Youth advised to create eco-friendly businesses
THE Minister for Employment and Labour Relations, Ignatius Baffour Awuah, has advised young entrepreneurs to create businesses centred on eco-friendly products and services to contribute to economic growth.
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“The urge to transit from today’s brown economy to an environmentally friendly and sustainable economy (green economy) imposes on us the need to develop and adapt innovative technologies that enable us to make efficient and sustainable use of the available resources.
It is these innovations and environmentally friendly technologies that create the green and circular economy,” he said.
Mr Awuah said this in a speech read on his behalf at the young entrepreneurs’ forum organised by Strategic Youth Network for Development (SYND) in Accra last Thursday on the theme: “Green Innovations for Sustainable Development: Empowering Young Entrepreneurs in Ghana.”
The forum presented an opportunity for young persons to wield their influence on green innovations, aimed at promoting environmental sustainability.
Acquiring skills
Mr Baffour Awuah indicated that acquiring skills for opportunities in the green economy was crucial for the youth.
He said by developing these skills, young individuals would not only contribute to a more eco-friendly future but also position themselves for career opportunities in a rapidly evolving job market.
“In as much as the green economy presents to us enormous potential for job creation, it is only when we facilitate people such as the young ones to acquire the skills and develop the entrepreneurial spirit to enable them to grow and manage green business that we can maximise the opportunities,” he said.
He explained that his ministry recognised the need for the country to contribute to the global agenda to address the impacts of climate change and transitioning of our economy from brown to green, adding that “we also recognise that the green economy presents enormous potential for job creation and we can take advantage of this, if we put in place the requisite measures”.
The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the National Youth Authority (NYA), Pius Enam Hadzide, explained that the public sector was not a sustainable way of creating the millions of jobs needed for the young people of Ghana as the government was already overburdened with expenditure.
He said addressing climate change presented numerous job opportunities in sectors such as sustainable agriculture and energy, therefore, the youth must be innovative enough to monetise solutions in climate change.
“There is a challenge as far as recruiting into the public space is concerned. Expanding the tax net can be a short-term objective but a more sustainable way to deal with the issue of unemployment is to position the young people to be innovative to create employment for themselves and others,” he said.
For his part, Executive Director for SYND, Chibeze Ezekiel, said the Young Green Entrepreneurs aimed at enabling the next crop of sustainable leaders, through the introduction and upscale of innovative solutions in combating the threat of climate change, supporting an effective energy transition and the creation of alternative sustainable livelihoods.