Entrepreneurship Education, Managing Unemployment and Poverty Alleviation in 21st Century (Published)
This paper examined the courses of unemployment in Nigeria with a view to proffering practical solution to it so as to reduce poverty rate. Secondary data gathered from various sources such as: CBN reports et cetera covering the period between 1970 to 2014 were used. It employed the regression analysis as the analytical method E-views version 9 and found out that a percentage increase in population growth will increase unemployment by 4.94%. Also the study found a positive relationship between government educational expenditure and unemployment rate in Nigeria and lastly, the result showed there is a positive relationship between gross capital formation and unemployment rate in Nigeria. It concluded by recommending that development of entrepreneurial skills and initiatives through entrepreneurship and training should be of paramount importance especially in the higher education sector so as to facilitate the employability and creativity of graduates who will derivatively contribute wealth of the nation not only as job seekers, but also job creators.
Keywords: Entrepreneurship education, Poverty Alleviation, Unemployment, educational expenditure, gross capital formation
Entrepreneurship Development and Youth Employment in Nigeria: Perspectives on Selected Entrepreneurship Schemes (Published)
The study examined the relationship between entrepreneurship development and youth employment in Nigeria. It focused on two empowerment schemes: Youth Entrepreneurship Development Programme (YEDP) and Youth Initiative for Sustainable Agriculture in Nigeria (YISA). The nation’s unemployment record, especially among youth, is alarming. A National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) report in 2018 shows that, out of the 85million labour force in Nigeria, 34million are unemployed and underemployed youths, with 25million largely uneducated. The YEDP and YISA schemes were designed to train and make youths entrepreneurs that would be self-employed and also employ others. Therefore, the main objective of this paper is to show that in spite of the conscious and frantic efforts by government and non-governmental organizations through the framework of YEDP and YISA to address the unemployment challenge in the country not so much has been achieved. The study revealed that the programmes have created a number of entrepreneurs and employment for young people across the country. Nonetheless, these efforts have not significantly yielded the desired outcomes of massive job creation for the youths and ensuring national food security. To achieve desired results, using the agricultural value chain, there is need to adopt scientific knowledge based agricultural production. Hence the paper concluded that for Nigeria to address the twin challenges of massive unemployment and national food insecurity agricultural activities should be scientific and greatly modernized. The study recommended, among other things, that integrated farming approach, involving large variety of activities per hectare should be adopted and there should be substantial investment in R&D to generate new ideas and high yielding seeds for the new entrepreneur-farmers.
Keywords: Entrepreneurship, Food Security, Uneducated., Unemployment, Value Chain, Youths
Women in Entrepreneurship in Emerging Economies (Published)
Some of the greatest challenges being faced globally especially in the 3rd World countries are issues bordering on unemployment, poverty, terrorism and other social ills. Efforts must be made by any progressive government to eradicate these or reduce them to the barest minimum in order to promote the economic development of a nation. A sure way to do this is to promote entrepreneurship as this is seen as the ‘engine’ of economic growth and development of a nation. The population of the women folk is 49.36 per cent of the total population in Nigeria as at 2011 (World Bank Report) A nation that is determined to progress and boost its economy must realise the economic potentials of women and invest in developing the entrepreneurial acumen of this gender who traditionally are discriminated upon and face many constraints when venturing into businesses apart from their traditional roles of home keeping. These constraints may be in form of access to credit facilities, land and other infrastructures, legal, education, family and cultural issues. The women folk are naturally endowed with special skills such as negotiating skills, endurance and other soft skills as pillars of the family. If these constraints that serve as barriers to their economic development are removed, expose them to entrepreneurship education and they are empowered to start their businesses or scale them up, it will go a long way in improving their standard of living and economic potentials, boost their self-confidence as a person, improve their family, their community and the foreign exchange earnings of the nation. Investing in women entrepreneurship development should therefore be seen as investing in our collective future. This will reduce incidences of crime, terrorism, kidnapping and other social ills plaguing the country, and our country ranked among the advanced economies of the world.
Keywords: Unemployment, Women Entrepreneurs, and entrepreneurship education., special skills