AFRICA DEVELOPMENT AND RESOURCES RESEARCH INSTITUTE (ADRRI) JOURNAL (www.adrri.org) ISSN: 2343-6662 VOL. I,No.1, pp 9-15,October, 2013 AFRICA DEVELOPMENT AND RESOURCES RESEARCH INSTITUTE (ADRRI) JOURNAL ADRRI JOURNAL (www.adrri.org) ISSN: 2343-6662 VOL. I,No.1, pp 9-15,October, 2013 Factors Militating Against Graduate Entrepreneurship in Ghana Solomon Yemidi (MPhil) Lecturer, Department of Mathematics and Statistics Ho Polytechnic (E-mail: mensahsy27@yahoo.com) Abstract This study seeks to identify some factors that militate against entrepreneurship among potential Polytechnic graduates in Ghana. Using a cross-sectional data from 93 students, it has been discovered that bad attitude of Ghanaians toward made-in- Ghana goods/services, bad business environment, inexperience and inadequacy of training and unavailability of skilled manpower tend to discourage initiative and graduate entrepreneurship. It is recommended that entrepreneurial training and mentorship should take a centre stage in tertiary education in Ghana. Also, Ghanaians should be educated by the government on the need to patronize locally produced goods. Keywords: factors, against, graduate entrepreneurship, Ghana Introduction Ghana embarked on an Economic Reform Programme (ERP) with the support of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) in April, 1983. The reforms sought to arrest and reverse the economic decay witnessed in the late 1970s and early 1980s as well as structurally transform many sectors of the country (Dordoonu, 1994). This recovery programme involved several structural reforms including education. In 1987, Ghana embarked on an educational reform in line with the ERP which altered the duration of formal basic education from 10 years to 9 years, based on Dzobo Report of 1975 (Agbemabiese, 2007). Similarly, duration of secondary education has been reduced from 7 years to 3 years. These reforms were necessitated by the government’s desire to cut back on its overall expenditure and to increase access to education as part of the reform. The government of Ghana was also required to downsize the workforce in the public sector through retrenchment. These two developments constrained the government when it came to employment. The educational reforms were therefore necessary to support such policies that would alleviate the burden of government being the main employer and spending huge sums of money on an individual for many years of schooling. The reform placed renewed emphasis on vocationalising the basic education system in an attempt to re-direct the educational system to better prepare the youth for the world of work as opposed to grammar-type of education (Casely-Hayford, Palmer, Ayamdoo and Thompson, 2007). The reforms were aimed at producing graduates with employable skills who would enter the job market or start their own businesses. With the opening of the educational system to many Ghanaian children coupled with the emergence of private tertiary institutions, the formal avenues of employment could not absorb all the products being churned out. According to ILO (2010), young people in South-East Asia and the Pacific are 4.7 times more likely to be unemployed as adults. Similarly, estimates have it that in North Africa as a whole, an alarming 23.6% of economically active young people were unemployed in 2010 (ILO, 2010). In West Africa, the youth represent 37% of the population of working age, and 60% of all unemployed (ECA, n.d). On average, young people across the globe are almost three times more likely to be unemployed than adults (ILO, 2010). Clearly, the unemployment is a problem not confronting Ghana alone but the world as whole. Increasingly, the private sector has been recognised as the engine of growth with emphasis on small-scale businesses (Ghana Vision 2020, the first step). As the country is being confronted with mounting graduate unemployment, the youth are being called upon to venture into private business with emphasis on self-employment. There are several studies that show that youth entrepreneurship is driven by the lack of opportunities to earn a living elsewhere (CEEDR, 2000; Awogbenle and Iwuamadi, 2010). The government has taken some steps to create the enabling environment to facilitate the private sector initiative of the youth. One can talk of the establishment of Venture Capital Trust Fund, National Board for Small Scale Industries and Local Enterprises and Skills Development Programme (LESDEP).