An enabling environment for youth to become entrepreneurs

Abstract: One of the most pressing socio-economic problems around the world is the high incidence of youth unemployment. South Africa is considered to be an emerging market as it is faced with a massive challenge of high levels of unemployment amongst the youth. Since 1994 after democratic election, the South African government has introduced policies for youth development, youth entrepreneurship programmes and small businesses with the purpose of creating an environment that support youth with labour skills to enter job market and being able to establish their own businesses. Despite all this government interventions, there is still higher numbers of youth that are unemployed and there also a low entrepreneurial activity among youth. The core research question underlying this research is; to what extent does the current government support youth entrepreneurship programmes which enable young people to start-up businesses. This study addresses the requirements of an enabling environment for youth entrepreneurship. The study was quantitative research using self-administration questionnaires as measuring instrument. The study sample consists of 197 youth from Johannesburg areas that attended NYDA road show exhibitions. The statistical analyses included reliability analyses; frequency distributions, cross-tabulation, factor analysis and Chi-square test. The main findings of the study indicated that entrepreneurial education and training with the skills to start a business and run a business is perceived to be more important for an enabling environment. The finding also shows that financial literacy is important in enabling environment as majority of youth lack knowledge on how to save, invest and spend money. This study recommended that learning about entrepreneurship and making entrepreneurship as a career choice is important in all levels of education from primary to tertiary education. Lastly, the study recommended that by having requirements that are need in entrepreneurship environment can increase the early-stage entrepreneurship activity rate (TEA) amongst youth in Johannesburg. The future areas of research were identified. The study contributes to the empirical study in the field of youth entrepreneurship. This study will assist the government agencies in creating and developing an environment that can enable youth to start their own businesses.M.Com. (Business Management