RELEVANCE OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP TO THE ECONOMICS DEVELOPMENT OF NIGERIA
Entrepreneurship’s role for the development and well-being of society has also been recognized by academic researchers and policymakers (Bosma, Wennekers, & Amorós, 2011). Entrepreneurship has assumed a proactive approach to tackle the ever-changing business environment of the 21st century, building sustainable development in the country, supporting the economic growth of countries, creating new job opportunities for young graduates, and societal well-being. Keeping in view its significance, developed countries and under-developed countries have shifted their focus towards entrepreneurship (Bosma, 2011; GEM, 2013; Volkmann, 2009).
Petrin (1994) discusses the importance of seeing the link between individual entrepreneurial aspirations and societal goals because all genuine entrepreneurship is social, with the entrepreneur aiming to provide a service or good that can capture a share of the market or even create a new market. This argument can be made even more forcefully within the context of entrepreneurship and rural development where the creation of rural enterprises can create employment, reduce poverty and reduce the need for social support. Hence, the motivations of the people who start new businesses should not be unusually highly individualistic or focused solely on self-fulfillment (Benjamin-Schonberger, 2010).
The motivation for entrepreneurs in starting new businesses should transcend the improvement of their standard of living, the presence of an individual personal plan and the attainment of higher social status and respect, and rather drive at helping the general society.
On its part, ethnic identification of sociological enterprise tries to explain entrepreneurship as a process where the individual’s sociological back-ground is one of the decisive “push” factors in becoming an entrepreneur (Reynolds, 1991). This is because individuals draw their values from the ethnic group they are associated with and are mostly influenced by such groups e.g. family, co-workers or broader groups such as occupational groups among whom they draw inspirations and experience.
Young entrepreneurs can achieve their individual or collective visions through concrete actions.
Entrepreneurship has the potential to create youth employment and integrate the youth into the economic mainstream while addressing some of the socio-psychological and delinquency problems that arise from joblessness (Chigunta, 2002; Curtain, 2001). Youth enterprises provide marginalized youth with a sense of ‘meaning’ and ‘belonging’, shape their identity and encourage others to treat and accept them as equal members of society and also promotes innovation and resilience as they are encouraged to find new solutions, ideas and methods of doing things through experience-based learning (OECD, 2001; White & Kenyon, 2000 cited in Chigunta, 2002). This requires the youth to be resourceful, have initiative, imagination, enthusiasm, dash, ambition, energy, vitality, boldness and courage (Schnurr & Newing, 1997:2 cited in Chigunta, 2002) in order to fight global youth unemployment. It is estimated that youth unemployment constitutes 47 percent (88 Million) of global unemployment, making the youth vulnerable to social exclusion (ILO, 2005a).
Globally, self-employment is an important source of employment, livelihoods and economic dynamism (OECD, 2001). Effective youth entrepreneurship education prepares young people to be responsible, enterprising individuals who become entrepreneurial thinkers and contribute to economic development and sustainable communities (Chigunta, 2002). One important thing is that young entrepreneurs gain a sense of accomplishment that comes from knowing that they did something useful with little or no supervision (Johanson & Vahlne, 2003) and is the greatest reason to raise a young entrepreneur.
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