Entrepreneurship Training Programmes Of Opportunities Industrialisation Centre - Ghana, Accra Centre

INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background to the Study Entrepreneurship is widely acknowledged as a key factor in promoting employment, fighting poverty and stimulating sustained economic growth (Adrangi et al. 2003; Botha et al., 2006). Furthermore, Garavan and O’Cinneade (1994: 3) noted that entrepreneurship is “a possible solution to rising unemployment rates and a recipe for economic prosperity.” This recent upsurge of interest has led to a host of supportive interventions aimed at promoting entrepreneurship. Bolton and Thompson (2004) defined an entrepreneur as a person who habitually creates and innovates to build something of recognised value around perceived opportunities. An entrepreneur develops new idea and takes risks of setting up an enterprise to produce a product or service which satisfies customer needs. Entrepreneurship can then be defined as the dynamic process of creating something new with value by devoting the necessary time and effort, and assuming risks and receiving rewards (Hisrisch and Peters, 2002). Entrepreneurship is associated with possession of personal characteristics, values and attitudes, among which are opportunity seeking, initiative, persistence, networking, goal setting, creativity, and propensity for risk taking that might be expected to be influenced by a formal education programme (Gorman, Hanlon and King, 1997, cited in Mafela, 2009). An entrepreneurship education programme combines the traditional vocational subjects with the knowledge, skills and pedagogical approaches, which are geared towards the development of entrepreneurship in the individual student as well as in the society