‘Lack of support, key youth entrepreneurship challenge’
Hauwa Liman, is the founder of a Non-Governmental Organization, (NGO), the Impact Nigeria Project. In this interview, the Economist spoke on the challenges that prevent youth to become successful entrepreneurs and the solution for these challenges.
What does Impact Nigeria do? My NGO Impact Nigeria Project is a platform that mentor youth to actualize their full potentials and also impact communities through collaboration networking and active youth volunteerism. We also work to promote ethnic and religious tolerance among youth.
What challenges would you say face youth entrepreneurship in Nigeria?
Their major challenge is the lack of support mechanism. You find out that in most cases these youths just go into entrepreneurship without having the knowledge of how to run an enterprise. Many of them believe that it is just having the idea, passion and the capital but it is much more than that. You need to have more than idea, passion or even capital to succeed.
I always ask why lawyers want to get Master in Business Administration or Doctors going to get MBA even with having a private hospital. It is because that hospital is an enterprise on its own. Therefore, you need to have a basic knowledge of running an enterprise. Like how to recruit a staff, how to balance your book, sort the right materials at a cheaper cost, how to engage your customers. But you find out that the attention is just giving youth capital to start business without having necessary education and the knowledge on how to run these businesses. That is why if you give them one or two years the business is nowhere to be found.
government
How can challenges?
address these
Government can address these challenges by engaging youth by providing necessary education to them. Rightly now we have some project of the Government that we are doing and this education is one of them. We introduced them to many programmes online. We are teaching them on how to run their businesses, how to market their goods.
By so doing they will be exposed to all these things before capital is giving to them. I believed when these things are sustained definitely we are going to see a drastic change. At the main time emphasis should be put on having mentors. People that will guide them when they are beginning to start, people that will put them on track, people that will monitor their progress in the entrepreneurship journey. I believe if we do that we are going to have some changes.
In what other ways can these youth be supported to realise their entrepreneurship dream?
Government should put in place a marketing support programme whereby for those that produced certain commodities. The various governments should now step in to purchase these items for them at a competitive price. This will go a long way in helping them to scale up their businesses. It will also encourage youth to have courage and participate actively in Government entrepreneurship programmes in the country.