Mustapha Ussif
Acting Executive Director of the National Service Scheme (NSS), Mustapha Ussif, has urged Ghanaian youth to consider entrepreneurship to secure jobs and lead better lives.
Speaking at a day’s workshop organised recently in Accra in collaboration with Dalex Finance on Youth Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Technology, he said the scheme was bent on helping to tackle the high unemployment rate in the country.
“The youth of Ghana and Africa represent our greatest resource, our greatest potential for solving our greatest development challenges and therefore delivering our future success. Therefore, a high unemployment rate is a national security threat,” he said.
The move, he mentioned, formed part of the Africa Vision 2025 to produce entrepreneurs and innovators in the continent.
Research by the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) in 2015 revealed that only 10 percent of personnel posted over the past years were able to secure jobs within the first year after service while the remaining 90 percent manage to secure job within 10 years after service.
According to him, such situation had been his headache, hence the collaboration with MIT-Ghana REAP and other relevant agencies, to end this cycle after each service year.
He said the scheme would also be introducing an Entrepreneurship & Innovation Deployment Model in 2018.
He re-emphasized the President’s vision to support the private sector, especially young entrepreneurs, to grow.
“Those who set up businesses must succeed for them to create wealth and employ more people. This is the surest way of turning our beloved country’s fortunes around and the scheme owns the country a responsibility by creating opportunities for the youth to enable them create wealth for themselves and employ their colleagues. This approach will go a long way to reduce the high unemployment among the youth.”
Emmanuel Akyeampong, Director of the Center for African Studies at Harvard University; Ed Lazowska, Member of the National Academy of Engineering and a fellow of American Academy of Arts and Science, and Robert Short, among others, spoke at the event.
CEO of Dalex Finance, Ken Thompson, thanked MIT-Ghana Regional Entrepreneurs Accelerated Programme (REAP) and The Africa Harvard Study Group for making time to attend the event to share ideas and expertise to help solve the unemployment issues facing Ghanaian youth.
By Samuel Boadi
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