Three thousand two hundred young Ghanaians have received entrepreneurship training covering areas such as product design, starting a business and financial management.
The beneficiaries were drawn from the Greater Accra, Ashanti, Bono, Bono East and Ahafo regions
Mr Allan Rutt, Country Director, British Council Ghana who announced this at an SME trade festival dubbed ‘Jobs for youth’ held in Accra to enhance and sharpen the entrepreneurial skills of the youth.
He said after their training, the beneficiaries were inducted into the enterprise club, which organised business talks, facilitated networking and providing business information and support.
The Country Director said after the entrepreneurship training, 400 enterprises were selected from the trainings of British Council, Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) and NBSSI to receive three months business incubation services that enabled them to develop their enterprises and innovations into viable businesses.
He indicated that, Ghana had a young population and estimated that 75 per cent of Ghana’s population is under 35 years.
Adding that “considering the valuable potential of young people, this initiative presents a huge opportunity for Ghana to build and grow its developing economy”.
He stressed that, to maximise the potential of young people to contribute to the economy, they needed to be provided with the right skills, support and opportunities.
The project he explained was funded by the GIZ and implemented by the British Council, aimed to compliment efforts by the government and other stakeholders in providing sustainable support to young people to create jobs for themselves and other young people through skills development, business incubation and acceleration as well as seed funding, access to markets and networking.
According to Gideon Mankralo, Employment Advisor at GIZ, the organisation is dedicated to building a future worth living around the world and would continually act as a provider of international cooperation services for sustainable development and international education.
“Ghana’s economic growth rest largely on the private sector and regardless of the continuous effort by the government and other development partners in implementing interventions towards job creation, youth unemployment and joblessness was still high,” he stated.
BY ALFRED NII ARDAY ANKRAH
.
