by Andem Effiong
President Goodluck Jonathan has launched the Youth Entrepreneurship strategy (YES).
YES, which he launched on Tuesday, February 10 at the Banquet Hall of the Presidential Villa, Abuja, is an online portal serving as a common platform for all of Federal and state governments’ diverse youth training entrepreneurship interventions.
The portal – Nigeria Youth Entrepreneurship Network (NYENET.COM) is Government’s collaboration with the Founder of Empower Nigeria, Nicholas Okoye.
While speaking at the launch, Jonathan said the broad based public-private platform is meant to speed up an already fast moving train of young entrepreneurs through government interventions that have created millions of additional jobs in the country.
“This strategy will redefine the way we engage and support the empowerment and employment of our youth and women going forward,” Jonathan said.
Jonathan expressed satisfaction that the first batch of 2,500 entrepreneurs has created an average of 9 jobs each making it a total of 22,000 jobs so far.
“Entrepreneurs are the engine room of the Nigeria’s economy as they are responsible for more than sixty percent of our $510billion GDP and the MSMEs are responsible for almost 98 % of the new jobs created in our economy on an annual basis. The new jobs we are targeting will come from the SMEs,” he said.
He further pointed out that the new online portal would give young budding entrepreneurs opportunities for both training and funding for entrepreneurial ideas.
Jonathan offered himself as a mentor to the young entrepreneurs by signing into the ‘Coalition of Super Mentors’, which is part of the YES, saying that he would also encourage other big and prominent Nigerian entrepreneurs to do so.
“Why we are here: there is unemployment crisis in the country, terrorism, armed robbery, kidnapping are all fall out employment. The telecom only employ, 250,000, (they can produce over 2 million indirect jobs) banking 300,000, (1 million in micro schemes indirect jobs) oil and gas over 350,000 (over million opportunities in micro schemes in welders, health and management etc), These sectors alone can’t address the employment,” he said.
He said Nigerians could now access all of government’s programmes, state or federal, from just this one portal.
The CEO Anabel Group and Founder Empower Nigeria, Nicholas Okoye, while introducing the Youth Entrepreneurship Network Platform, said it is a Public Private Partnership targeted at the young people in the country, with about twenty different programmes.
He said according to data compiled by his office, 7,121 youths have been empowered by this administration with an addition of over 14 million jobs created in the Agricultural sector.
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