Empirical Review of Entrepreneurial Youth Empowerment Initiatives in South-Western Nigeria

Abstract

Youth empowerment prepares candidates for new venture initiation by transferring knowledge and developing relevant skills that improve the self-efficacy and effectiveness of the potential entrepreneur. Entrepreneurial opportunity recognition is a relevant vehicle for economic development contributing to youth employment worldwide. Over a 50-year period, the Federal, State Government and Private Institutions have established many initiatives with the aim of promoting entrepreneurship. Examples of these Federal youth empowerment initiatives are N-power, Youth Enterprise with Innovation in Nigeria (YouWin), Youth Empowering People (YEP), Graduate Internship Scheme (GIS), African Youth Empowerment Nigeria (AYEN), TraderMoni, Youth Initiative for Sustainable Agriculture in Nigeria (YISAN) and Presidential Youth Entrepreneurship Support (P-YES). The entrepreneurial components of the youth empowerment programmes of the state government are merely underplayed. Youth empowerment coordinators have not been able to engage empowerment beneficiaries to create and connect entrepreneurial components into an interactive and sustainable business start-up. The study adopts empirical study explored the entrepreneurial youth empowerment initiatives of youths to become self-employed after their initiatives from various empowerment schemes. Qualitative research is concerned with gaining an in-depth understanding of human issues. Findings show that business opportunity recognition influences business sustainability of small-scale businesses. This implies that impact of identifying business opportunities, entrepreneurial knowledge, spotting a particular business industry, transforming business ideas into reality and empowerment initiatives structures influence business sustainability of youth empowerment candidates. The study concludes that entrepreneurial empowerment initiatives have to prepare candidates for new venture opportunities by transferring knowledge and developing relevant skills. The study recommended that state government and private organizations (empowerment organizers) need to create an environment where youth empowerment beneficiaries can identify business opportunities. This will improve the performance by improving business sustainability.