An entrepreneurial culture will skyrocket as we invest in the youth

History in the making for the Ministry of Education as a new education system is implemented in the upper secondary section. The inclusion of entrepreneurship, as a subject, is a milestone in the making of an entrepreneurial culture. Not only is it culturally advantageous, it is also viable economically if we are ever going to be able to have sustainable development. The School of Finance and Banking established a centre for entrepreneurship development. Its remit is “to foster entrepreneurial skill development among Rwandans” by offering capacity building and value added services to address challenges faced by small and medium sized enterprises. All this news shows a desire to develop. It’s not just patching up for next year, but for 15, 20, 50 years to come. Entrepreneurship is hinged on aspects of innovativeness, creativity and self responsibility. For us to generate an entrepreneurial culture we need to instil these aspects into our society. For the young (secondary level), sensitization is a vital priority and the Ministry of Education should collaborate with the Ministry of Youth to organise seminars to steer and raise awareness for a stimulating background. With this in place, innovativeness and creativity is needed to spearhead the spirit of adventure and challenge so. The collaborating ministries must then invest in youth intensive activities such as the entertainment industry where the youth compete in categories such music, dance or drama. This industry is well placed since innovativeness and creativity are fully exploited. In reality, we find the entertainment and business industries using innovations and creativity to maintain their competitive advantage over their rivals thus lending momentum and value to sustainable development. Our youth learn through such competitions to be competitive locally or globally as this world becomes more and more competitive. For the elder youth (university level), universities should encourage their students to establish enterprise study groups/associations that can advice each other on how to promote creativity to be ,then, practiced during research dissertations. Most companies in today’s world desire to have graduates who are creative and innovative with whatever they have to generate greater output. The Private Sector Federation need a thumb up for their initiative to award youth with good business plans. The promotion of youth employment, through youth cooperatives and initiatives, is being spearheaded by the Ministry of Youth and these youth cooperatives are being given financial assistance through loan disbursement by COOJAD (a youth savings and credit bank). It’s in this vein that we find the youth having interest in embodying an entrepreneurial culture in them since they see a path to success economically. With regard to self responsibility, many youth have embraced better respect to their fellow youth in different countries. Entrepreneurship not only instils respect to other but also stewardship to our environment. Our environment defines us and so, whatever we do affects it positively or negatively. The organisers and contributors of the Legatum Africa awards OTF, John Templeton Foundation, Private Sector Federation, to mention but a few, deserve a thumbs up for their support in awarding small and medium businesses that promote stewardship. Today, our youth have many opportunities to be the entrepreneurs of tomorrow and all stakeholders should be accredited and continue to promote an entrepreneurial society for our development. akagenza@yahoo.co.uk