Published: 14 Feb 2017 Source: University Relations Office (URO)
Comfort Ocran, Chief Executive Officer of Legacy&Legacy, and an executive member of the Spring Foundation has asserted that with over a hundred tertiary institutions in Ghana graduating about 500,000 candidates every year, with few employment opportunities, we cannot say no to entrepreneurship training. Mrs. Ocran made this assertion at the opening of this year’s Entrepreneurship Clinic organised by the Centre for Business Development for final year students.
She continued that the public sector which was choked and ineffective requiring downsizing employed about 800,000 graduates every year. With over 350,000 people entering the labour market annually, there was the need to train students to set up innovative businesses. Entrepreneurship was the surest way to reduce graduate unemployment in the country.
Mrs. Ocran challenged the students to come up with ideas, identify their unique selling propositions and to start small businesses on campus. She also advised them to manage their cash flow and invest their own monies in order to raise the seed capital for their businesses. The Legacy&Legacy CEO in ending urged them to believe in themselves and to foresee that there was power within them to accomplish whatever they embarked on successfully.
Reverend Albert Ocran, Keynote Speaker
Reverend Albert Ocran, an executive pastor of the International Central Gospel Church, keynote speaker for the occasion, noted that the event was timely and that it would enable them as future leaders to embrace the entrepreneurial challenge. He challenged participants to have a strong penchant for new ideas and not follow the same old trends as the business and professional world today was characterized by rapid changes, keen competitiveness and uncertainty.
With the media convergence on the rise, he encouraged the future entrepreneurs to anticipate global changes, predict, plan and position themselves strategically ahead of their peers. Rev. Ocran advised students to prepare themselves to meet opportunities when they came their way.
The KNUST Entrepreneurship Clinic, 2017 for especially final years seeks to motivate and equip students in broad areas of entrepreneurship and small business management. It is expected that at the end of the Clinic, the culture of entrepreneurship will be cultivated among students by way of awareness creation, identification of business opportunities, challenges, appropriate attitudes for business and skills needed for successful entrepreneurship and venture creation.
The programme is not necessarily going to make all participants entrepreneurs or self-employed people immediately after graduation, but at least, it will give them the necessary exposure. To achieve its target, carefully selected accomplished business practitioners and entrepreneurs are invited to share their experiences through teaching, coaching and mentoring.