Enterprise development: is a third and the most critical.
This states the supports and services that incubate and
help develop their own businesses. It goes beyond
entrepreneurship education by helping youth to access
small loans that are needed to begin business operation
and by providing more individualised attention to the
development of a viable business idea.
The implementation of effective youth development
programme cannot be fulfilled without finding support
fund for the trainees. This is predicated on the fact that
“empowerment is not complete without a corresponding
adequate funding provision for the trained manpower.
The greatest challenge still remains financial
intermediation. Trainees keep raising the concern about
the practicability of the post-training activities. Majority
have doubt about the availability of funding and the
possibility of having access to fund to finance
businesses.
If the bottom-line of creating the entrepreneurship
development centres in the country is to reduce poverty,
then there is need to ensure that soft loans are
accessible by the people within a reasonable time frame.
To this end, the creation of the micro-finance banks all
over the federation is to buttress the preparedness of
EDP creator to serve the purposes of the micro-lenders
into whose group the youths fall. This however, leads to
other emerging questions: Is there any evidence that the
Micro-finance banks have impacted poverty in Nigeria? If
so, are they society-wide? Can the poorest benefit from
the loans? Are the interest rates charged on loans
encouraging enough for start-up businesses