General News of Sunday, 17 November 2019
Source: citinewsroom.com
2019-11-17
President Akufo-Addo speaking at the summit
Increasing investment in young people is the key to development. This includes promoting quality education that prepares them for future opportunities.
It is for this reason that President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has reiterated government’s resolve to create a congenial atmosphere for startups in Ghana.
According to him, this call is based on the importance of indigenous businesses to the growth of an economy.
With the initiatives like the Presidential pitch competition under the National Entrepreneurship and Innovation Program, NEIP, which supports entrepreneurs, Nana Akufo- Addo maintained that Ghana is on the right path to development.
Speaking at the Africa Net-preneurship Summit in Accra, he said that empowerment of the youth with education and skills training is key to the economic development of Africa.
“There is now a firm recognition among government and international organisations that the development of entrepreneurial challenge is key to the process of economic development and to addressing the challenge of unemployment, especially among the youth.
This summit comes at a time when the United Nations has projected that by 2035, Africa’s working population will be about a quarter of the world’s population and a third of the world’s youth population are between the ages of fifteen to twenty-four years. The empowerment of this young population with access to education and skills training and the creation of the enabling environment for their businesses to survive and thrive to constitute very powerful tools for economic development in Africa and the world.
On his Part, Jack Ma, founder of the Alibaba Group charged young people to find ways of solving problems in their communities through entrepreneurship.
“Entrepreneurs never wait for conditions. They create their own conditions. Those who wait, complain and stay at home will never be entrepreneurs. A real entrepreneur opens his radius and searches for opportunities to solve problems. They search like hunting dogs. Anytime I come to Africa, I try to tell people that the four keys which are extremely important for the future of Africa are Education, E-government, Infrastructure, and Entrepreneurship. Africa never lacks talents and resources,” he said.
A former Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-Moon and the founder of “The Jack Ma Foundation and Alibaba Group”, Jack Ma on Friday, 15th November 2019 paid separate courtesy calls on the President at the Jubilee House.
Their visit was ahead of the maiden edition of the Africa Netpreneurship Summit, which was held at the Accra International Conference, on Saturday, 16th November 2019.
Founder of Alibaba, Jack Ma awarded 10 finalists for his Netpreneur Prize Initiative.
