Policymakers Urged to Support Entrepreneurship Education to tackle youth Unemployment

Samuel Mobolaji

Youth unemployment has been a problem in Nigeria for decades. This is why policymakers are increasingly turning to entrepreneurship education as a solution.

It is hoped that entrepreneurship will reduce reliance on formal jobs and create more opportunities for self-employment.

The unemployment rate stood at 5.3 per cent in the first quarter of 2024, representing a third consecutive increase since the second quarter of 2023. This is close to the 2023 global unemployment rate of 5.1 per cent.

Researchers and policymakers globally view entrepreneurship education as a key solution to youth unemployment.

Nigerian universities have been required since 2006 to teach at least one entrepreneurship course to undergraduates before graduation. All university undergraduates, no matter their course of study, receive entrepreneurship education before graduation.

This is clearly motivated by evidence that graduates who start businesses are most likely to start businesses that employ more workers over time. This should reduce unemployment, especially youth unemployment.

Admittedly, not all high-growth businesses are started by university graduates. However, global evidence shows that the most successful entrepreneurs are also highly educated.

It has now been 18 years since Nigerian universities were first required to teach entrepreneurship. There have been limited studies evaluating the impact of the program. Also, many of these evaluations use small samples and cover only one or two years. Their methodologies equally do not allow for definitive conclusions about the policy’s effectiveness.

Experts on innovation, entrepreneurship and economic development has recognize that rigorous, long-term evaluations can provide deeper insights. They decided to address these limitations by employing a more robust research design.

Their study sought to determine whether entrepreneurship education has had an impact on students. They used data from a sample of over 12,000 Nigerian undergraduates. The results show that despite a strong positive impact at first, the longer the policy has been in place, the weaker its effect.

They found that the entrepreneurship course initially had a strong positive impact on students expressed intent to start a business. However, this effect had weakened by 2021. The later sets of students did not express as strong an interest in starting a business as the earlier sets of students did.

Research shows that the entrepreneurship course does not fully meet students’ needs. Further, the quality of teaching fluctuates as lecturers change. More importantly, neither the universities nor the national universities commission consistently monitor the course success.

This categorization offers a plausible explanation for our result. While the policy had an immediate positive effect, it did not have the same impact on different groups of students over time. This highlights an important issue: the lack of ongoing evaluation and adaptation of how the policy is implemented. Policies, especially those aimed at education and skill development, must respond and adapt to changing circumstances. Without continuous monitoring, even the most well-intentioned policies can become ineffective.