Our Founder, Fola Adeola witnessed the hardships faced by young Nigerians seeking jobs during a job recruitment process at his bank in 1998. On that fateful day, Mr. Adeola, a renowned entrepreneur, Founder, and Pioneer Managing Director/CEO of GTbank, had put himself in the shoes of 2000+ job applicants, who applied for vacant roles where only a number of them could be taken. Despite the fact, most of these applicants were fit for these roles. He was disheartened by the lack of job placements for such young talented applicants who came from all over the country.
He wondered what happened next to the 2000 applicants. In his words, “where do they go” given the drastically high unemployment and poverty rate in the country. “If we keep rejecting 2000 candidates, we will create a society of extremely talented people who are not provided with work”. After that experience, Fola Adeola made it his problem to find ways to create jobs for such individuals in Nigeria who haven’t had the opportunity to be provided with work. The recruitment process was just a scaled-down reflection of how bad things were in the country. He thought to himself, the only solution was for these individuals to create such opportunities for themselves. But how will they go about it?
This was how FATE Foundation was born, to harness the strong entrepreneurial culture of Nigerians by providing aspiring entrepreneurs business incubation, growth and accelerator support required to fully explore their innovative potential, to start, grow and scale their businesses. The inception of FATE Foundation that focused on Entrepreneurs is referred to as; The FATE School.