FATE Foundation 2022 Impact Report

Dear ,As we close out on the 2022 year, I am pleased to share with you FATE Foundation’s 2022

Impact Report

 which presents a snapshot of our journey this year.  Across 20 states reaching all geopolitical zones, through our newly formed Divisions - The FATE School, The FATE Institute, and The FATE Giving, we continued the delivery of our mission to foster wealth creation by promoting business and entrepreneurial development among Nigerians. In our 22nd year, we are proud to have now reached a cumulative number of over 230,000 aspiring and emerging Nigerian entrepreneurs of which 7,438 are graduates from our pre-incubation, incubation, growth, and accelerator programs. This year, we were also able to connect over N131,926,671 in grant and loan financing to our entrepreneurs while also taking entrepreneurship further into 10 public tertiary institutions.

In our Impact Report, we share the highlights of this year captured along the following 6 areas that defined our most critical focal themes for 2022.

Expanding our Learning & Influence: Whether in-person, virtual or a mix, our goal remains the same: to enable aspiring and emerging Nigerian entrepreneurs  build sustainable businesses with knowledge and insight that are locally relevant while allowing them to play in the global space. This led us to commence the development of Nigerian SME case studies for use in our programs and publish 3 sector business guides across the fashion, recycling, and poultry farming sectors. We now have a total of 12 books available to Nigerian Entrepreneurs all of which can be gotten here.

Diversity & Inclusion: It was a remarkable year for our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion efforts at FATE Foundation as we set up a gender inclusion team and incorporated disability inclusion into our programming and delivery. Our class of graduating entrepreneurs is made up of 55% female entrepreneurs and 7% Persons with Disabilities. We appreciate the support of partners such as Youth Business International, the Standard Chartered Foundation and the Cherie Blair Foundation who made this possible.

Community Building & Engagement: One of the strongest areas of growth particularly as we moved back to in-person programming was our alumni community engagement. We relaunched our full consulting and advisory services; held our first 2-day Alumni Conference bringing members from across Nigeria and transitioned to a new Alumni Executive Committee ExCo leadership welcoming Toyin Bakare, CEO of SAS Textiles as the President of the 2022-2024 FATE Alumni ExCo.

Sustainability: Supporting small and growing businesses to accelerate global climate action led us to support and invest in entrepreneurship in the sustainability, climate change, and circular economy space. Our focus was on supporting them to review and adapt their business models to ensure a purpose-profit-planet fit. We appreciate the support of partners such as the Embassy of the Kingdom of Netherlands, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Netherlands and Mitsubishi for this.

Digital Enablement and Acceleration: Innovation and technology was our essential enabler in reaching more Nigerian entrepreneurs through our self-paced and facilitator-led programs alongside our digital platforms and channels.  With partners such as Meta, we were able to continue to have deep-dive pre-incubation programs that placed a strong emphasis of digital literacy and digital marketing for 240 early-stage entrepreneurs across 9 states in 2022. We also launched resources and platforms like our Alumni Hub to promote virtual engagement and access to market opportunities; and also launched the Business Plan  Developer Tool which allows our entrepreneurs an easier, accessible and affordable way to develop bankable Business Plans. We thank Crosswise Works for their support in launching our Alumni Hub platform.

Thought Leadership & Idea Exchange: Our quest for driving knowledge creation and translating research into evidenced-based Workshops Policies and programs led us to run quarterly workshops with other partners in the Nigerian entrepreneurship ecosystem and develop White Papers from these engagements. We now have over 16 Thought Leadership Reports on the Nigerian entrepreneurial ecosystem and MSMEs for stakeholders investing and supporting these spaces. We thank partners such as the Bank of Industry, Ecobank Nigeria, and the Small and Medium Enterprise Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN) for this. We also announced our 6 new FATE Institute Fellows who are working with us to develop more robust insights on the entrepreneurial ecosystem to influence our policy advocacy efforts.

This year’s impact report focuses on the above 6 thematic areas and much more.

On behalf of the FATE Foundation Board, Team, and our Community of Entrepreneurs, I say a huge Thank You to our 2022 Program Partners (Bank of Industry, BATN Foundation, Cherie Blair Foundation, Crosswise Works, Hague Institute for Innovation of Law, Lagos State Employment Trust Fund, GiZ, Meta, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Netherlands, Mitsubishi Corporation, SMEDAN, Stanbic IBTCBank, Standard Chartered Foundation, and Youth Business International) and the 292 volunteers who supported us this year to push the boundaries of entrepreneurial success within the urgency of our macro-economic challenges.As 2023 beckons, we remain committed to being curious, adaptive to learning, agile in responding to our entrepreneurial communities, and collaborating for impact. We look forward to having you join us in the coming year to accelerate the role of small and growing businesses in achieving socio-economic growth and impact at the national and sub-national levels.

We wish you a Happy and Impact Driven 2023. Adenike AdeyemiExecutive DirectorFATE Foundation