The Global Entrepreneurship Congress took place in Manama Bahrain between April 16 to 18, 2019.  This is a yearly conference that brings together entrepreneurs, policymakers, investors, and startup champions to deliberate on different issues and find solutions affecting their local and even global Entrepreneurship Ecosystems.

This year Adenike Adeyemi, Executive Director and Amaka Nwaokolo, Team Lead Research and Policy attended the conference to share our stories and experience from the Nigerian and FATE perspective. During the conference, Adenike was on 3 panels to share her insights, answer questions and also give her recommendations on the different subject areas.

Details of the panels she was on are as follows:

Donors & Entrepreneurial Programmes

The Funding Sustainability Challenge. This session was powered by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Orange Corners, an initiative of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The table below summarizes the delegation, panel and discussion areas:

The Dutch delegation o  Robert van der Hum, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation|Policy coordinator

o  Theodore Klouvas |Program Manager Orange corners, Policy Advisor Youth Employment

o  Tim Spaans|Program Coordinator Orange Corners, Program Advisor Startup Finance
The Panel o  Julio Maria |Project Manager Orange Corners Mozambique

o  Josephine Ndao| Chief Entrepreneurship & SME Development Officer at African Development Bank Group

o  Mutaz Hassan | Project Manager Orange Corners Sudan

o  Joana van Halsema| Project Officer Economic Affairs & Orange Corners Angola

o  Ismael Soumahoro |Senior Analyst – Entrepreneurial Solutions Partners Ivory Coast

o  Adenike Adeyemi |Executive Director, FATE Foundation Nigeria
Discussion areas o  What is the role of donors in the Ecosystem?

o  Is donor funding damaging the sustainability of local programs?

o  How can donors harmonize their efforts better?

o  Should donors provide funds to Startups? If yes, in what form?

Establishing and Scaling High-Impact Mentoring Programmes

A Global Success Story. This session was powered by Youth Business International.

YBI Delegation o  Joanna Gray, United Kingdom | Director of Programme Delivery and Mentoring Lead – Youth Business International

 
The Panel o  Guillem Aris, Spain | CEO – Autoocupació

 
Discussion areas o  Explain the importance of mentoring and why this type of developmental support is essential.

o  Share the mentoring framework that has enabled YBI network members programmes to launch successful mentoring programmes.

o  Hear from a panel of mentoring practitioners and experts from around the world who are running mentoring programmes supporting entrepreneurs enabling delegates to ask questions and explore challenges.

o  An opportunity to experience how mentoring works through an interactive activity.

 

Ecosystem Diagnostics

Conducting a Gap Analysis. This session was powered by the Global Entrepreneurship Research Network (GERN).

GEN Delegation o  Dane Stangler, United States | Senior Policy Advisor – Global Entrepreneurship Network

 
The Panel o  Phil Auerswald, United States | Senior Advisor and Director – Global Entrepreneurship Network

o  Chad Renando, Australia | Director – Startup Status

o  Travis Hunter, United States | Associate Director – MIT Sloan Global Programs
Discussion areas o  Hear from experts who have developed models for analyzing ecosystem strengths and weaknesses

o  Explore why the explosion of programming for entrepreneurs and interest among policymakers in enabling ecosystems has met with mixed results in many countries

o  Examine how standardized datasets that are broad-based, able to keep pace in a fast-moving field, and reliable can be generated or gathered in a rigorous, consistent and cost-effective manner

o  Provide feedback to those leading the development of the kind of data framework that capture the best measures for evaluating programs and assessing ecosystem performance

o  Contribute to creating a community of “data ready” entrepreneurship support organizations

 

Global Entrepreneurship Research Network Annual Meeting

In this meeting, we discussed the FATE Foundation’s research activities along with that of other participating GERN member organizations.