Youth Entrepreneurship: Essential Tool for Socio-economic Development and Growth

Abstract

A consistent surge in the population of young people in prior years made it imperative for attention to issues related to youth unemployment to transcend national borders to include regional and global levels. Thus, issues related to youth, specifically youth unemployment, gained global recognition several decades ago. However, the decades-long initiatives of the United Nations to address youth unemployment challenges have yielded little or no socio-economic results. The purpose of this research was to examine the implications of youth unemployment rates for national and global unemployment rates during the research period. The quantitative approach to scientific inquiry was adapted and used in the study. Specifically, a cross-sectional design formed the basis of the research. Data required for the conduct of the research were obtained mainly from secondary sources. These included textbooks, peer-reviewed articles published in journals and grey literature from youth advocates. Other sources were Google Search Engine, including Ghana Statistical Service, Ghana’s Ministry of Youth and Sports, UN, UNESCO, UNICEF, UNCTAD, UNFPA, UNDP, OECD and EU, and electronic databases of the World Bank, ILO and Commonwealth, among other significant sources. Respective data on Ghana’s annual youth unemployment rates and national unemployment rates from 2000 through 2019, as well as respective 2019 national youth unemployment rates and national unemployment rates for one hundred and eighty-seven (187) economies, were used in the research. Descriptive statistics and regression models were used to describe the research variables and to evaluate their behaviour over the stated time frame on national and global unemployment rates. The study revealed that widespread joblessness is taking an adverse toll on this generation’s ability to contribute its meaningful quota towards a prosperous, happy and healthy future. The level of progress made in business development by most advanced, emerging and developing economies was not found to have a strong relationship with youth-centred policies and programmes. As of 2016, the United States and Canada had no national youth policy. Findings from the research revealed a positive and significant relationship between the youth unemployment rate and national unemployment rate (coefficient value = 0.489206843; p = 0.000, p < 0.05) and a positive but non-significant relationship between global youth unemployment rate and global unemployment rate (coefficient value = 0.447986211; p = 4.60249, p > 0.05). Youth unemployment rate accounted for about 52.97% of the variation in national unemployment rate; while global youth unemployment rate accounted for about 86.05% of the variation in global unemployment rate during the period. The statistical analysis confirmed and validated, to a large extent, the severity of the youth unemployment phenomenon at the national level, a clarion call for active participation of the youth in policy formulation and implementation process, and the need for expeditious implementation of youth intervention programmes such as youth entrepreneurship to assure effective participation of the youth in the national development agenda. There is an urgent need for global economies to thoroughly examine their existing financing models and emerge with financial products tailored to address the specific financial needs of participating young people to ensure the success of intended youth development programmes. Encouraging performance-based lending to the neglect of collateral-based lending would draw each economy closer to the realisation of this objective. Embedding youth entrepreneurial initiatives in well-rehearsed and thought-out national youth policy and walking the talk through practical implementation would facilitate the transformation of current and projected increase in regional and world youth populations from socio-economic liabilities to competitive, productive and invaluable assets at the national, sub-regional, regional and global levels.