Entrepreneurship and Youth Employment in Sokoto State: A study of selected leather industries

Abstract

The youths of are the bed rock of any society. Empowering the youth implies having good leaders tomorrow. Deterioration in the development indices of most countries in Africa has forced world leaders to search for other approaches for development in the African continent. For obvious reasons, entrepreneurship is one of those practical approaches that could fast track Africa’s trajectory to development. Eradication of unemployment in general but especially youth unemployment has become the prevalent development challenge in Africa. This study poses to examine the relationship between entrepreneurship and youth employment in Sokoto State. It attempts to answer the following question; Does the solutions to the problems of unemployment lies mainly in entrepreneurship and self-employment? A total of 58 questionnaires were administered to the employees who were randomly selected to serve as the sample population of this study. An interview was also conducted with four entrepreneurs in the leather industry. They were purposely selected because they share the same characteristics – privately owned, age, popularity and size. All the three were hypotheses formulated to guide this study were accepted. The study found that entrepreneurship creates job opportunities for the youth, thus, inculcates self-reliance into Nigerian youth, reduces burden on parents and youth criminal activities. We recommend among others that government should as a matter of emergency encourage graduates to seek employment in entrepreneurship ventures.