Elumelu Team Eyes $15bn Infrastructure Projects for West Africa

Nigerian businessman Tony Elumelu is part of a team considering a $15 billion pipeline of investment projects across West Africa, aimed at reducing the region’s infrastructure deficit, according to a Bloomberg report published on Thursday.

Elumelu, who is chairman of Heirs Holdings Limited and co-chair of the West Africa Integration and Investment Summit, worked with the team to identify projects that can be presented to lenders.

The project list is being put together ahead of the inaugural regional summit, which will hold in Sierra Leone in November.

Elumelu, founded Heirs Holdings in 2010 as a family-owned investment company. It holds interests in financial services, power, energy, oil and gas, hospitality, technology and healthcare.

Through Heirs, he holds a controlling stake in Transnational Corporation of Nigeria (Transcorp), the country’s largest listed conglomerate. Transcorp’s businesses include Transcorp Power, one of Nigeria’s major electricity generators, and Transcorp Hotels Plc. He also chairs Heirs Energies, which operates in oil and gas.

Before Heirs, Elumelu built his name in banking. He led the merger of Standard Trust Bank with United Bank for Africa (UBA) and served as UBA’s chief executive, taking it from a mainly Nigerian bank to a pan-African group. He was later its group chairman and retired from that role on August 21, 2026, when Emmanuel Nnorom succeeded him.

In 2010, he also founded the Tony Elumelu Foundation, which supports entrepreneurs across Africa.