2024, Halisi Africa Discoveries was selected among the Kenyan beneficiaries of the Tony Elumelu Foundation Entrepreneurship Programme, a continent-wide initiative that backs early-stage businesses with funding, training, and long-term mentorship.
The programme is known for the scale and competitiveness of its selection process. Each year, hundreds of thousands of applications are submitted from across Africa, with a small percentage progressing through business viability screening, financial modelling assessments, and impact evaluation before final selection. In Kenya, only a limited number of ventures are chosen to represent a wide spread of sectors, from agriculture and manufacturing to digital services and tourism.
Halisi’s inclusion places it within a cohort of businesses that are not only commercially viable, but also rooted in solving real, local challenges.
What stood out in the selection process was the clarity of Halisi’s model. Rather than positioning travel as a transactional service, the company operates within a regenerative framework, designing journeys that intentionally direct value back into the communities that host them. This includes working with women-led experiences, prioritising locally owned supply chains, and structuring itineraries that move beyond high-traffic circuits into places where tourism can have a more balanced and meaningful impact.
The Tony Elumelu Foundation programme itself runs beyond seed funding. Selected entrepreneurs go through a structured cycle that includes business management training, mentorship from industry professionals, and access to a pan-African network of founders navigating similar growth challenges. The emphasis is on building businesses that can sustain themselves, scale where appropriate, and create employment.
For Halisi Africa Discoveries, this recognition came at a stage where the company was refining its positioning within Africa’s evolving tourism landscape. Being part of the 2024 cohort provided not just validation, but access to tools and conversations that sharpen how the business thinks about growth, partnerships, and long-term impact.
It also situates tourism within a broader entrepreneurial context. In many cases, travel is not immediately seen alongside sectors like energy or technology in innovation spaces. Yet its ripple effects, on livelihoods, cultural preservation, and local economies, are significant. Being part of this cohort reinforces that tourism, when intentionally designed, belongs in these conversations.
The work ahead remains grounded in the same thinking that brought Halisi into the programme. Building itineraries that are slower, more deliberate, and more connected to place. Working with partners whose stories are often overlooked. And ensuring that growth does not dilute the original purpose, but strengthens it.
This milestone becomes part of a wider trajectory. Not as a standalone achievement, but as one of several signals that the direction Halisi is taking, towards community-centred, regenerative travel, is both relevant and necessary within Africa’s tourism future.
