GTUC lecture inspires youth to create wealth

Dr Michael Agyekum Addo, Chief Executive Officer of KAMA Group Limited over the weekend urged young Ghanaians to be creative and entrepreneurial.

He was speaking at the ninth Graduate school prestigious lecture of the Ghana Technology University College (GTUC).


Mr Addo noted that youth unemployment posed a developmental challenge to the nation, that called for the youth to wean themselves from government jobs and apply their creative and imaginative minds to create wealth.


“Because I came from a poor home and raised by a single parent with many siblings I vowed never to visit poverty again in my life…I faced tribulations and disappointments in the hands of one particular lecturer in KNUST, who often discouraged me but I never gave up,” he said in reminiscence.


Speaking on theme: “Entrepreneurship in the 21st century revolution,’ Dr Addo told a fully packed audience at the Florence Onny Auditorium of the school, that the youth needed to engage their “right hand side of the brain” embedded with innovation and creativity to explore and exploit opportunities in the environment to improve their lives.


He said there is “no short cut for money or sakawa” but what one needed to do was to understand how the system worked and take advantage of the situation, adding “in every negative situation there are numerous opportunities associated with it.”


While enjoining young Ghanaians to be disciplined and cultivate winning attitudes which are the hallmark of success, Dr Addo also advised lecturers and teachers “to love their students and not to victimize them because you cannot suppress the destiny of anybody in life.”

He noted that the 21st century has its own revolution, such as e-commerce, e-policing, e-banking, e-learning, among others, that called for new methods of doing things which the youth and the nation ought to embrace.


Mr Addo, who is also the owner of KAMA Group Limited, expressed regret that while many nations had gone past the industrial revolution era, Ghana was still marching along and stacked in it, saying Ghana “ones produced batteries, sugar, radio and operated a blue train as well as a shipping line” but today all these had collapsed.


He blamed the situation on university dons for churning out products without entrepreneurial brains or creativity and offering “University certificates of unemployment” to products virtually nonperforming on the job, because “they cannot imagine, create, use talent and apply innovation”.


He called for a paradigm shift in the mindset of Ghanaians by accepting the new revolution as well as eschew doubt and fear which are inimical to creativity and innovations.


Dr Francis Agyenim Boating, Dean of GTUC Graduate School said the paradox of Ghana having the knowledge while bedeviled with unemployment could be resolved through innovation and creativity.


He urged university authorities to harness the creative minds of students through creation of offices, changing the curricular to reflect the 21st century and establishing relevant training institutions to facilitate students’ innovations.