The National Service Scheme (NSS) and the Ghanan Enterprises Agency (GEA) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to nurture the entrepreneurship skills of young entrepreneurs and graduates.
Under the one-year pact, 15,000 young entrepreneurs would be trained through the Innovation, Creativity and Entrepreneurship (ICE) component of the GEA/ Mastercard Foundation Young Africa Works programme.
A total of 5,000 graduates would be aided to prepare their own business plans while 2,000 young entrepreneurs would be helped to start their own businesses.
The GEA Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Mrs Kosi Yankey-Ayeh and the Executive Director of the Scheme, Osei Assibey Antwi, signed the MoU in Accra last Wednesday.
Mrs Yankey-Ayeh said the youth was at the heart of government policies because they make up the majority of the population and that the intervention must be designed to ensure that they also live in an environment where they can contribute to socio-economic development.
The partnership, she said, was to strengthen the relationship between the two institutions and support the government’s vision of creating employment and business to support the teeming youth unemployment in the country.
“What we seek to do with this partnership is to support and design a business development programme to identify the youth who are coming through the NSS who are interested in starting their own businesses and helping them through the various intervention programmes we have,” she said.
On his part, Mr Assibey, said the MoU was in line with the NSS’ resolve to position itself as an agent to create employment for the youth as directed by the President, Nana Akufo-Addo, in addition to its mandate of mobilising and deploying the graduates.
“This year, for instance, we have done more than 110 deployments, but the sad aspect of it is that at the end of the year, you will see them going home. So what do we do to retain them?” he said.
To address this problem, Mr Assibey said the NSS had created an employment hub to help unemployed graduates through institutional collaboration with GEA and others.
He said the pact with MoU was the first of three pilot projects, adding that there was another with the Agri-Impact, a body that is into green housing, and vegetable growing and exports them.
“So, as for the graduates, they have a lot of skills, so our prayer and main goal is to collaborate with the GEA/Young Africa Works in creating dignified work for the Ghanaian young people because they have the know-how.
“They are professionals. Now that the youth have gone into tertiary education, they have gotten the know-how. What is left now is for us to sharpen their skills a little bit so that they can be on their own because a lot of them went into university with the mindset that with you supporting us, we can do a lot, and now the Ghanaian youth will have a future,” he said.
BY JONATHAN DONKOR
