Definition
The capacity and willingness to develop, organize and
manage a business venture along with any of its risks in order to make
a profit. The most obvious example of entrepreneurship is the starting
of new businesses.
In economics, entrepreneurship combined with land, labor,
natural resources and capital can produce profit. Entrepreneurial spirit
is characterized by innovation and risk-taking, and is an essential part
of a nation's ability to succeed in an ever changing and increasingly
competitive global marketplace.
At its core, entrepreneurship is starting a business from scratch, which includes everything from idea conception to managing the company for the long term.
Nolan Bushnell, who founded Atari and Chuck E. Cheese's,
believes the key to becoming an entrepreneur is as simple as doing
something.
The turnout for the just concluded NIS recruitment exercise
that left scores injured and about 21 people dead has underscored a
very chilling point: unemployment is still very much an issue that
threatens the economic survival of the people and that of the nation.
Unemployment rate in Nigeria increased to 23.90 per cent in 2011 from
21.10 per cent in 2010, according to the National Bureau of Statistics
(NBS) and it has expressed worry that it may rise by an additional two
per cent before the year ends. Given the NIS recruitment turnout, many
people are wondering if the figure had not been doctored.
Since the exercise, however, an outcry has been raised against the
state of unemployment in Nigeria and several alternatives have
emerged to unemployment in the country. One is entrepreneurship. The
question, however, is can entrepreneurship solve the youth
unemployment crisis? A group of entrepreneurs, especially young
entrepreneurs believe that, yes, entrepreneurship can indeed solve the
youth unemployment crisis, and then called on all stakeholders,
especially the government, to ensure entrepreneurship development in
Nigeria.
A group of researchers, in their “Entrepreneurship
Development: A Panacea for Unemployment Reduction in Nigeria”,
published in the Journal of Emerging Trends in Economics and
Management Sciences, agreed that it was imperative to “increase
entrepreneurial activities to reduce high rate of unemployment” in
Nigeria.
Entrepreneurship development, they said, “has led to employment generation, growth of the economy and sustainable development,” adding that entrepreneurship plays an important role in
bringing down unemployment in the country.
Just last year, the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor reported that
entrepreneurs in Africa help boost employment and GDP rates.
Countries like Nigeria, Angola, Botswana, Ethiopia, Ghana, Malawi,
Namibia, South Africa, Uganda and Zambia were listed.
“The entrepreneurial landscape in sub-Saharan Africa is changing
rapidly and the region is now becoming a Mecca for business
development and growth,” remarked Mike Herrington, lead author of the
report and GEM Executive Director and Professor at University of Cape
Town, South Africa, on GEM’s website adding that “opportunities
abound and a positive spirit is emerging amongst the population of
these countries.”
The United Nations (UN), has also observed that global
development is entering a phase where “entrepreneurship will
increasingly play a more important role.” The body cited three major
reasons for this observation. In the West, it said, the managed economy
of the 1970s-2000s was characterized by reliance on big business and
mass production and thus, gave way to “a so-called entrepreneurial
economy.” It observed that in this age and time, knowledge-driven goods and services have become more flexibly provided by smaller firms, forcing the emergence of a creative class to require less interference, but more facilitating state.
Second, in the emerging countries, it said, especially – Brazil, Russia,
India and China, “impressive growth has been driven by a veritable
entrepreneurial revolution. The need in these economies to sustain
growth through sustainable access to resources, knowledge, markets,
and low-carbon industrialization puts a premium on innovative
entrepreneurship.”
More so, in the least developed countries, where aid dependency is
high, donors have been shifting the emphasis in development
cooperation towards private sector development, the UN said, adding
that “promoting youth entrepreneurship here has become a vital policy
objective of many development organizations and donors.”
Roles of entrepreneurs in national economic development
In discussing the roles entrepreneurship plays in bringing
down unemployment in the country, it is pertinent to seek out the role
of entrepreneurs in economic development. As someone succinctly put
it, an entrepreneur plays a pivotal role not only in the development of
industrial sector of a country but also in the development of farm and
service sector.
Young entrepreneurs in Nigeria are also saying that with the
new upsurge in entrepreneurship in the country, they are introducing
new ideas into a fledgling economy that can help the country grow.
These entrepreneurs believe that entrepreneurship is one of the most
important input in the economic development of a country, while noting
that as entrepreneurs, they act as a trigger head to give spark to
economic activities by their entrepreneurial decisions.
The role of the government in promoting entrepreneurship
The UN, in its “Entrepreneurs and economic development” report,
observed that “for entrepreneurs to play an appropriate role, the role of the state remains important, if not more so than before. Strong states, as regulators and gatekeepers, play a particularly vital role. In the
absence of appropriate ‘rules of the game’, entrepreneurship may result
in undesirable social outcomes, including corruption, crime, speculation
and financial crises, and may worsen the vulnerabilities of people
during natural disasters.”
While entrepreneurs and bodies like the CEI have constantly
advocated for friendly policies to encourage the SMEs and startup
entrepreneurs in the country, the Nigerian government has insisted that
they are making sure that the Nigerian entrepreneurs are giving level
playing grounds to do business.
For instance, the Federal Government, in collaboration with
foreign bodies have been making capital available to SMEs. And experts
believe that the international organizations have, since mid-1980s,
continued to play vital roles in providing foreign capital to some SMEs in
Nigeria. World Bank, African Development Bank (ADB) and International
Finance Corporation (IFC), are among the said organizations. It could be
seen that entrepreneurship business was, hitherto, neglected in
Nigeria.
Also, some of the agencies such as the Nigerian Export
Promotion Council (NEPC), National Economic Reconstruction Fund
(NERFUND), the National Directorate of Employment (NDE), among
others, have been established by government to aid entrepreneurship
development in Nigeria.
Entrepreneurship opportunities in Nigeria
Tech-based businesses are currently revolutionizing the way
business is done in Nigeria. According to Mr Tomi Davies, the CEO of
TechnoVision, “technology has infinitely improved communication of
ideas through its making tools available for entrepreneurs to express
their visions... It is already changing the way we search for, buy and
even consume our food. From recipes to restaurants we are seeing the
incursion of technology.”
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