President of the Ghana Chamber of Young Entrepreneurs (GCYE), Sherif Ghali, has called on government to engage the youth to create more jobs in the country.
According to him, although it is not “everybody that can be an entrepreneur”, government in its own way can help the youth build capacity to set up businesses.
Mr Ghali revealed that the Chamber conducted a survey to find out the key challenges entrepreneurs face across the country and indicated that 60% of the responses were that young people lacked needed capacity to “run sustainable businesses”.
He stressed that despite “access to finance” placing second in the survey, the leading concern of the youth was capacity building, a phenomenon which he revealed must be addressed by government.
“Youth entrepreneurship is one key thing though it is not a panacea to solving this unemployment issue. But it’s one key thing the government can engage to support or create jobs. However, support those that are already doing the businesses… what the government can do is that, identify these young people, build their capacity… so they can employ more”.
Mr Sherif Ghali
Mr Ghali highlighted that Ghana is one of the “promising economies” that is very fertile for entrepreneurships. This, he explained, is as a result of the “many untapped opportunities” and innovations available to young people.
That notwithstanding, he indicated that policies churned out by the central government, which are directed towards creating an enabling environment for the young person to start to “grow and sustain a business” is what we are lacking.
“So, if you have an economy that is fertile for business but they are not direct policies that can support these young people, then at the end of the day nothing good is going to come out of it. Governments upon governments what basically they do is that they come up with policies for young entrepreneurs, when the young people are not even consulted”.
Mr Sherif Ghali
Government advised to create jobs
Touching on the 1 million jobs promised by government during the reading of this year’s midyear budget, Mr Ghali stated that he hasn’t seen “any practical action” from government with respect to job creation.
Mr Ghali revealed that government cannot keep promising one million jobs when we do not know the “impact of all our policies”.
“I will still go back to that issue I’ve always been hammering on. If we promise from 2017 to create 500,000 or 100, 000 jobs every year, how did that fair? It is only based on that we are able to see how we faired and the impact that we can build on what worked and what didn’t work”.
Citing the YouthBanc proposed by government in the midyear budget statement, Mr Ghali explained that if government follows through with the plan it will “provide that necessary support”.
For now, Mr Ghali noted that he hasn’t seen anything “practically” from government with regards to job creation for the youth.
“Currently, we have close to fifteen different interventions that are geared towards creating jobs. So, I’ve never been very elated about this one million jobs thing and I’m not surprised that we are not seeing anything. However, I will always say they are very good attempts”.
Mr Sherif Ghali
In concluding, Mr Ghali urged government to involve “key stakeholders” and young entrepreneurs whom policies are created for, to “engage” them.
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