ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN AFRICA

Entrepreneurship is living a few years of your life like most people won't, so that you can spend the rest of your life like most people can't - A student in Warren G. Tracy's class,

It is an open secret that entrepreneurship is the backbone of the United States economy. This has been so because as one writer states it, capitalism relies on an individual’s ability to assume a risk based on their expectation of profit. There is no bigger risk than starting your own business. It takes planning, preparation, and perseverance to be a great business owner. 

In fact, during the G8 meeting in June 2009 at Sea Island - Georgia, the UN Commission on the Private Sector and Development stressed that "poverty alleviation requires a strong private sector. Because they believe it is the source of growth, jobs and opportunities for the poor." The Monterrey Consensus also made it clear that achieving lasting development requires the use of all relevant resources, including the role of the private sector as a vital engine of economic growth, job creation and poverty reduction. They went further to say that enabling the private sector to help poor people prosper should become systematically integrated into development assistance efforts. They then advised developing countries on the need to create the conditions in which entrepreneurs can build successful businesses.

At the same time, observing events and the discussions on radio and Tv, I am tempted to believe that Africa is gradually gathering the momentum to drum home the idea of entrepreneurship into a lot more of our young people to stop the blame game and dependency syndrome and to focus more on being responsible. To me, being responsible stems from the idea of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is such that, it encourages freedom to express ourselves and promotes trust, all inclusiveness and the list can continue on and on.

With this, I mean it helps people to be initiative, creative, and innovative and so on without complaining about problems. But rather introducing solutions that bring change and improvement in the lives of people. Even if it does not pay from the beginning, it ends up bringing some reward of a sort. Either for those it was started for or for the initiator.

It is as a result of this that I believe the Conference of Entrepreneurship Educators, Researchers and Entrepreneurs in Africa (CEEREA 2011) which is being organized by Centre for Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Development of Kumasi Polytechnic is in the right direction.

What determines the economic health and vitality of a country? A study coauthored by Edward Glaeser suggests that the abundance of small, entrepreneurial businesses is major a factor. It identified that there is the need to recognize the powerful correlations between entrepreneurship and economic growth. As a result, it states that state and local policymakers may want to do more to encourage entrepreneurship.

The study made it clear that, the available evidence points out four tentative implications that should be important to us in Africa: Firstly, it states that investing heavily to attract large, mature firms may not be so good a policy. Second, there is little reason to have much faith in the ability of local governments to play venture capitalist using public investment funds. Third, focusing on quality-of-life policies that can attract smart, entrepreneurial people makes sense, especially because few communities “ever screwed up by providing too much quality of life.” Finally, because of the robust link between educational institutions and certain types of high-return entrepreneurship, policymakers should be wary of policies that severely restrict the growth of local colleges and universities.

The time is long overdue for us to strategically redirect the attention of young people in Africa and Ghana in particular towards entrepreneurship wherever they might find themselves. It’s rather unfortunate that most people hear about entrepreneurship and their first thought goes to starting your own business. Yes! it is true that it is the main idea. However, we should also note that its not everybody who can start from the word go. Whiles some people will prefer starting and learning through the process until they achieve their aims of owning their own businesses, others can also take advantage to work in other organizations that could have a certain level of resources among others readily available that can be used to gather expertise and experience by the inside entrepreneur (intrapreneur) before branching or growing into their own businesses.

There is nothing wrong with trying to work on your own. But it makes much more sense if you can also show a little bit of your creativity and innovation with other organizations so that the cost of making mistakes and learning on your own can reduce just a bit more than necessary. It is an undeniable fact that the young people nowadays prefer the fast way to the slow painful process. But I believe it’s only because their energies are not being harnessed and channeled through the right tools and resources.

I will edge every student, entrepreneurship educator, researcher and entrepreneur in Ghana and Africa to attend this conference in order to contribute their quota and also learn from others. We need to get our house in order. So that we can groom a crop of entrepreneurship educators, researchers and entrepreneurs in Africa, who will play their roles to get the economies of Africa on the right track. It does not matter where you might find yourself, either in the public sector, private or student, entrepreneurship cuts across and should be important to you. If you don’t believe it, ask the Americans and they will tell you what has brought them this far (all other things being equal).

http://www.hks.harvard.edu/news-events/publications/impact-newsletter/archives/spring-2010/the-power-of-entrepreneurship

If you are interested in the conference, visit events.kpoly.edu.gh/ceerea/2011

 I live you this message:

The entrepreneur in us sees opportunities everywhere we look, but many people see only problems everywhere they look. The entrepreneur in us is more concerned with discriminating between opportunities than he or she is with failing to see the opportunities - Michael Gerber, author, entrepreneur