The World Bank assisted programme comes under the Ghana Jobs and Skills Project, which is designed to give life to the entrepreneurial aspirations of young Ghanaians, with a broadened startup support package that includes both financial and technical, targeting 50,000 youth.

The Bank is providing technical and financial support, and the Ghana Enterprises Agency (GEA) is the implementing agency.

The programme would provide training and startup grants for the youth in their fields of expertise and includes training in workplace management modeled on the popular Japanese theory, Kaizen.

Training also covers monetary management and other nodes essential to entrepreneurial enhancement, and beneficiaries in the Volta Region are currently undergoing beginner phase training.

Mr Seth Klutse, Regional Manager of the GEA, said a total of 1,379 from all Municipalities and Districts in the Region are benefiting, and that the count met the 50 per cent threshold for female participation.

He said selection had been open and deferred political and other considerations, and that the training, which was being undertaken in two batches over the course of two weeks, would prepare trainees for subsequent advancement with the intermediary and advance stages.

Mr. Klutse said the YouStart was unique in that it would ensure quality assurance and affect the general outlook of young entrepreneurs for a well-developed industrial environment.

He said the programme showed the Government’s premium on skills development and was sure to enhance the entrepreneurial competence of the youth and provide better quality jobs.

“This YouStart Programme is unique in the sense that the World Bank is monitoring it and that we have people monitoring the training sessions for quality assurance in terms of delivery, the environment, and the contributions. It is not like any other programme.

“After passing through this YouStart, our entrepreneurs should be able to change their attitude and the mindset that a lot of SMEs think about money more than capacity building, and that is what we need to work on.

“So, I am expecting that they will be able to practise exactly what they will be taught, and then use these tools, especially with the Kaizen that is coming up, they should be able to use these tools to be able to develop their businesses.”

He said the programme had come to complement others such as the MasterCard sponsored CAP, which the Region also benefited from.

The YouStart programme is on a full rollout in the Region following a pilot in Ho.

More than 100,000 young entrepreneurs nationwide are expected to sign up.