Professor Sarah Olarewaju Anyanwu a Professor of Development Economics in University of Abuja is Head of Department (HOD) of the Department of Economics. Recently she delivered a paper on the importance of Encouraging Entrepreneurship Development in the country. The lecture
captioned, “Entrepreneurship: A veritable tool for fostering economics Development in Nigeria was a masterpiece.
In this interview with journalists
shortly after presenting the paper, the university don spoke on the message of
the lecture and why imbibing the culture of entrepreneurship would place the
country on a fast development lane.
Ques: Madam
what do you think the paper you just presented is out to achieve
Ans: The choice was basically to drive home the point about the key role
entrepreneurial
activities play in
any given economy. Some of my first publications for my Ph.D and after were on women entrepreneurship. After that, I was made Director Centre for Entrepreneurship Training, University of Abuja here and by virtue of my exposure in the subject area, I had also participated
in all programs connected to
entrepreneurship or organize by such bodies as the National Universities Commission and others
For an example, we have produced two books
for general studies in conjunction with the commission for use nationwide by
all the Tertiary institutions. These are in parts I and 2. Again we had traveled to other universities abroad to learn more about entrepreneurship. So the essence of the
paper basically was to beam a searchlight on what entrepreneurship is all about and how it can sustain the economic growth of a
country tremendously.
Ques: what then
do you think entrepreneurship training can do to National economics growth and
development?
Ans: Actually
it would facilitate economic growth. Apart from that it helps to generate jobs, stimulate group empowerment, either
women or youth bodies
and of course all
Nigerians that are interested in entrepreneurship. Infact, globally, it is known that this
is an agent of wealth
creation, poverty reduction, all being ingredients or out come of
entrepreneurship. The
western worlds that are now developed today came about as a result of their imbibing the
culture of entrepreneurship. You can see India, Taiwan, China and the rest they are ahead in entrepreneurship matters. They are more in the areas of developing medium scale enterprises which form
the major backbones of their economies.
Ques: Nigeria as a country appears not to be too disposed to encouraging medium scale enterprises, what do you think can be put in place to address this
Ans: In fact, the government needs to put in
place interventions to encourage the large firms to carry
along medium scale enterprises. You know this small scale enterprises are like
out put servers to the large scale enterprises. So they need to carry them along in terms of credit
facilities, in terms of providing conducive business environment and of
course reducing the
cost of production for them and making sure that they get credit at affordable interest rates.
Ques: Inspite of all these, why is there still unemployment in the country
Ans: Honestly, Nigeria is among the growing economies in the world but
GDP without development is a problem. So what we need now is inclusive growth whereby we do not only have growth in GDP but other indicators also, like development indicators. We have to reduce unemployment, Poverty and address the problem of infrastructure. So growth without
development cannot sustain the economy. Based on this, we need inclusive growth whereby all the segments of the economy would be carried along.
Ques: Okay your advice to government
Ans: Government should make the business environment conducive. There are so many factors.
We have the political
factor, economic
factor and technological factor,
social and even moral.
You know the
attitude of people to work also counts so these factors would combine to provide a very conducive environment for business to
strive. Otherwise people would shy away from putting their money into
investment
Ques: what is
then your advice to students?
Ans: they should also imbibe entrepreneurship.
They need to be self reliant. Students need to be empowered, acquire that
entrepreneurial culture and spirit so that they can be self sustaining even
after coming out of the system. They can do away with government work if they
are empowered. And making it possible for them to acquire entrepreneur skills,
then set up their businesses as alternative to white collar jobs that are hard
to come by these days. Thank you.