PROMOTING LOCAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP SHOULD BE OUR MAIN AGENDA.
Kenya like her counterparts in the East African Community faces the same challenges, those of promoting homegrown businesses and locally produced products either in their own country or within the region. Our markets have been flooded by imported products right from the simplest of all products like clothes to the most sophisticated industrial machinery. Truth be told that we may not be able to make those heavy machines but we can do the easier and less technologically advanced household products and promote them locally. Our young entrepreneurs have greatly embraced the market with its challenges and produced products which have not been accepted totally, and for us as a nation to develop, we should make our products and export some in a bid to counter the excess imports.
A critical look at our nation and you can’t miss to see the need to promote local entrepreneurship, why? People have been crying that they lack jobs and employment. We need to develop a positive look for the self employment sector so that it can look appealing to our youth and they can value it as a good employment too. Over the recent past, there has been change in our university curriculum to try and introduce entrepreneurship as a common discipline among all the university courses. It is a good initiative but it worries to some extent about the small turnover number of the university student graduates to self made entrepreneurs. The skills imparted to our students should be such that they develop a strong desire in the learners to be self made entrepreneurs. This can be achieved by introducing creative and innovations clubs in our universities with a strong foundation in research and development. This fact will help change the current trend that has marked universities as the least environment that encourages innovation and creativity.
With the new inventions and innovations in our country, we could be on the verge of having economic and financial break troughs for our country with a sharp decline in levels of unemployment and a direct improvement in the living standards of our people. The dream of any country is to become economically independent with improved infrastructure and living standards. To reach such levels, the countries already there did a lot of sacrifice. Their sacrifices might be or might not be the same as ours but we must also sacrifice. To cut down on imports and improve on our local innovations and consumptions of locally made products is one of the sacrifices. With improved promotion of local products, we promote local entrepreneurs and in turn develop an entrepreneurship culture and spirit locally for the coming generations.
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