Don’t bank on self-employment.Parts 1

Policymakers increasingly consider youth entrepreneurship as a possible solution to the youth employment crisis. However, experts believe that only 20 percent of all people are fit to run their own businesses. Moreover, people with some experience are more likely to succeed as entrepreneurs.

Last year, the title of a report published by the World Economic Forum read: “Educating the next wave of entrepreneurs”. It was one more paper pointing out that entrepreneurship education serves to spur economic growth and that young people are crucial for the development of any society.

The argument is not new. As early as 1995, the United Nations’ “World Programme of Action for Youth to the Year 2000 and Beyond” called for more opportunities for self-employment. In 2001, an initiative of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and the World Bank, the High-level Panel of the Youth Employment job Network, stressed entrepreneurship, employability, equal opportunity and employment creation (‘the four Es”) as global policy priorities. Accordingly, the promotion of entrepreneurship was also considered one of eight core elements when the ILO reviewed its Global jobs Employment Agenda in 2003.

Entrepreneurship (including of youth) figured prominently in the Latin American and Caribbean Summit on Integration and Development in December 2008 and the Summit of the Americas in April 2009.

African countries like Uganda, Nigeria, Malawi, and Kenya started programmes to promote entrepreneurial skills. Several expectations are associated with youth entrepreneurship. Typical hopes are that:

§  Young people will find livelihoods for themselves and even provide livelihoods to others they employ once their businesses take off.

§  Alienated and marginalised young people will be brought back into mainstream society, thus stemming sociopsychological problems and delinquency that arise from unemployment.

§  Innovation will take hold due to young entrepreneurs’ particular awareness of new opportunities and trends, that entire communities will be revilitalised as young women and men develop new skills and attitudes that may serve them when rising to other challenges in life.

§  Entrepreneurship allows youth to develop new skills and experiences that can be applied to many other areas of life.

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