Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Wennovation Hub CEO Wins Mentorship Award

The Mentorship Award was bestowed on the Managing Partner of LoftyInc and CEO of the Wennovation Hub,  Wole Odetayo by one of Africa's largest private philanthropic organizations: the  Tony Elumelu Foundation (TEF) on Saturday, August 11 2012.  

Mr Tony Elumelu, founder, The Tony Elumelu Foundation (TEF) and Chairman of Heirs Holdings (left) and Mr Mike Onolememen, Minister of Works (right), congratulating Wole Odetayo, CEO of Wennovation Hub and winner of the foundation’s Chief Ebitimi Banigo Award for Mentorship 2012 during TEF’s leadership development programme in Lagos, on Saturday.

The Award is the Chief Ebitimi Banigo Award for Mentorship. It's a fallout of LoftyInc/Wennovation Hub's current participation in their sponsored African Market Internship Program 2012 in which TEF seconded LBS-MBA student to us and partly, as a result of our disruptive "Lofty" initiatives in the tech space in Nigeria.

The Executive Partner of LoftyInc, Michael Oluwagbemi in a message to the team declared that, "we cannot have an effective ground team without a leader and that credit belongs to  Wole. I am incredibly proud of what we've been able to achieve this past year and a half together, and as I always in various forms.."we're just getting started"."

Indeed, the Wennovation Hub, Lagos Angel Network and very soon the Wennovation Hunt as well as the soon to be launched Wennovation Virtual Incubation Environment are all testimonies to the hard work of the Wennovation Team. So also are those dozen or so start-up companies the ecosystem supports between Nigeria, USA and Ghana. 


Wennovation Hub is a Lagos based Start-Up Accelerator focused on the ECOWAS market and the technology enabled sector(s). It is an initiative of the Africa Leadership Forum (the partner) and LoftyInc Allied Partners Limited (the operator). It provides access to space, broadband, mentors and funders through its hybrid eco-system: leveraging non-profit and for-profit philosophies. Focused on accelerating "wennopreneurs" from ideas to funding/commercialization, the pioneer class of Wennovation Hub members of four companies have obtained up to $500,000 in investor commitment with over 80% coming from local investors. More than nine start-ups are currently members of the Wennovation Hub ecosystem and to varying degrees the portfolio of the operator company.