Team Details
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Fanto Foday
Program Operations Lead
With over seven years of handson experience across West and East Africa, Fanto Foday has become a specialist in turning raw potential into measurable employment. Her work has always asked one question: What happens after the training? The answer, she has learned, is structure, partnerships, and relentless followthrough.
About Fanto Foday
Fanto does not just build programmes. She builds bridges between untapped talent and the industries that desperately need them.
At Ventures Park, a leading West African innovation hub, Fanto took 15 tech startups from idea to minimum viable product. She did not just oversee their growth; she connected them to real opportunities. By brokering a partnership with MTN Nigeria, she helped 50 founders collaborate on product cocreation and market access. She also designed sectoral webinars that directly shaped programme development, ensuring that earlystage talent learned what employers needed.
While at UNDP Kenya, Fanto threw herself into the Timbuktoo Greentech Accelerator Program. She assessed 35 highpotential African startups from a pool of over 660 applicants, working handson with ventures in renewable energy, Agrictech, and circular economy. This gave her an insider’s view of the talent gaps that emerging green industries face. She also conducted due diligence on five privatesector green energy projects, helping mobilise $340,000 in climate finance. That experience taught her how to match skilled people with growing sectors, not just in theory, but on the ground.
Earlier, at Civic Innovation Lab, Fanto secured $230,000 from Google and Oracle to scale digital education for underserved communities. She trained over 500 children in foundational digital skills and, more importantly, forged strategic training partnerships with IBM and Microsoft Nigeria. She learned that a curriculum means nothing without a direct line to employers. Every partnership she built came with a placement pathway.
Across all her roles, Fanto has mobilised resources at scale. At UNDP Kenya, she developed partnership strategies that identified over $2 million in funding opportunities. She updated the Quantum UNITY tracking system, improving reporting accuracy by 20%. She does not just dream of largescale talent networks; she has built the financial and operational scaffolding to make them real.
PanAfrican Credibility
Selected as one of 36 fellows from over 12,000 applicants for the AUUNDP African Young Women Leaders Programme, Fanto brings a continentwide perspective.
More of the team
Justin Ibhenbisa (AKA Justin Bisa)Program Director
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