K-Poly institutes revolving fund for graduates of IEED
The Institute of Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Development (IEED) of the Kumasi Polytechnic has launched a GH¢100,000.00 revolving fund to assist students of the institute to set up their own businesses.
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The fund is to provide a pool fund that could be assessed by the students of the institute to set up their own business after completing school instead of waiting for employment.
At a fundraising dinner dance organised by the institute, the Rector of Kumasi Polytechnic, Prof. N. N. N. Nsowah-Nuamah, said one of the major challenges facing graduates in setting up their own business was funding.
Lack of funds
He said, “Banks are not ready to provide funding, especially to startups. We have, therefore, decided to create a revolving fund to assist graduates of the IEED for the establishment of their ventures after school.”
Even though the objective of the establishment of the institute was to solve unemployment in the country, he said the lack of funds was defeating that purpose.
He said some students even abandoned the programme, especially in the third year, when they were unable to raise funds for their new venture, “which is the core of the entrepreneurship and finance programme”.
Graduate unemployment
Prof. Nsowah-Nuamah said although tertiary education had expanded in the country, leading to the turning out of many graduates by the institutions, “on the contrary, job creation has not seen a corresponding increase so there is a job deficit”.
To make matters worse, he said, most graduates looked for wage employment and “do not create employment”.
He said this was one of the reasons the IEED was established to produce graduates who would graduate and move into setting up their own businesses.
“Kumasi Polytechnic is the only tertiary institution in Ghana that offers practical entrepreneurship where students graduate into their ventures without chasing wage employment after school,” he stated.
Access
According to Prof. Nsowah-Nuamah, the time had come for the polytechnic to partner with seasoned entrepreneurs to attempt to solve graduate unemployment in Ghana.
He said funds raised would be put into a revolving fund where students from IEED “need to provide a winning business plan in order to access the fund”.
Policies
The Director of IEED, Dr Gabriel Dwomoh, said although the government had introduced a number of policies to encourage people to set up their own businesses, “these policies have not yielded their desired objective”.
He identified poor monitoring and management as the major challenge contributing to the failure of the policies, and called on the government to strengthen “these areas so that policies that are geared towards promoting entrepreneurship in Ghana can achieve their desired objective”.