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Continued from previous page
Ndidi Okonkwo Nwuneli, W'95
It was during the summer of 1998
in Hebron in the West Bank that a pointed
question from a Palestinian entrepreneur
indelibly defined Ndidi Okonkwo
Nwuneli's future.
She was consulting for the Center for
Middle East Competitive Strategy while
getting her MBA at Harvard when an
entrepreneur she was advising asked her,
"Why are you helping us in our country
when yours is such a mess?"
"I think this was a defining moment
for me," says Nwuneli, a native of
Nigeria and the founding executive
director of the FATE Foundation, a
two-year-old nonprofit organization
created to foster wealth in Nigeria via
entrepreneurship.
Nwuneli returned to McKinsey,
where she had begun her post-Wharton
career, for seven months after graduating
with her MBA. But she continued to
think about Nigeria, a nation torn apart
by government corruption and poverty,
and how she could use her education
and experience to help her people.
A phone call from Fola Adeola, managing
director of Nigeria's Guaranty Trust
Bank whom she had met after a speech
he made, gave her a place to start. Adeola
shared Nwuneli's view that wealth creation
through entrepreneurship, rather
than programs designed to alleviate
poverty, would help Nigerians improve
their lives. He wanted to target Nigeria's
recent college graduates, 70 percent of
whom are unemployed, with a nonprofit
foundation that would provide the skills,
tools, networks, and financing necessary
to ultimately start thousands of new
businesses capable of employing tens of
thousands of Nigerians.
Nwuneli, excited by the prospect
of returning to Nigeria to lead a project
she believed could help thousands of
Nigerians, pulled together a strategic
plan outlining how FATE could and
should evolve. Shortly thereafter,
Nwuneli became FATE's first executive
director. She resigned her post at
McKinsey, moved back to Nigeria,
and founded FATE in March of 2000.
A developing country, Nigeria faces
massive hurdles and societal problems.
Per capita income is less than $300 per
person, and 69 percent of the population
live on less than a dollar a day,
despite the fact that, as Africa's leading
oil-producing country, Nigeria produces
more than 10 percent of the oil used in
the United States. "It's a very corrupt
country, and very little trickles down to
the masses," says Nwuneli. In the early
1990s, massive government spending
ballooned the budget deficit. Interest
rates and inflation soared, and more
recent government efforts to reduce the
county's dependence on oil exports and
sustain noninflationary growth have
failed, in large part because of endemic
corruption.
Nigeria's shrinking economy and
dependence on oil exports means that
very few jobs exist, even for Nigerians
with college degrees. "This is why crime
and prostitution rates are increasing in
Nigeria," Nwuneli says. "We have all
these recent graduates who feel that they
have skill, and relative to everyone are
actually quite privileged. But they still
can't get jobs. So you have all these people
sitting around idle," she says. While
governments of other developing countries
have recognized small business
development as one way to improve
economic growth, Nigerian initiatives
have instead focused on very small,
"micro" entrepreneurs in rural areas,
leaving the country's recent college
graduates with few options.
Nwuneli and Adeola hope to change
this. With the help of donors, including
the Seven-Up Bottling Company, the
Ford Foundation, and Arthur Andersen,
Nwuneli and the FATE staff created
three programs. The core program,
The FATE Programme for Aspiring
Entrepreneurs, combines a five-month
educational program with mentoring
and a financing support plan for recent
graduates.
Three classes have now graduated
from the program, and Nwuneli has
learned some critical lessons along the
way. "We found with our first class that
despite the fact that many people are
unemployed, they are not necessarily
motivated to improve their situations,"
she says. Fifteen of the program's initial
20 students (190 applied for admission)
graduated, but only four businesses got
off the ground, and problems such as
spotty attendance and tardiness were
common.
"What we saw was that we had to get
tougher with the standards," she says.
FATE officials tightened admissions
standards, forcing applicants to take an
examination, write an essay, and come
for an interview. Once accepted, students
were also expected to attend classes
regularly and on time. "When people
were late for class, we locked the door.
Participants who missed consecutive
classes were asked to leave the program,"
she says. "We are trying to teach
them that starting a business requires
discipline."
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