Dr Gordon Adomdza
SOME PUBLIC and private universities have led the discussion on how to fashion out pragmatic solutions to reduce the increasing graduate unemployment through leveraging alumni entrepreneurship.
The discussions were centered on how universities can provide intentional support programmes to encourage more alumni entrepreneurial prospects.
Speaking at the pre-dissemination research conference organized by MasterCard Foundation themed, ‘Driving Student & Alumni Entrepreneurship’ Associate Professor for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Ashesi University, Dr. Gordon Adomdza said a research study conducted by Ashesi and McGill University revealed that, “a lot of alumni who were employed in industry in large companies with entrepreneur ideas and with working experiences spanning from 5 to 10 years were waiting to start working on their entrepreneur ideas.”
Making reference to a review by Harvard Business which states that the average age of entrepreneurs at the time they found their company is 42, Gordon Adomdza made a clarion call to heads of tertiary institutions to identify solutions that will support entrepreneurs with experiences spanning from 5 to 10 years to establish their businesses.
At the same time decried the lack of interventions to support university alumni to help reduce the high graduate unemployment rate in the country.
According to him, although there were a few universities that had business incubation programmes to support alumni entrepreneurs, more could be done to accelerate the growth of businesses of alumni entrepreneurs.
Dr Samuel Yaw Akomea, a senior lecturer at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), implored universities to establish business incubation centres to assist budding entrepreneurs in developing their businesses and solving problems associated with it, especially, at the initial stage.
BY Prince Fiifi Yorke