Entrepreneurship development to address unemployment in Ghana
Reducing youth unemployment is one of the major challenges facing most governments in the world. With an estimated 88 million young women and men worldwide unemployed, the need for employment creation efforts focusing on youth is undeniable.
Advertisement
According to a recent study conducted by the International Labour Office (ILO), the youth are generally three and a half times more likely than adults to be unemployed. In 2015, approximately 660 million young people entered the workplace or were looking for work – an increase of 7.5 per cent over the 2003 figure. While bound up with the overall employment situation, this challenge has its own specific dimensions and therefore requires targeted responses.
Ghana has a youthful population. Results of the 2010 Population and Housing Census indicate that in 2010, 8,662,400 out of the estimated 24,658,823 (representing 35 per cent) people in Ghana were between the 15-34 years age cohort. The youth therefore constitute the vital force for national development. Effective harnessing of energies and capacities of the youth would give impetus to Ghana’s social, economic and political development efforts.
However, entrepreneurship development remains one of the biggest socio-economic challenges facing Ghana. Over the years, there have been a number of public efforts aimed at promoting employment and entrepreneurship especially among the youth.
But these entrepreneurship development initiatives have not achieved the desired results largely due to implementation bottlenecks. These include coordination and funding challenges as well as political patronage.
Initiatives
In recent times, there have been several initiatives, programmes and activities aimed at promoting entrepreneurship development in Ghana. These include proposals contained in medium-term national development programmes, the National Youth Policy, National Employment Policy (NEP), Captains of Industry Programme and Students in Free Enterprise Programme (SIFE). The others are the Skills Training and Entrepreneurship Programme, the Ghana Youth Employment and Entrepreneurial Development Agency (GYEEDA) and the Microfinance and Small Loans Centre (MASLOC).
However, the numerous policies and programmes on entrepreneurship development have not yielded the desired impact as a result of the numerous bottlenecks which entrepreneurs face. However, in spite of these initiatives, Ghana has not been able to create and maintain the favourable environment needed to foster youth employment and entrepreneurship development. There are a number of barriers which entrepreneurs in Ghana face. These include, weak and unreliable infrastructure, lack of legal and regulatory framework, lack of coordination among government agencies to ensure that the necessary resources are directed where they are needed just to mention but a few.
Enlarging the base of entrepreneurs
Entrepreneurship development (ED) refers to the process of enhancing entrepreneurial skills and knowledge through structured training and institution-building programmes. It basically aims to enlarge the base of entrepreneurs in order to hasten the pace at which new ventures are created. This accelerates employment generation and economic development.
Entrepreneurship development focuses on the individual who wishes to start or expand a business. Small and medium enterprise (SME) development, on the other hand, also focuses on developing the enterprise, whether or not it employs or is led by individuals who can be considered entrepreneurial. Furthermore, entrepreneurship development concentrates more on growth potential and innovation than SME development does. However, many of the lessons learned from experiences in both types of development are similar.
Entrepreneurship is promoted to help alleviate the unemployment problem, to overcome the problem of stagnation and to increase the competitiveness and growth of business and industries. Various attempts have been made to promote and develop entrepreneurship, by giving specific assistance to improve the competence of the entrepreneur and his enterprise so as to enhance his entrepreneurial objectives and accommodate more people to become entrepreneurs as well.
Ghana Employers’ Association, in its bid to promote entrepreneurship development in Ghana, has partnered the Trades Union Congress (Ghana) to advocate entrepreneurship development. The advocacy action, which has support from Business Sector Advocacy Challenge Fund (BUSAC Fund), is aimed at entrepreneurship development initiatives in the National Employment Policy (NEP) and how these can be implemented to promote entrepreneurship development in Ghana. The action further seeks to ensure the establishment of the National Employment Coordinating Council as proposed in the National Employment Policy.
Activities under the Entrepreneurship Development Advocacy Action
The following activities are being undertaken by TUC (Ghana) and GEA towards youth employment and entrepreneurship development in Ghana:
1. Three Stakeholders’ workshops have been held in Accra, Kumasi and Tamale on entrepreneurship development. The workshops were used to validate the views received across the country and further generate ideas on the way forward on entrepreneurship development in Ghana.
2. There has been documentation of priority areas for entrepreneurship development in the National Employment Policy for advocacy. This involved the development of common understanding between the TUC (Ghana) and GEA on the advocacy tools, targets (policies and programmes of advocacy).
3. A media engagement has been carried out to discuss the initiatives to enable the media carry information on entrepreneurship development.
4. Five sensitisation workshops have been held in Accra, Ho, Kumasi, Takoradi and Tamale to disseminate the content of the National Employment Policy and highlight areas for youth employment and entrepreneurship development for members of TUC (Ghana) and GEA.
5. GEA and TUC (Ghana) are engaging in dialogue with the government, represented by the Ministry of Employment and Labour Relations (MELR), on how entrepreneurship development initiatives identified in the National Employment Policy will be implemented.
Conclusion
The West African sub-region is marred by civil and armed conflicts as well as rising extremism. Extremist groups have preyed on idleness and joblessness among the youth in some West African states to fuel conflicts. In Ghana, rising unemployment among the youth has been identified as one of the most important threats to Ghana’s social, political and economic stability.
Therefore, to preserve Ghana’s peace and democracy, there is the urgent need to effectively harness and channel the energies of the youth towards productive ventures. Towards this end, effective youth employment and entrepreneurship promotion and development schemes are required.
The implementation of the advocacy action on entrepreneurship development will enhance the implementation of entrepreneurship programmes in Ghana. This is being achieved by engaging with public institutions mandated to implement youth employment and entrepreneurship development programmes.
It is also expected that the results achieved by this advocacy would serve as useful lessons and benchmarks for improvement of projects and activities aimed at promoting employment and entrepreneurship development in Ghana.
The writer is the CEO of the Ghana Employers Association.
Email: [email protected]
