The Director for Business Support at the Ghanaian National Entrepreneurship Innovative Plan (NEIP), Mr Franklin Owusu Karikari, has disclosed that out of about 250,000 citizens that enter labour market yearly, 98 per cent targets the informal sector or underemployed leaving only two per cent for the formal sector.
In a new report seen by Business Hilights Ghana Bureau chief, he revealed that in 2018 alone, Ghana produced more than 90,000 graduates and most of them are currently unemployed or underemployed.
Though he commended the government for the Nation Builders Corps (NaBco) programme, which he said engaged 100,000 out of the 160,000 graduates who applied for the programme last year, he called for a more robust formal sector so as to absorb the surging number of new entrants.
Explaining more at an entrepreneurship awareness seminar held in Sunyani, organized by the Sunyani Technical University (STU) with support from the Ghana Oil Company Limited (GOIL), Karikari expressed discomfort with the worsening unemployment situation in the country and called on graduates to develop interest and engage in entrepreneurship to fetch jobs for themselves.
Speaking on the theme; ‘Changing Minds, from job seekers to job Creators: Adopting Entrepreneurship as a Career Option,’ he told the participants that “Your certificates alone are not enough to grant you jobs”, challenged them to form groups and do extra curricula activities as well as develop business modules and ideas that can make them self reliant going forward.
While disclosing that his agency had in 2018, trained about 70,000 unemployed graduates and only supported 2,000 of them to establish and expand their businesses, NEIP boss added that coming up with a good business plan and idea would enable the students and entrepreneurs to seek support from the agency.
According to him, waste management, oil and gas, agri-business, ICT, fashion, tourism, and microfinance provided enormous business opportunities, and advised the unemployed graduates to explore into those sectors.
