Teaching youth skills on becoming self-employed

Following the persistent trend of unemployment, young people have been urged to start thinking of entrepreneurship as a career path and change their mind-set from job seeking mentality to self-employment.

Entrepreneurship is important for the future of our economy. We get graduates who will build businesses and create jobs, thus providing solutions to social problems.

The Founder of the University Entrepreneurship Challenge, Mr Victor Joseph, said the universities entrepreneurship challenge is a yearly initiative aimed at recognising and supporting entrepreneurship campuses across the country.

“This project is aimed at recognising and supporting young entrepreneurs, who will build successful businesses and shape the future of Tanzania’s economy.

Victor said the project was initiated in 2012 to inspire innovation and creativity. The goal was to get higher education students who would come up with innovative solutions and products.

“We realised early on that there aren’t enough jobs to go around, and many smart young men and women fail to have the careers they hoped for. The University Entrepreneurship Challenge Program has designed activities and processes that encourage and inspire students to become entrepreneurs and to support the ones that actually do become entrepreneurs,” said Victor.

He added that they had over 1000 students participate in the challenge, many with original ideas and others in early stage start-ups, adding that, University Entrepreneurs Challenge helps youth to the best of their abilities with supportive learning materials. “However due to limited resources we have to focus on the very best,” said Mr Victor.

He noted that there were two levels of the competition, adding that in the first phase they targeted students who had already initiated a business and run it for at least 6 months.

“In the second we target students who have an original idea for a business and had done initial ground work and research to bring it to life,” he speaks, adding, “in both challenges we seek what we call entrepreneurial traits in the individual students and our judges assess them to see whether they are committed and serious about launching their projects.”

Considering the fact that a few universities equip students with entrepreneurial skills, it is undeniably prudent for universities and parents to get students interested in entrepreneurship endeavours.

Victor notes that the program is in line with the trend of some universities equipping students with entrepreneurial skills, and that is why the programme includes a lot of training, mentorship and coaching for the students.

He says they aim to reach as many students as possible and get them interested in this endeavour.

“The young entrepreneurs going through our program are taken through a very grounded and experiential program, with experienced entrepreneurs as well as professionals in Finance and economic development, playing the roles of their mentors and trainers,” said Victor.

Currently, a participatant is not required to prepare a business plan, they need only to apply through an online form, this form has very specific questions that will give the organisers a full picture of the applicant’s business as well as their understanding of the business and the target market.

Talking about many graduates tending to be job seekers rather than being job creators, Victor said through this program they can help youths stay clear of such mindset and make them realise early on that there are not enough jobs to go around, and many smart young men and women fail to have the careers they hoped for due to fear of venturing in individual projects.

In Tanzania, there is a high number of students who wish to become entrepreneurs but lack the specific support to help them realise their dreams and ambitions. All that they need is support and encouragement in order to become fully fledged entrepreneurs.

Challenges

Such entrepreneurship programs are never without a fair share of challenges. According to Victor, since the program spans countrywide, across all universities in Tanzania, the geographical size of the country has proven to be a big challenge in the execution of the program.

“We target university students from across the country and we face logistical challenges. Over the years we have been making a number of mistakes and we also have a hard time raising funds for effective running of the programme,” he notes.

Meanwhile, Diana Mbogo, a winner of 2016 University Entrepreneurship Challenge revealed her strategy to Success. “It’s all about persistence and patience,” she reveals.

The journey to success has its ups and downs but university student should learn a lot through that journey that crafts one’s personality and attitude. Students who are eager to achieve greatness in life should embrace and enjoy the journey.

“All across the world, universities play a crucial role in innovation ecosystems, this cannot be different here in Tanzania, if Tanzania is to become an industrialized nation, then we desperately need to get our educated young men and women to build these industries, that is how it works across the world,” Diana notes.

According to the young learner, it is quite shameful to have a class of educated Tanzanians just sitting back waiting to get jobs in these industries while foreigners come to build them for us.

“The government and everyone need to realize that we have to get our business school and engineering students to begin building companies that will strengthen the economy for a sustainable future. We have to quit just training our youths to seek out jobs,” Diana further notes.

Speaking about last year’s competition, Diana said she was exposed to an international network of business people, best start-ups, mentors and coaches from around the world. This alone showed her the true power of networking and knowing the right people at the right time.

“I was also able to grasp a lot of new ideas to improve my business, other side of marketing, financing projects and managing and running a business,” she speaks, continuing; “Confidence in the work I was doing and the vision I had for the company, plus my attitude towards everything; networking, learning from others and inspiring are some of the traits that made me stand out. As a student who’s keen on anything to do with economy, I pay much attention to my environment and try to learn from it as much as I can.”

Diana said before joining the competition she was running the same company, Millennium Engineers Ent Ltd, which is a renewable energy company dealing with solar and wind energy.

However according to the Nation Bureau of Statistics, in 2014, the percentage of unemployed and discouraged youth aged between 15-24 years as per national definition stood at 13.4 per cent against the overall 11.7 per cent.

According to standard definition, the youth unemployment rate is almost double the overall unemployment as it stands at 8.8 per cent against 4.7 per cent overall.

According to the national definition, the percentage of youth who are not in Education, Employment or Training stands at 13.4% (6.7% male, 11.2% female) of the total unemployed youth and 9.0% (12.3% male, 14.3% female)as per standard definition.

Under both definitions females are more affected than males; also the situation is more critical in the urban areas.

Further data shows that youth unemployment rate in Tanzania decreased to 13.70 per cent in 2014 from 14.90 per cent in 2006.

Youth unemployment rate in Tanzania averaged 14.30 per cent from 2006 until 2014, reaching an all-time high of 14.90 per cent in 2006 and a record low of 13.70 per cent in 2014.

The proportion of young people who were in vocational training in 2012 was 1.7% and 46% total enrolment were female. In 2010, 66% (44% male, 22% female) found employment after graduation.

The number of young people in the modern apprenticeship is insignificant as the system declined after privatization of the parastatal organizations in 1999.

Basing on such statistics, it is apparent that in order to minimise the number of unemployed youth and those living in abject poverty, then we need to embrace entrepreneurship programs that will impart business skills to the youth