Chairman of the African Business Centre for Developing Education Ekwow Spio-Garbrah has challenged stakeholders and the public to sing the praise of successful agribusiness men and women in order to attract the youth and especially unemployed graduates to venture into it.
Speaking at the Annual Forum on Government, Industry and Academia collaboration under the theme: Commecialisation of Scientific Research; Promoting youth employment in Agribusiness, the former Trade Minister indicated that Ghanaians have not done enough to project Agribusiness as prestigious hence the continuous shunning of the sector by the youth.
“People think sitting in an office is more prestigious so we must find a way to make agriculture look attractive and equally prestigious to young people and to bring the role models of successful agribusiness men and women who have also built their homes and our sitting in nice cars and have converted their agribusinesses into successful operations and with offices, factories etc…” Spio-Garbrah noted.
“Most people if you ask them to name one successful agribusiness industrialist in Ghana, they may find it difficult naming them. So we honour our teachers, farmers, bankers, entertainers, sportsmen and musicians but we may not have done enough to showcase our agribusiness success stories especially the ones being done by young people…” he added.
He stated that although Government has taken some steps to bridge the gap, more could be done by the public institutions by adding it to the curricula to encourage students to appreciate it from the onset and not see it as the last option when all other fails.
“… does the curriculum in our schools encourage our students to think about agribusiness as a career option or does it make agribusiness look like something you only go in to do when you’re a failure… does society itself holdup agribusiness people, when we go to our churches for our annual harvest do we deliberately look for agribusiness entrepreneurs and hold them up as the chairmen of the committees…”
The Forum on Government, Industry and Academia Collaboration is a mentorship event organised by the African Business Centre for Developing Education annually to focus on ways to forge better coordination between the aforementioned sectors.
