Enterpreneurship education and youth unemployment challenges in Africa: Ghana in perspective

Abstract

Entrepreneurship education has the mandate to equip the youth with functional knowledge and skills to build up their character, attitude and vision. It has vital role in developing eco-system that promotes innovation and solving unemployment challenges of nations. Government of Ghana has initiated direct job creation interventions to address youth unemployment challenges. Examples include: Skill Training and Employment Placement (STEP) Programme (2002- 2004), National Youth Employment Programme (NYEP), now Youth Employment Agency (YEA) in 2006, Youth Enterprise Support (YES), now National Entrepreneurship and Innovation Plan (NEIP) in 2014, and the recent Nation Builders Corps. Despite the above efforts, unemployment rates in Ghana instead of reducing, increased from 2.15% in 2015, 2.26% in 2016 to 2.36% in 2017; whilst youth unemployment rate increased from 4.51% in 2015, 4.72% in 2016 to 4.9% in 2017. Therefore, this study attempts to conceptualize the relevance of entrepreneurial education to solving the youth unemployment challenges in Ghana.