Mr Ignatius Baffour-Awuah, Minister for Employment and Labour Relations, has paid glowing tribute to the European Union, the Netherlands Embassy and SNV Netherlands Development Organisation for shaping the entrepreneurial mentality of Ghanaian youth.
He said the support being given to young entrepreneurs under the Boosting Green Employment and Enterprise Opportunities in Ghana (GrEEn) Project, was complementing government’s efforts towards addressing youth unemployment in the country.
He was speaking to the media after leading a high-level delegation made up of representatives from the EU, the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Ghana, SNV, United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) and the Ministry, to visit GrEEn project sites in the Ashanti Region.
The GrEEn project is being implemented jointly by SNV in Ghana and the UNCDF with funding from the European Union Emergency Trust Fund for Africa, and the Netherlands Embassy in Ghana.
It seeks to contribute to addressing the root causes of irregular migration through green and climate resilient local economic development by creating employment, and enterprise opportunities in the agriculture, water and energy sectors in the Ashanti, and Western Regions.
The goal is to create job opportunities for youth, women, and returning migrants as well as facilitate the development of Micro, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (MSMEs) enabling the transition of local economies to green and climate resilient development.
Mr Baffour-Awuah said one of the basic challenges confronting the country was how to handle the teeming number of young persons who were graduating from various universities annually.
“Obviously, the public sector doesn’t have enough space to handle them.
So, what happens to the rest of them because many of them, with little guidance, can be entrepreneurs of their own,” he pointed out.
He said it was for that reason that the Ministry signed an agreement and has been working with SNV to enable not just job creation and entrepreneurship development, but facilitate Ghana’s transition into a green, eco-inclusive circular economy that is able to withstand the dire effects of climate change on livelihoods, especially at the community level.
The Minster was happy to see young graduates with the support of the project building sustainable businesses while creating employment opportunities in their local communities.
Marta Brignone, Programme Manager on the GrEEn Project at the EU, said the EU supported the implementers of the project to boost green businesses, and support the government of Ghana in climate resilient infrastructure and practices.
“It was very important for us to also come to the field and see the impact of this intervention, and we are impressed with what we have seen,” she noted.
She explained that apart from working closely with key state institutions in the implementation of the project, the team was also happy to see young people using their business ideas to make impact in their local communities.
Sustaining the progress made beyond the project, she said, was very important and urged national institutions responsible for supporting businesses to continue from where the project would end.
Wendy van Meel, Deputy Ambassador at the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Ghana, said she was impressed with the results of the GrEEn project with a lot of decent jobs being created.
“I was really impressed by the young entrepreneurs, and we see a lot of opportunities in youth employment, and we would really like to commit to that to support promising young people,” she observed.
