group whose artificial intelligence chatbot, LEO, is the first to enable cross-border payments across Africa—provided context, explaining:
“You don’t build successful companies by focusing on profit first. You build them by focusing on people, and profit follows.”
Elumelu, the proponent of Africapitalism—a development approach that positions the private sector, especially entrepreneurs, as the catalyst for Africa’s social and economic development—added that he was fortunate to learn this lesson early in his career, a lesson many leaders discover too late.
“Today, every decision I make at Heirs Holdings or UBA Group still comes back to this: Empower people, create value, and then measure the success,” the extraordinary entrepreneur stated.
While UBA is one of Africa’s largest employers of labour—serving over 45 million customers globally and operating in more than twenty African countries, as well as the United Kingdom, United States of America, and France—Heirs Holdings, which he founded and chairs, is his family-owned investment company. It is committed to improving lives and transforming Africa through long-term investments in strategic sectors of the continent’s economy, including financial services, hospitality, power, energy, technology, and healthcare.
Both entities—and others Elumelu is involved with—are major contributors to the African economy.
A prominent champion of shared prosperity across Africa, particularly through the Tony Elumelu Foundation (TEF), Elumelu stressed that focusing on people development is “the mindset Africa needs for sustainable prosperity.”
TEF is credited with elevating about two million Africans out of poverty, providing an estimated 2.5 million young people with access to training via TEF-Connect, and disbursing more than $100 million in direct funding to thousands of African entrepreneurs. These businesses are estimated to have created nearly two million direct and indirect jobs and contributed approximately $3.2 billion in revenue to the continent’s economy.
