Young Entrepreneurs

Young Africans are growing up in a difficult economic environment with limited opportunities for decent work. Despite this fact, many young Africans do gain employment either by working for others or, more typically, by establishing their own businesses. But the potential of Africa’s young entrepreneurs is not being fully realised. Existing entrepreneurs are often successful in spite of the myriad constraints they face, such as ineffective regulatory frameworks, lack of business skills, training and mentoring, access to finance, and even negative  stereotypes which still persist in large parts of Africa. But the majority of would-be entrepreneurs are thwarted by these obstacles, never seeing their often promising ideas and dynamic energy translate into products, profits and jobs. Women face more constraints to becoming entrepreneurs than men. Entrepreneurship should be considered an important tool for economic growth across economies at all stages. Youth entrepreneurship is not rewarded and encouraged as much as it should be. There is a need to nurture a culture in which creating jobs is encouraged more than getting a job. Evidence suggests that young people are ready to rise to the challenge.

Given their key role in delivering higher incomes and more jobs, focus on providing young entrepreneurs with skills and opportunities needs to be strengthened. As young women and men are Africa’s greatest asset, there is a need to exploit their potential by providing them with the opportunity to obtain productive employment and decent jobs.

The Africa Commission calls for the following policy actions on entrepreneurship:

• R16:Increase the focus on young entrepreneurs, both women and men, as drivers of change. Such a renewed focus should be reflected in policy dialogue, poverty reduction strategies or other development plans, and medium-term and annual budgets.
  
  
  
• R17: African governments together with stakeholders, including the private sector, schools, universities, civil society, and youth organisations, must promote entrepreneurship as a viable, pro-poor development strategy, given that most new jobs are being created through small enterprises and self-employment. In particular, the development of comprehensive programmes directly aimed at encouraging young entrepreneurs to set up and grow viable businesses, including facilitating access to start-up capital, should be considered.

The Initiative: Unleashing African Entrepreneurship

The Africa Commission will launch an initiative targeting young African entrepreneurs. The initiative will offer packages of assistance to young existing and would-be entrepreneurs, complementing training with advisory services, mentorship, and access to finance for both rural and urban entrepreneurs. In order to strengthen the sustainability of this initiative, all enterprise support services will be offered through existing local providers like business associations, youth-led organisations, private consultancies and training providers or public agencies.

The initiative aims to create thousands of enterprises and tens of thousands of new and better jobs, at least 50 percent for women, in three countries where it will initially be launched. It builds on existing entrepreneur-ship tools used and tested by the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

Key areas of intervention are (i) training for future entrepreneurs, (ii) embedding entrepreneurship education in the school system,
(iii) business plan competitions, (iv) access to finance, including micro-credit schemes, (v) strengthening evidence-based advocacy through impact assessments and youth business climate surveys and (vi) launching a Youth Opportunities Fund: A competitive grant scheme  for youth-led organisations working on youth entrepreneurship.

”The initiative will assist young entrepreneurs – existing and would-be – in developing bankable business plans and accounting skills and provide them with access to finance, a business network and mentors as well as basic infrastructure such as access to the internet, computers and printers. The initiative will promote a culture of entrepreneurship and ensure that activities take place within potential high-growth sectors. That way, sustainable enterprises will be developed in sectors where income is proven by market research or value chain analysis.