Promoting youth entrepreneurship in Lagos, Nigeria - SNHU ...

Nigeria produces job-seekers but not job-creators or wealth generators. Globalization has hadlittle effect on less developed countries to boost their economic development and the gap betweenthe rich and the poor, the skilled and the unskilled as well as digital divide continues to widen.Nigeria‘s economy is struggling to leverage the country‘s vast wealth in fossil fuels in order todisplace the crushing poverty that affects about 57 percent of its population. Economists refer tothe coexistence of vast wealth in natural resources and extreme personal poverty in developingcountries like Nigeria as the ―resource curse.‖ Nigeria‘s exports of oil and natural gas—at a timeof peak prices—have enabled the country to post merchandise trade and current account surplusesin recent years. However, the World Bank has estimated that as a result of corruption 80 percentof energy revenues benefit only 1 percent of the population (SEEDS, 2005).Figure 1: Problem treeThe crucial role played by entrepreneurship in driving the economy of any nation iswidely understood Figure 2: and Problem receiving tree global attention, but most stakeholders have not looked at it10