Entrepreneurs and leaders are a special breed of people who by the virtue of their existence, keep our world going round. Since I discovered the nature of entrepreneurship some ten years ago, I have been fascinated by entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship….There are certain attributes of entrepreneurs that can never be taught. The entrepreneur acquires it along the way. These traits are confidence, courage, tenacity, risk taking, hard work, honesty and determination. No one can teach you these traits. You learn them along the way. And only those who get them succeed.
The words above come from Saeed Mahmoud Jajah of Ghana, out of his first place winning essay in the category of “Entrepreneurship and leadership,” in CIPE’s 2009 International Youth Essay Contest. When the 2009-2010 academic year is complete, Mahmoud will have a B.S. in management studies from Central University in Accra, Ghana. When the 2009-2010 academic year is complete, Mahmoud will continue to live out the challenges he puts forth to his fellow Ghanaian youth, through his winning essay.
Joining Mahmoud among the winning essays in this category are second place winner Lochana Yasath Wijesinghe from Sri Lanka, and third place winner Julius Ankomah Agyemang also from Ghana. Ukraine’s Yuliya Prysyazhnyuk received an honorable mention in the category. These essays represent the best of a highly competitive and growing pool of essays and ideas addressing the question: “What needs to be done in your country to provide youth with the opportunity to become entrepreneurs and/or leaders in their communities?”
These essays and ideas, entered into the contest or not, represent the very frontier of thinking about development and what role young people have in pushing it forward. Entrepreneurship, especially social entrepreneurship, is gaining more and more attention each year gone by that poverty persists.
These essays and ideas call the international community to see the bigger picture when it comes to what makes poverty persist.
Although supporting individual entrepreneurs is admirable and should continue, the institutional environment for entrepreneurs remains frought with obstacles. These essays and ideas address that environment, calling for institutions that will unleash entrepreneurship en masse—the rule of law, property rights, banking sectors that give the poor full financial services, not merely microfinance. These essays and ideas don’t come only from people in the western, developed world; they come from people of all ages and places, who aren’t content to wait for development to come from the outside. They are helping to make it happen from within.
Published Date: September 15, 2009