Deputy Trade and Industry Minister in Charge of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), Nana Ama Dokua Asiamah-Adjei, has launched the 2022 edition of Ghana Startups and SMEs Week with a call on Ghanaians to be driven by the desire to create their own businesses.
This, she said, is the only way the country’s debilitating graduate unemployment challenge can be solved; and as well, it serve as the fulcrum of economic recovery.
“We need to be able to develop our entrepreneurial skills. Those who have been able to set up organisations that are now worth millions were not born with blue or green blood. It’s not the colour of anybody’s skin or hair, but rather the ability to utilise their brains first and foremost and building ourselves in terms of discipline…rather than giving unnecessary excuses,” she said
She added: “We need to be able to equip ourselves a lot more, and we should also be able to take ourselves out of the idea of entitlement and rather equip ourselves with the idea of pushing to get where we will want to get to. If you come in with entitlement, you will only get disappointed”.
The Deputy Trade and Industry Minister made these remarks when delivering the keynote address at the 2022 edition launch of the Ghana Startups and SMEs Week at the Accra Digital Centre on Monday, September 13, 2022.
She said graduates departing from reliance on government for employment opportunities will mark a new dawn in the country’s development agenda: citing an African Development Bank (ADB) study that revealed an unprecedented growth in the number of tech-related startup entrepreneurs on the continent.
Building competitive startups and SMEs to create jobs
Touching on the country’s startups and SMEs ecosystem, madam Asiamah-Adjei said government has put in place several critical measures aimed at ensuring the SMEs and startups ecosystem drive the covid-era economic recovery agenda.
“It is against this backdrop that government under the leadership of his excellency Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has put in place strategic measures to ensure 100 Ghanaian companies are supported with various forms of assistance to export under the AFCFTA to the rest of Africa; the teeming youth who are over 60 percent of our population is better educated and equipped for the job market,” she said.
Chief Executive Officer of the National Youth Authority (NYA), Pius Enam Hadzide, said government holds the view that the solution to the country’s unemployment situation resides in the private sector and not in the public sector.
“We do agree that there should be an increase of recruitment into the public sector, but that is only to service an effective public service that can underpin a functional private sector. Nowhere in the world has the problem of youth unemployment been resolved by interventions within the public sector,” he stated.
Ghana Startups and SMEs Week
This year’s Startups and SMEs Week being organised by Ghana Startup Network and slated for November is on the theme Innovate, Collaborate and Invest for Greater Impact. The event, Executive Director of the Ghana Startup Network Solomon Adjei said, will present an excellent opportunity and platform to dialogue, network and facilitate cross-fertilisation of ideas.
He added that the event will be marked with a series of activities including a student’s entrepreneurship forum, ladies founders forum, young entrepreneurs summit, Ghana venture investment forum and startups demo day, and young entrepreneurship awards among others.
