Abstract:
Unemployment among the youth between the ages of 18 to 35 years is a major developmental
challenge as it accounts for over 45% of the unemployed in Ghana. Entrepreneurial
development has been identified by the Ghana National Youth Policy as one of the panaceas
to youth unemployment in Ghana. The higher educational institutions are responding to youth
unemployment through the development of entrepreneurial spirit and competencies in the
curricula for prospective graduate. The study used a content-validated questionnaire to survey
160 undergraduate students who had undergone various courses in entrepreneurship and
agribusiness in the University of Cape Coast, Ghana. This was to identify the relationship
between the perceived improvement in the level of entrepreneurial competencies and
willingness of students to start own business after graduation. The SPSS and STATA
softwares were respectively used to generate descriptive statistics and binary logistic
regression to describe the variables and relationships. The Cronbach's alpha coefficient of 0.89
on the likert-type scale measured indicated that the questionnaire was reliable. The results
from the study showed that majority of the respondents (62%) were willing to start the own
businesses after graduation. Generally, the perceived overall entrepreneurial competencies of
students were high. Specifically, students possessed high entrepreneurial competencies in
areas such as self confidence, self discipline, the desire to start business, responsibility,
problem solving ability and perseverance. Results from the logistic regression showed that, of
the 20 entrepreneurial competency areas studied, only four namely the desire to start own
business, .generosity, good people judgment and knowledge on agribusiness were the
significant predictors of the willingness of students to start own business after graduation. The
study recommends among others, the development of business incubators and apprenticeship
schemes for graduates to reduce youth unemployment since the desire to start own business is
high. Moreover, the high risk involved in starting own businesses in Ghana should be
minimized through the enforcement of laws governing business operations and provision of
technical and financial supports to graduates
