$100,000 Secured For Entrepreneurship Project In 2nd Cycle Schools

The National Entrepreneurship and Innovation Plan (NEIP) has secured hundred thousand dollars to begin an entrepreneurship competition in second cycle institutions.

Beginning 2018, the business prowess of interested students in second cycle institutions across the country will be tested in a business start-up competition.

The initiative is meant to inculcate the habit of entrepreneurship among students at an early stage in the bid to address growing unemployment in the country.

Officials of NEIP say entrepreneurship clubs and groups will be set up on various senior high school campuses so help students develop and explore innovative ideas.

CEO of NEIP, John Kumah, explains, “We are going down at the basic level very soon to begin to have entrepreneurship clubs and groups on campuses so that students will be able to undertake something and develop their ideas even whiles they are in school”.

The business competition will allow the interested students at the various schools decide what venture they will go into and put a team together.

A day will be set aside for them to exhibit what they have done as a business and the projects will be matched with other schools.

A panel of judges will screen and select which of the business ideas are brilliant and can be scaled up.

Officials say the winners will represent Ghana in Spain and when they do well, they will go to Silicon Valley in the United States of America for coaching.

“This is something we are going to do regularly in campuses and institutions in the country as long as the NEIP program exists,” Mr Kumah told Luv Business.

He says NEIP will use the initiative and other similar upcoming programs to encourage young people to create and identify with entrepreneurship and business ideas.

“The whole idea is to help create businesses that are sustainable and that will empower young people in this country. We will continue to do that as long as there is a need to help young people in this country,” he adds.

Mr Kumah spoke exclusively to Luv Business in Kumasi, on the sidelines of the launch of the GRASAG-NEIP entrepreneurship competition at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST).