Youth equipped with entrepreneurial skills in north

MORE than 120 youth, comprising females and males from the Northern, North East and Savannah regions, have undergone a five-day entrepreneurial skills training to enable them to start their own ventures.

The initiative is aimed at promoting entrepreneurship among the youth to help reduce the unemployment situation in the area.

Organised by the Empowerment for Life Programme and the Ghana Enterprise Agency (GEA), it also seeks to equip participants with essential knowledge and skills in entrepreneurship. 

Reduce unemployment 

Speaking to the media at the training at Dalun, the Programmes Manager of the Empowerment for Life Programme, Abdul-Jabaru Mohammed, explained that the idea was to empower the youth to create employment for themselves and also recruit other young people.

"After this training, we'll do very close monitoring, discussions, collaboration and mentoring to see if they are able to actually establish businesses.

“Those who already have, we will see if they can expand and diversify their income sources," he said.

He said unemployment had become a major challenge facing the country, which the government alone could not address, adding that the surest way to address the menace was to equip the youth with entrepreneurial skills.

Advice 

The Technical Advisor for Youth Advocacy and Gender at the Empowerment for Life Programme, Abdul Ganiw Alhassan, said some of the participants already had businesses but they did not have the requisite knowledge to run them.

"Young people complete various forms of education, but for the lack of an entrepreneurial mindset, they are unable to start their own businesses, and we cannot keep waiting for the government or other agencies to do all their magic," he said.

The Head of Business Advisory at the GEA in the Kumbungu District, Bridgette N. Sheini, advised the youth to always consider registering their business to enable them to benefit from government interventions and other funding opportunities.

Some of the participants who spoke to Daily Graphic thanked the organisers for the training and said it would help them to create their own businesses.