President Akufo-Addo has indicated that, the time has come for the country to take entrepreneurship seriously and drive the development of businesses and promote opportunities for young people to venture into entrepreneurial endeavour in many different fields.
In view of this, the President has assured that impediments largely found in the public sector, which include petty corruption and excessive regulation, which demoralize businesses will be removed to ensure that the businesses grow.
According to him, entrepreneurial talents abound within the youth, hence educational institutions must take a closer look at their curriculum content and the way they teach, so as to align it with present day realities.
“More and more these days across the globe, the value of a university is measured by how easily its graduates find jobs. This is a challenge that our own universities must face,” he said.
The President made these comments during the International Conference on Entrepreneurship, Business and Technology (ICEBUT) yesterday in Accra.
He pointed out the importance in developing partnerships between industry and universities to ensure that the next generation of business leaders is appropriately trained.
The President indicated that, “…entrepreneurial talents abound within the youth of our country. They just need an appropriate framework for their talents to shine.”
Nana Addo-Danquah Akufo-Addo also said, the time has come for a country like Ghana to take keen interest in developing its entrepreneurship base since “successful economies always depend on entrepreneurs running successful businesses.”
The President noted that it is in the interest of all stakeholders that those who set up ventures and take business risks are able to generate wealth, and that “this is the sector that must grow, for it is the sector that will provide the cure for our unemployment crisis.”
President Akufo-Addo noted that educational institutions would have to take a closer look at their curriculum content and the way they teach, and align it with present day realities, “… the value of a university is measured by how easily its graduates find jobs.”
The President also urged businesses to employ the use of technology in the running of their businesses as it “formalizes their operations without much cost.
“It is time to utilize them to the full, instead of the one-upmanship gadgets they tend to be currently. A smart phone can enable a market woman decide when the best time is to make the planned trip to the orange farm for her purchases, because she can see the state of the oranges from her home or office 200 kilometers away. That same smart phone would hold all the records of her previous transactions and enable her conduct her banking. The possibilities are endless and we have the opportunity to make rapid progress, with the aid of technology to create wealth,” he said.
President Akufo-Addo also urged for the development of “partnerships between industry and universities to ensure that the next generation of business leaders are appropriately trained. Our educational institutions need to know, at first hand, what is happening in industry and train their students accordingly. This is a fundamental imperative if we are to achieve best practice and create jobs. We ignore the teachings of two of the most powerful economies of our era, the German and the Chinese, to our cost.”
He averred that, when the public service becomes attractive as a source of money making, then “we must acknowledge to ourselves that we have things in the wrong order. It is in all our interests that those who set up ventures and take business risks are able to generate wealth. This is the sector that must grow, for it is the sector that will provide the cure for our unemployment crisis.”
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