Chemistry Entrepreneurship: A Panacea for Chemistry Graduates Unemployment-The Nigerian Experience (Published)
This study sought to examine chemistry entrepreneurship as a panacea for chemistry graduates unemployment in Nigeria. The recent economy recession world-wide and particularly in Nigeria has necessitated the need to make a paradigm shift from consuming economy to producing economy. For any nation to attain the status of producing economy, its citizens must have acquired entrepreneurial skills in all sectors of the economy. Entrepreneurship is the capacity and willingness to develop, organize and manage a business venture along with any of its risks in order to make a profit. The notion to become an entrepreneur in Nigeria is fast gaining ground in the face of little or no government jobs. The labour market is gradually becoming more attractive to graduating students as they want to be self-employed and independent.In view of all these, there is the need to entrench entrepreneurship education into our school curricula at all levels of education, most especially the higher institutions. This being as it is, there is need for inclusion of chemistry entrepreneurship in the chemistry curriculum most especially for our higher education students.Chemistry entrepreneurship being offered as a course will equip the students with the knowledge and skills to convert innovations from researches in chemistry into marketable products for commercial gain. Many of the household materials being used on daily basis are the products of innovations from chemistry researches. Such household materials as soap, candle, cream, toothpaste, slippers, shoe polish, insecticides, herbicides among others are enough, if invested in, to make a chemistry graduate a wealth creator instead of a job seeker.In view of the above, the paper recommends that the Nigerian government should prioritise, generally the academic entrepreneurship and particularly chemistry entrepreneurship in all our higher institutions, as this will go a long way in arresting the spate of chemistry graduates unemployment and also strengthen the nose-diving economy in the country.
Keywords: Chemistry entrepreneurship, Innovations, Knowledge, Skills, Wealth Creation