Accra, May 9, GNA – Government aims to train 50,000 young entrepreneurs over the next three years as training for the first batch of YouStart entrepreneurs began in 188 districts across the country.
The Minister of Trade and Industry, Kobina Tahir Hammond, announced this during a working tour of three training facilities in Accra to interact with the trainees.
The programme aims to combat unemployment and empower young people between 18 and 40 years to grow into entrepreneurs to start their own businesses in the next three years with the view of creating one million jobs overtime.
The Minister of Trade and Industry, Kobina Tahir (KT) Hammond, explained the goal of the YouStart Programme and advised them to strive for excellence in the training period.
“You must take this initiative seriously and prove your commitment. This is the start of your training. This programme will help you start your own businesses, and for those who already have established businesses, it will help you improve the standing of your businesses,” he said.
The Minister said while there was high increase in the population, there was little chance of citizens getting employment from the public sector.
“The national population has bulged, yet many state enterprises have collapsed since independence so there is realistically little chance that government will employ the greater chunk of the citizenry.”
It is for this reason that you are undergoing training to set up your own businesses that will lead to employment,” he said
The Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Enterprises Agency (GEA), Kosi Yankey-Ayeh, the programme was under the Ghana Jobs and Skills project, which aims to provide entrepreneurship training and competitive start-up grant to the youth.
“When we started this programme, the focus was not only to look at funding but access to technical assistance -training, access to how we can build them to access better market, to get better quality product and those who are able to successfully go through the project to be able to access some funding,” she said.
She explained that the training programme was in three phases: the Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced phases.
The Beginner phase will last for five days, whereas the Intermediate phase will last for 10 days while the Advanced phase will be for 15 days.
Participants who excel in one phase will be moved on to the next phase while the best trainees after the Advanced phase will receive some startup capital to grow their businesses.
She said the GEA received over 200,000 applications for the first phase of the programme.
The World Bank is providing financing and technical support to the Government of Ghana (GoG) for the implementation of the Ghana Jobs and Skills Project.
Following a successful launch of the Youstart Ghana Jobs and Skills Project in November 2022, an online portal was opened for interested persons to apply for the project.
GNA