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

The Consortium for Youth Entrepreneurship Education notes: "Effective youth entrepreneurshipeducation prepares young people to be responsible, enterprising individuals who becomeentrepreneurs or entrepreneurial thinkers and contribute to economic development and sustainablecommunities". It follows, therefore, that policies to promote youth entrepreneurship need not beseen as a departure from the broad policy orientation needed in any case. As the OECD report(2000) observes, programmes to train young men and women for self-employment and helpingthem to achieve it can enhance what must be done to attack youth unemployment in general. Thisis based on the recognition that not all young people can become entrepreneurs in a businesssense. Enterprise skills can, therefore help youth adapt well to other non-entrepreneurial careers.With this situation, promotion of youth enterprise and youth entrepreneurship in particularis vital. The relevance of promoting youth entrepreneurship should also be seen in the context ofimproving social attitudes towards entrepreneurship.Given the growing importance of self-employment as a means of creating new jobs andeconomic dynamism in a developing country like Nigeria, there is need to tap the potential ofentrepreneurship as a source of youth development, employment creation and economicempowerment.2.5 The Specific Needs of Youth in EntrepreneurshipYouth attempting entrepreneurial activity have specific needs divergent from the generalpopulation. Some needs in these two groups are identical, such as financing, but each areapresents its own unique challenges. For example, youth do not often have collateral for a loan,making it difficult to obtain financing from an official institution. The three major factorsaffecting youth employment and entrepreneurship are job/employment creation (aggregate23