VOSS, NORWAY — Billionaire hedge fund manager Paul Tudor Jones wants to save Africa.
The Greenwich, Conn.-based tycoon and philanthropist is one of the largest money men behind the recently formed nonprofit African Community & Conservation Foundation (ACCF), which is behind a campaign to safeguard vast tracts of land and wildlife that stretches from Zambia to South Africa.
“Paul Tudor Jones, our founder, is really focused on how do we protect the wildlife population and the people around properties, as well as on how do we protect the natural environment in the region,” Brady Forseth, CEO of ACCF, told The Post on the sidelines of Norway’s Startup Extreme conference last week.
Forseth, a native of Long Island, was here in the Land of the Midnight Sun at one of Europe’s most unusual startup conferences, promoting the new nonprofit to the hundreds of investors and startup representatives present.
“We’re here to make connections,” said Forseth, pitching the innovation aristocracy and investors from Norway and Europe, and from as far away as New York’s Silicon Alley. They bonded over whitewater rafting, paragliding and hiking in the nearby mountains — and a long, beer-inspired midsummer night pre-conference bonfire party in Oslo.
“We know that 15 percent of people who support our cause are Nordics,” Forseth said.
Nordic enthusiasm aside, Tudor’s new nonprofit is also big on social media, garnering over 90,000 followers on Facebook since its recent official inception. The board’s star wattage includes singer-songwriter Dave Matthews and boxing legend Evander Holyfield.
“In some ways, we’re sort of like the Robin Hood Foundation of Africa,” said Forseth, referring to the anti-poverty nonprofit also founded by Jones.
Jones has a reported net worth of $5.1 billion and certainly is an African explorer. In 2002, he embarked on his continental adventures, leasing 340,000 acres of land in Tanzania.
Conservation was a priority. But despite his widespread philanthropy — he co-founded the Everglades Foundation and once guaranteed college scholarships to motivate students at an underperforming public school — Jones’ home in Greenwich was picketed in 2015 by a coalition protesting the influence of hedge funds in New York politics.
Forseth said African Community & Conservation has been well received across the social board.
“We are starting to snowball,” he said.