Entrepreneurship, Path To Viable Employment!

Youth employment is a global challenge that different governments face in diverse ways obliging each system to seek adaptable solutions based on its context and magnitude of the problem. Like elsewhere, the assertion of the International Labour Organisation that the most obvious general labour market characteristic of youth unemployment is that its rate is higher than that of adults, holds true for Cameroon. The Head of State is quite aware of this trend and is redoubling efforts to contain the situation and provide solutions to the vexing situation. 
Little wonder in his traditional Youth Day Message for 2023; the 57th edition, President Paul Biya dwelled lengthily on the issue, telling his young compatriots what the way out could be if all hands are on deck. After enumerating all government’s actions aimed at bailing its youthful population out of the worrying unemployment, President Biya opined, “These efforts are all geared towards providing you with the best possible training to make you competitive and capable not only of seizing the job opportunities available locally and internationally, but also of becoming veritable self-employed entrepreneurs.” The Head of State told his fellow compatriots that, “In a bid to foster your integration into the job market, the State is taking action to promote the requisite entrepreneurial culture for youth empowerment.”
It was certainly not by chance that the father of the nation kept insisting on entrepreneurship as recourse to sustainable employment. For, it is an open secret that entrepreneurship which consists in developing, organising and running a new business to generate profit while taking on financial risk obliges youth to think out of the box. Cameroonian youth who have gone to school or not, acquired one skill or the other cannot fully depend on government for very limited Public Service jobs. Transforming themselves into entrepreneurs would make them job creators not job seekers. It is said that entrepreneurs are important to market economies because they can act as the wheels of the economic growth of the country. By creating new products and services, they stimulate new employment, which ultimately results in the acceleration of economic development. Cameroon, more than ever, needs this calibre of youth! This explains why the President said, “I am urging you to embrace self-employment by taking advantage of the opportunities available in areas such as agriculture, handicrafts, and digital economy. This is definitely one of the most effective ways of reducing youth unemployment.”
It was therefore on the basis of stimulating the entrepreneurial spirit in his beloved young compatriots that the Head of State decided in 2016 to prescribe the Special Three-Year Youth Plan which till date has already enabled the financing of over 11 thousand youth projects and generated close to 35 thousand direct jobs, for an overall cost of approximately FCFA 20 billion. Quite illustrative of what youth entrepreneurship can do to a nation and its peoples.
No doubt in an attempt to boost this plan, the country’s Chief Executive Officer said, “I have instructed the Government to fast-track the creation of a Guarantee Fund for Young Entrepreneurs, with a special window for financing projects promoted by youth of the Cameroonian Diaspora.&rd...