Inclusive Growth: The Entrepreneurial Environment for Scaling Up Business

In today’s world, enterprising youth who attempt to expand their businesses have exciting opportunities and also face serious challenges. Unsurprisingly, these young people around the world are coming together and finding innovative ways to meet these challenges and seize the opportunities.

In this week’s Economic Reform Feature Service article, three winners from CIPE’s 2012 International Youth Essay Competition in the Inclusive Growth category discuss what opportunities young entrepreneurs have in expanding their businesses and the challenges they face. Each author describes how youth in their country are meeting this challenges and the tools that they are using to do so.

In Obed Ankrah’s Promoting Inclusive Growth: the Entrepreneurial Environment for scaling up business in Ghana, Ankrah talks about:

• Youth-led businesses in Ghana face a number of challenges that hinder business expansion, including lack of access to finance, restrictive cultural norms, and lack of managerial and leadership skills.
• Given Ghana’s economic rise, however, youth-led businesses and entrepreneurs have the opportunity to learn from successful entrepreneurs and receive entrepreneurial training from universities.
• In order to encourage more youth to become entrepreneurs instead of entering the public sector, the government should implement reforms that create a small enterprise-friendly environment.

In Anna Grishkina’s Turning Opportunities into Results, Grishkina discusses:

• The youth entrepreneurship community is skyrocketing in Russia, but it is neither recognized nor acknowledged by the larger public.
• The opportunities for improving youth-led businesses in Russia are slowly increasing with the development of youth business associations, and the growing number of social institutions supporting youth entrepreneurs.

And in Ngutor Saaka’s Youth and Entrepreneurship in Nigeria: The Way Forward, Saaka

• In Nigeria, the government is often blamed for the high unemployment rate amongyouth. However, instead of focusing on what the government can do, youth should focus on how entrepreneurship and the private sector can resolve unemployment.
• Numerous impediments hinder young entrepreneurs in Nigeria from growing their businesses, including lack of access to capital, lack of mentorship, and lack of engagement with policymakers and relevant stakeholders.
• In order for young entrepreneurs to scale up their businesses, they must form a unified voice by collectively advocating for better business environments for entrepreneurs.

Read all three articles here.

Laura Boyette is Program Assistant for Global Programs at CIPE.